Dread

In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift imagines a race of beings who are immortal. Gulliver is astonished to hear this news, and imagines that they must have the utmost happiness and prosperity since they have overcome that most basic human problem: death.

Swift reverses this formula however: the life of the immortals is one of continual agony, pettiness, and boredom. To cut to the chase, Swift's essential insight is that death is not the problem, life is. (This is why, in a recent examination, I attempted to argue that, along with 1984, Gulliver's Travels is a fundamental anti-utopian text. That is to say that these texts are not dystopias warning of some nightmare version of the future, but instead they represent a reproach to the very idea of utopia. Swift's indictment of existence is but one aspect of his attack on those who would propose utopian solutions, but it is the bedrock that supports all the rest.)

A common thread to many of the thinkers I regard highly (Cioran, Schopenhauer, Hamlet) is this belief that existence is the true source of dread, and not a fear of death (as thinkers such as Heidegger maintain*). Suicide is, as Cioran said, too late. It is best to not be born at all:

Life is pain. And life persists, obscure,/but life for all that, even in the tomb...Suicide is unavailing. The form/is changed, the indestructable being endures...There is no death. In vain you clamour for death,/souls destitute of hope.

*It occurs to me as I write this to consider the bold final movement of The Thin Red Line, a film that has been described as cinematic Heidegger. I have argued in the past that the final moments of the film's main character represent a victory over death through personal sacrifice, and despite my differences with Heidegger I think this is still probably the best description of what happens. Considering what I wrote above, it is perhaps possible to see it as victory over fear, a victory that the character himself wishes for at the beginning of the film (he asks for a sense of "calm"). In this sense he conquers the dread of existence through a passive acceptance of death. A moment worth thinking more about...

The Vatican, Gender Equality, and Fettering in the Family Structure

The Vatican has released a report suggesting that certain strands of feminist thought pose a threat to the traditional family structure. I have to be fair by admitting that I have not read the report and do not intend to, but I agree with many of its findings. However, I reach somewhat different conclusions.

I have argued in the past that one of the main threats posed to the antiquated family structure is the socio-economic equality of women. This structure was one that developed on many assumptions of woman as a subordinate gender. Without going into details, because in many cases they are self-evident, changing attitudes about the role of women, sexuality, and woman's entry into the employment market have refuted these assumptions and shaken the very foundations of antiquated marriage. Now, women are expected to work in a dual capacity, once in the marketplace for a devalued salary and once at home in indentured servitude. This places an unreasonable burden on the woman that raises the possibility of straining relationships both at home and in the workplace, and this is just one of many examples.

A quick look at the formal or traditional aspects of marriage that we still carry with us show the subordinating tendency of the antiquated family structure. For instance, there is the "tradition" of taking the male's surname in marriage, a tradition that nobody can doubt was borne of an attitude that women were the socially inferior gender in the marriage. Initially, it was a means to determine patrilineal descent of property (since, absent science, the only "natural" way to determine descent is matrilineally since we can see what mother a child is born to). Then when we decided that patrilineal property descent was not the American way and was a denial equal opportunity, the male's surname was kept because he was the contracting and professional spouse. Now with no social or economic reason for such a practice we rely on that last bastion of idiocy, "tradition," a word that is easily coded for repression.

Never accept a "tradition" blindly, all a tradition is many times is the semi-empty form of historical subordination. I say semi-empty because there is still subordination involved in the mere taking of a name. After all, we are "naming creatures", and as Sartre says, by naming, we change the thing. Words make a difference, oftentimes language is our key tool for structuring the world around us, but this is getting off point and if someone wishes to take me to task on the danger of naming then I would be glad to write a short book in response!

The point is that the antiquated family structure is certainly in trouble, it fails at near 50%, and, as I have said in the past, if the airline industry reported crashes at anywhere near 50% of its flights then none of us would be boarding planes. High rates of failed families have much more widespread implications than plane crashes because they affect more lives and tend to reproduce themselves in their offspring. The family is the basic "building block" of our civil society and it is almost 300 years past due to begin discussing ways to reform it. I argue that the solution does not lie in a rolling back of the liberties gained by women (this is currently underway whether you like it or not, the women's movement is in fast retreat), and the solution certainly will not be found in denying homosexuals equal protection of the laws. Its time to crack open our closed little American minds and begin considering real ways to adjust our civil forms to meet their real, material circumstances. The antiquated family structure is fettering the family's ability to carry out its roles as a basic organizer of civil society, and it is fettering the march toward equality by women and others.

I am glad the Vatican agrees with me, that gender equality and historically unequal institutions do not mix well. I strongly oppose the suggestion that this means we ought to continue rolling back gender equality, "putting woman back where she belongs." I think denying rights to homosexuals is at best a non sequitur, and at worst an outward, politically-motivated lie (apparently the way to win elections in America today, in both parties, is to pander to the lowest common denominator...make appeals to racist, sexist, and narcissistic xenophobics, these must be the "swing voters" who apparently do not have much of a mind to make up). Its time we begin considering how to evolve the family unit so that it is not an anomaly within a liberal democratic society.

John Dewey said that in our institutions, particularly in the civil society, we still carried the remnants of authoritarianism...we lack the "democratic faith" required to truly democratize society. I call for a little more democratic faith and a reform of the fettering, antiquated family unit. "Faith" seems to be a word of great currency today, but it often means faith in one type of person's authority over other types of persons...faith in narcissism is not much faith at all. True faith, in the Kierkegaardian sense, requires a leap, a teleological suspension, or at the very least a belief in something that is not easy to believe in...we need a little bit more democratic faith. Ultimately, victory in an ideological "war on terror" will be won in part by a strengthening of the defenses that lie throughout our civil society.

Odyssey. Stifling, and Departure

The following is an essay on German politician Joschka Fischer, a man I admire and find as a kindred spirit in the march toward cosmopolitanism, or at least a unified Europe.  The essay is quite long but marks the interesting odyssey of Fischer from young anarcho-marxist, engaging in acts of violence against the state, to pragmatic leftist statesman and central figure in Euro-federalism. 

What is particularly interesting is the difference between German and American politics.  In Germany an individual can develop politically, including even what some would consider wild miscalculations and acts of moral impropriety, and emerge as a figure in official political circles.  In Germany parties can develop at any time provided that they are backed by ideas that people support. 

In America one must be the institution their entire life. 

We are currently saturated with John Kerry's youthful "indiscretions" such as suggesting that Vietnam may not have been such a noble cause or supporting internationalism, God forbid.  John Kerry has been notably sucked of life since the man who appeared before Congress in the 70's(?) to testify at hearings on Vietnam.  That was a man imbued with (at least the appearance of) spirit, personal integrity, ideas, and courage.  Fortunately for his political prospects he has lost all those rather "unseemly" traits that the American public seems so averse to. 

In America it is funny that we do not see any incoherence in having the 1st amendment of our Bill of Rights address the preservation of a diverse marketplace of ideas, and having our democratic process stifled by the institutional preservation of only two sets of ideas.  At any given time those two sets are functionally limited further by such discursive notions as in the late 60's and 70's that to be "conservative" was to be wrong, or today that to be "liberal" is to be wrong (Note how the democratics are trying desperately to prove they are not liberal...).

When will America wake from its "dogmatic slumber" and realized it is being stifled?  Will it take the eventual and impending loss of our global economic and moral superiority? 

I get so frustrated and bored with American politics, I long for an arrangement like that of the European democracies where diversity of political ideas are encouraged rather than ridiculed.  If we don't shape up then I am out, I will not serve out my time in a place so devoid of genuine political spirit!

Here is a quote I liked in particular:

"During the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Fischer met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others in Munich to discuss the evidence for invading Saddam’s Iraq. In a now famous exchange, Fischer, gesturing with his hand, nearly shouted at Rumsfeld in accented English, 'Excuse me, I am not convinced!' In German he continued, 'We owe our own democracy to America, but we have to be convinced.'"

What is this?  How could anyone demand to believe the proposed foundation for a set of potential actions?  This is certainly un-American!  We believe what we are told and do not ask questions, at least not until we have "shocked and awed" with our military eroticism.  Fortunately for Fischer he is not an American. 

Then again, in retrospect Fischer was right, the intelligence was bad eventhough it was widely accepted.  How is it that a political body could have more than one set of beliefs?  Because they have more than two (one?) parties!  Because they have the institutional framework to support more than a narrow set of ideas!

Anyway, here is the link, read it if you like http://bostonreview.net/BR29.3/hockenos.html.

Art and Structure

I read a really fascinating thing in The Story of Art last night.  The author suggests that it is wrong to think about artistic movement as an advance or decline as one would describe scientific movement (linear and direct).  Art does not move in this manner.   He suggests that every innovation, stylistic change, or technical "advance" is accompanied by a loss of one of the aspects of its predecessor "school," so the artists then find themselves struggling to reconcile what is lost with what is gained, and artistic movement is characterized by this kind of activity.  

The example is the early Renaissance in Florence where the artists "rediscovered," (began to utilize with greater skill and frequency), the classical mastery of foreshortening and shading to make the figures more robust, and discovered the technique of perspective.  What was lost in this more natural and realistic approach was the harmony and balance that Medieval art was able to demonstrate by not having to deal with spacial considerations.   The middle Renaissance period demonstrates a somewhat forced and inadequate attempt to re-introduce harmony and balance into naturalistic art using foreshortening, perspective, etc...

The high Renaissance (which is the next chapter to read) is when artists, Leonardo I think, learned how to re-incorporate balance and harmony.  This is pretty fascinating because its sounds like something Derrida would have written.  Everything is structured, art is a structured language, all structures are characterized by an arbitrary center that limits the play of its structure.  In Renaissance art the technique of perspective was made the center and the result is that it appeared to limit the ability to balance the paintings (a technique that was abundantly available prior to perspective).   What must have happened was some kind of deconstruction of the center to loosen the structure and allow for play, bricolage, and the ability of Leonardo and his contemporaries to make a structure balanced and centered on perspective (probably not exactly perspective, but something like it...plus it did not hurt that Leonardo may well have been the most ingenious Westerner to ever live!). 

Science is firmly centered, and its center is accepted on faith, so its progress appears self-testing and valid.  Science too would move like art if people began to demand that some of the things science limits be reintroduced.  Undoubtedly, we would lose some of the pragmatic benefit of the scientific method and be forced to spiral adjust.   Linear progress, at least as the dynamic of thought, is an illusion.

There is No Truth in Order

There is no truth in order.  Order is what follows from a rule, which by itself is unverifiable.  This is not to say that this state of affairs is wholly bad, we chose to live in an ordered fashion and with good reason, but we ought not find ourselves in the trap of calling our orders "true."

Order and its rule have a type of self-contained set of consistencies that can fairly be called "truths" without too much perversion of the language.  These "truths" make navigation and administration of order possible, but if one were to step outside order, a move universally forbidden by order, then one would see that there is nothing true about the truths of ordered systems.  Is there truth?  Does it matter?

There are spaces between orders, and unappropriated spaces within them, where one can dance creatively and feel freedom as it was once felt by pioneering man.  The Enlightenment Spirit has taught man to be repulsed by space and disorder.  When the modern man encounters space he is at first disgusted with its lack of harmony, its "primitiveness."  The people he finds inhabiting space he calls "savages."  Then he thinks that even this primitive area of savages must fit under one of his rules because modern orders have as one of their great guardians the idea of "universality," and no amount of contortion of the rule will dissuade man from finding existing order in spaces.  He appropriates by describing how the space has already been appropriated.

Man must learn to strip order down to its rule, to remove the dressing of what follows, and stare at his god to learn of his true being.  A rule without what follows is barren and foolish, a rule without what follows is Lear stripped naked, without reason in a wild tempest of disorder.  By learning the true nature of one's order one may learn how to explore its internal spaces, where creative freedom is allowed to move with slackened reign, and play with the ideas of beauty and power. 

This is not enough though, for there are two kinds of spaces in the world (I use "world" reluctantly because it is an ordered space) the internal and the external.  The extraordinary man has always known how to pioneer internal spaces as the Greeks did with the Egyptian rules of representation of the image of man, as the literary artist does with metaphor.  The next space to learn to dance within are the external spaces; whose trespass is strictly forbidden by order; whose existence is denied by reason; and who man is both afraid, and yet compelled, to look upon directly.

There is no truth in order.  There are spaces within and around orders and it is in these spaces that I would like to mine for the beautiful.

Aphorisms

An aphoristic tone hangs about this book (we,  one, always). Now the maxim is complicitous with an essentialist notion of human nature; it is linked to classical ideology: it is the most arrogant (often the stupidest) of the forms of language. Why then not reject it? The reason is, as always, emotive: I write maxims (or I sketch their movement) in order to reassure myself: when some disturbance arises, I attenuate it by confiding myself to a fixity which exceeds my powers: 'Actually, it's always like that': and the maxim is born. The maxim is a sort of sentence-name, and to name is to pacify. Moreover, this too is a maxim: it attenuates my fear of seeking extravagance by writing maxims.

Roland Barthes

A fascinating passage worth thinking about in relation to Cioran, a writer who wrote almost exclusively in maxims. It was Cioran's desire, I believe, to escape contingency, and Barthes here reveals that his form of writing was as important for that goal as the content.

Barthes Reloaded

I'll wait for your final post on this topic for comments, but I can't hold this one back. When you affirm that every man is a "particular thing" are you then also affirming a sort of trancendental individualism? I use "transcendental" in this case to mean something that is above and beyond any physical presence, like indentical twins are two different particular things rather than two instances of the same thing.  Is it even possible for there to be two instances of the same thing if you follow your line of reasoning? Or even two related things? If not, where does that leave us?

To make myself clear: if I observe two distinct objects that act the same and appear materially identical, then on what basis can I affirm that they are two different things other than the metaphysical? (Or I could say "they are not REALLY identical" but if I can't tell then it amounts to the same thing). What's the real illusion in this situation? This is an honest question because I feel genuinely confused about this! Would it be wrong to generalize about the natural "thingness" of things, or since there are only "particular things" (what does that phrase mean at this point?) can I attribute nothing at all generally to them--not even the quality of being a thing?
 
In other words, aren't you attributing a quality called "particularity" to a class of objects called "things"? Is "things", like "men" a figment of language? I mean, is there any legitimate use for the number 2? (2? 2 what?) Help you've broken philosophy!

I get the sense that if someone was speaking of the nature of fish to swim in water or, say, of lava rocks to be dense I doubt it would provoke the kind of nominalism you seem to be leaning towards. In the case of writers like Barthes I feel like it is a form of humanism (as he admits to) that is ideologically based that is the culprit; there is nothing ideologically at stake when I classify a group of objects as "hammers". And, for the post-structuralists, all that's LEFT is language (signifiers floating free of the signified), which is to say that all that's left is ideology--there's no other choice! And I feel quite a bit of despair at this condition. But why, what's the point of such despair over quite literally nothing? I can't put it any other way.
 
At least modernism allows me the dignity of my despair. Postmodernism insults me with notions of "play"!  I'd rather have the illusion of dignity.

Ignore this if it's a part of your larger post to follow! I have other questions but I'll hold them.

Oh wait another: are all generalities necessarily abstract and metaphysical? Is this where common sense and philosophy part ways? Where does probability fit in here? (Is the great "50-50" theory rearing its head?!!?) I'd also say to be careful to consider the full range of meanings that the term "human nature" has.
 
I hope I've made some sense, and that you can help me out.

One More Quick Response to Barthes

I find it hard to believe that a post-structuralist would ask us to choose an either/or.  This just seems to be a bit against the thrust of the post-structural attack on the nature of truth, center, and play.  Is this an article or a book you are reading from?  In any case, this is a follow up to the longer response.  Perhaps you could explain how a post-structuralist could advocate a centered idea with binary options.

Barthes response

I would suggest a rather unsatisfying verdict on the "must."  Perhaps it is a pure turn of rhetoric to suggest disdain for the "progressive humanism" he is discussing.  I would have to see more of the context.  I am having trouble with the idea of the post though.  As I take it Barthes is criticizing at once both essentialist and historicist coneptions of the "nature" of man.  The former being that, stripped of all the contingencies layered on by history and the social, one may uncover the "essence" or "nature" of man.  The latter suggesting that man is the result of a historical process of construction and conditioning.  Correct me if I am wrong please. 
 
When I see the word "mystifying" it suggests to me a kind of fetishism or reification.  So the "essential" searcher is looking for reified or abstract man, this is one of the ideas of "human nature" that I adamantly oppose.  In no place is a search for "nature" less suited than in the fetishized world of the universal.  I can see where post-structuralist Barthes would have a hard time digesting the idea of the essential, objective, and universal idea of the "natural" man (to what extent is such an idea merely a falsifiable "center" of a structure).
 
On the other hand, historicism is also constantly assaulted by the post-structuralist/postmodernist aversion to the grand enlightenment narratives.  I tend to find myself leaning toward the idea that "man" is a particular process, and whether you decide to allow your abstraction to be the static essence of man, or the universal grand historical scheme of man, you are still searching for the "natural" in the most unnatural of places. 
 
My conception of the human process is one that leans heavily on the aesthetic, and in particular Kant's aesthetic.  The "human process" is "purposiveness," or a kind of meandering tale of creation, interpretation, and recreation.  This process is directed at objects and includes the "self," which we have learned to craft quite effectively with that most human tool, complex language. 
 
Nowhere is this more evident than in the search for a "human nature."  We have here a general concept that may exist entirely to add continuity and fluidity to language.  Where in the world does one ever see an abstract generality other than in one's mind to connect the experience of particulars (and here it is a particular mental image!).  "This particular thing is a subset of 'man' and ought to behave and be encountered according to the rules embodied in that concept."  The dilution of particulars and mutual construction (between subject and object) can help to alleviate the shock of encountering a particular.  The idea of "human nature" is a tool of experience that helps us to encounter ourselves and those around us, hence it cannot be either natural or essential to man.  It is as inherent to man as the hammer he uses to build his home, the brush he uses to paint his Mona Lisa, or the piano he uses to play his sonata.
 
I have gotten well ahead of myself and far beyond the bounds of having thought this out so I will end here.  This is a rough and fragile sketch of my "human nature" post that should be forthcoming so I suggest holding criticism till then except as pertains to how I read the post on Barthes  (I would like to stay on Barthes for a bit and fear sidetracking the subject).  I have one aesthetic essay by Barthes on the plates of encyclopedias which may not be much aid in understanding your post but I am currently working through it. 

Barthes

This myth of the human 'condition'  rests on a very old mystification, which always consists in placing Nature at the bottom of History. Any classic humanism postulates that in scratching the history of men a little, the relativity of their institutions or the superficial diversity of their skins, one very quickly reaches the solid rock of a universal human nature. Progressive humanism, on the contrary, must always remember to reverse the terms of this very old imposture, constantly to scour nature, its 'laws' and its 'limits' in order to discover History there, and at last to establish Nature itself as historical

But why the "must"? Barthes doesn't really justify it in the rest of the piece (The Great Family of Man), but as so often is the case, I get the sense that his desire to read Nature as historical is simply of prerogative of his ideology.

Of course, Barthes knows this. You are either on the side of "justice" (a suspect concept perhaps) or not, these questions of "nature" or "history" are simply evasions or justifications (progressive humanism, in his view, has to deny nature). In this game the reader is caught in a either/or situation: he "must" choose between equally faulty positions on tired old ideological grounds. I think I'd rather opt out of this little trap if I can. (Can I? The "third way" in this particular situation is not one that is particularly viable for political change.)

Nietzsche...My Worst Fears Confirmed

I have long been very suspect of secondary sources of Nietzsche because he has been treated so oddly by philosophy, and seems so suited to out of context quotation because of his style, etc...anyway I read Kaufmann's intro to the On the Genealogy of Morals today and he has an interesting quote:

"Nietzsche has an almost pathological weakness for one particular kind of ambiguity, which, to be sure, is not irremediable: he loved words and phrases that mean one thing out of context and almost the opposite in the context he gives them. He loved language as poets do and relished these 'revaluations.'"

this is the thrust of his idea of "art" in the essay i studied last week...the idea of language as a 2-part metaphor and concept as the bounds of metaphor....what he really enjoyed about art seemed to be when metaphor pushed the bounds of the conceptual and widened our perceptive horizon, when art was able to work freely and de-mystify the concept (this is not completely different from Heidegger's idea of art opening up a space where Being can emerge...i think, but trying to understand Heidegger makes me sick to my stomach!)...I am becoming more and more of the opinion that a real understanding of Nietzsche can only be achieved by an intense and focused study of his work...allowing it to teach you and not bringing in pre-conceived Nietzsche to guide the reading...this would ultimately bound conceptually what Nietzsche hoped would be aesthetically broadening.

Marx cubed

Again, I have to apologize for the ad hoc nature of these posts, I have been inundated with practical life garbage lately and unable to completely pursue a post. I would like to first suggest you look to the idea suggested by Derrida, (and I believe Levi-Strauss) of bricolage. The question is, once a system or structure has been decentered what do you do with the leftover system. Well you can do several things I suppose, you can just toss the whole system out, or you can try to replace the center and achieve fixity (Derrida and poststructuralism would suggest this is impossible, every center is a concept and not an absolute truth so there is always some play, and it can be deconstructed). The other option is suggested by the idea of bricolage, you can just use the system as a tool for whatever task is at hand, while denying the center is an absolute truth.

As applied to Marxism (I will use economistic Marxism) the center is perhaps the idea of Historical Materialism, the necessary and inevitable march of economic structures through history and the given superstructures that emerge inevitably from them. At some point the economic structure will begin to fetter the mode of production and a contradiction arises and this contradiction is necessarily cast into the epiphenomenomal superstructure...men's consciousness, political institutions, laws, etc. The proletariat will then overthrow the capitalist ruling class and begin to move the means of production into a position where all will stand equal, and as this happens the epiphenomenal superstructures will accordingly adjust to mirror the changing structure. Now the fact that "men" need to make the revolution is not in itself problematic for materialism because men are material beings and part of the changing structure, the problem arises when one looks at the world and sees that men did not do this when industrialism was wreaking the most havoc on the living standards of the working class.

Instead what happened is what was called, by Gramsci and Lenin, reformism or trade union consciousness. Rather than "becoming conscious" of the need to make a socialist revolution the working class worked within the existing system to make piece-meal reforms and slight advances in their living conditions, they were not "becoming conscious." Lenin poses, in an essay entitled "What is to Be Done?," the idea that a revolutionary vanguard of intellectuals needed to use theory as a means of making men conscious. This is a problem for Marx's epiphenomenalism, why would theory, or ideology, be needed to make men become aware, should not this awareness just emerge from the contradictions in the structure...how can ideology change material conditions? This is where economistic Marxism ran dry, all the socialists in Europe who thought they could just sit back and await the working class to become aware of the contradictions in capitalism and overthrow the ruling class kept waiting until about 1991, then they became bitter, rich conservatives. This is again, the old problem of the relationship of base and superstructure and I will not again go into Gramsci's step toward resolving it unless it is directly requested of me.

I will say though that the "inevitability" of "orthodox" Marxism is an illusion. First of all, history has born out that the conditions that would "inevitably" bring about the collapse of capital can be perpetually put off with counter-propanganda and reform (hegemony). Secondly, historical materialism is itself flawed, and this will be continued later, but one must begin to consider a different method if this is the path they wish to travel. "Orthodox" Marxism is a nice way of saying dogma, but Marx intended to create a "science" so one should ask why we need to feel bound to any part of Marxism that is not useful, and the answer is that we do not. Finally, I will suggest that the kind of "economistic" Marxism I used for an example above was never what was intended by Marx. First of all, there is the oft-quoted phrase from the "Thesis on Feuerbach" where Marx suggests that the point of philosophy is to change the world, for philosophy to change the world the base-superstructure relationship must be considerably more complex than a direct, linear and causal one. The article Gramsci points to is "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," again where a direct and causal relationship from structure to superstructure cannot be made to fit. It is in the work done by Engels and his commentaries on Marx that one begins to see the economistic view of Marxism emerge and it is prevalent on the Continent during the first part of the 20th century (also in Marx's rhetorical excess of polemics like "The Communist Manifesto" one sees an economistic tendency, but just ask, why would Marx need to write a Manifesto for the working class if the structure would necessarily yield revolution on its own).

Now if one accepts the more complex view of the base-superstructure relationship suggested by Gramsci and others, then one can see that there is absolutely nothing inevitable about the socialist revolution, in fact, it is even unlikely in the West according to Gramsci. What is still inevitable is the idea that the structure will at times have contradictions that will vary in intensity, but can be offset with a healthy dose of ideology (consumerism) and reform (most clearly, Roosevelt's "New Deal," et sequitur). But quickly to "deconstruct" historical materialism...the neat binary of structure and superstructure does not hold up. There is no clean split and clearly prior relationship, the two poles are not always poles, at times they overlap, shift, clash or work together. So if we assume the center of Marx's theory to be historical materialism, then its easy to see that the foundation is not an absolute, it is what "God" is to deconstructed Christianity. The question is then what to do with a system whose absolute truth is no longer valued, and the post-structuralist answer is bricolage. This is why people can use tools of systems like Freudianism or Marxism without trying to bring the unconscious into the conscious or overthrow capitalism. One can just "play" with the systems and address things through their perspective.

Now what does it all mean for me? Well, I would first argue that the "right" socialism is still yet to be found, and may never be found. There is no reason why something has to be dropped because it does not conform to the thoughts of its first theorist unless it is dogma or dictatorial principle you are working with. Marx's grand system is not what he thought it was, but I still have no doubt that economic prosperity is alienating, is pervasive, and even to an extent mirrored in our political and cultural landscape. I believe that for democracy to be democratic people must be equal at least in the realm of political power at elections. "Formal equality" does not exist because it is always substantiated by "real" people and some of those people enter the room owning corporations and others do not even own houses. There is no reason why we should have 250 million dollar lotteries that people feel is there only chance at prosperity...and why doesn't anyone ever ask what would happen if we just distributed that $250 million amongst the population of the state so that everyone wins big. There is something incommensurate when capital can move across borders at the click of a mouse, but labor has to be smuggled thirsty and hungry through deserts only to be treated like second rate human beings when they get to their destination. There is a problem when American workers spit vitriole and hatred at Mexican and Chinese laborers for taking "their" jobs. Put yourself in the shoes of a Chinese worker who gets nothing but an ideology for their work, or a Mexican worker who lives in holes in mountains in southern California so they can stand, bent-over, all day and pick strawberries at 25 cents an hour. They hate foreign workers, but see nothing wrong in a set-up where capital can flee in a second to exploit a new labor frontier while they sit and rot in the American mid-west. Out of three subjects; the American worker, the foreign worker, and the owner of the factory, who is consistently coming out on top? What would happen if international living standards were as good as they are in America, would a factory owner flee to Mexico to pay a Mexican worker the same wage and benefits he/she is paying the American worker? Why not work for international social justice where there is no unexploited frontier of human beings left to sap dry, commodify and then alienate the second their use-value drops below their cost? Why not say efficiency is great, but what about human decency? Marx is still relevant to me because the modus operandi is still the same...how much are civilian contractors in Iraq being paid, and how much are the soldiers being paid? Where do you think those soldiers overwhelmingly come from, the upper class, NO! The incentive for fighting wars is upward mobility, the GI Bill, stable benefits, who does this appeal to? Marx is relevant as long as I can convince myself that temporary material comfort is not enough, and I still can.

Marx, again

I'm not sure that the idea that criticism needs an end, or a point to be more clear, is particularly Modernist. In fact, I think it's prety much present in every form of criticism, even post-modernism, which to my mind is primarily concerned with overthrowing and exposing those "grand narratives" that inform ideology. There is a difference between expecting something to fulfill some reasonable or unreasonable purpose, to do something, and expecting it to contribute to some grand narrative or ideology. In any case, I don't have a problem with criticism that has no point. There is no point to life or literature.

What concerns me, and where I think you can help me, is the implicit contradiction I find in the notion of specifically Marxist criticism without a point, because I cannot seperate Marxism from its "point"--that is, communism and revolution. I want to know what value you think Marxism has without the ends that, to my way of seeing things, are built into the philosophy. (Marx's critique of capitalism, for example, sees it as a progression towards a certain point. Can you disentangle the critique of capitalism from the notion that it will develop in the way he says it will?) I know you believe strongly in this value, and I would like to hear the how and why of it, if not now than at some point in the future.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you mean by "economistic" and I am flabbergasted by the idea that good Marxism is not concerned with historical inevitabilities. (Maybe we are confusing "good" and "orthodox"--which would make sense based on our respective knowledge of the subject.)

So to clarify my intitial post: I was perturbed by the idea that a book which was designed to serve a certain purpose can be useful in a way (a very vaque way--a further annoyance but one that doesn't concern us anymore perhaps) that doesn't serve that original purpose. Now, on the one hand, I am being intentionally extreme on this point, but on the other I want to ask serious questions about the value of this sort of thing, of using systems of thought to ends that are not their own.

To use a poor (and loaded) analogy, what is the value of Christianity without heaven?

Quick Response to Post-Marxist Marxism

Ryan mentions a problem I have dealt repeatedly with over the last several years when he talks about the "historical inevitability" of communism, and the role of ideology or people to "make" a revolution. Stated neatly, it is the problem of the relationship between base/structure and superstructures and is a problem that is not unique to our website. I have said on several occasions that I feel Gramsci has taken the best first step to dealing with this problem with his explanation of the base-superstructure relationship. He suggests a kind of reciprocol relationship where superstructures are "relatively autonomous." In the last instance I am sure he would give primacy to economic structures, but it is considerably more complex than the hard determinists or economists suggested. I think that ultimately Gramsci's view is even a bit too reductionist in that it only recognizes a one-way linear distribution of power.

Briefly addressing the role of Marxist criticism in literature I will suggest that some aspects of Marxism are still valuable critical tools in an academic setting. We can all concede that the Marxist view is too myopic to deal with the complexities of contemporary western societies, this is one of the key reasons it has not been able to construct a healthy socialist state in the west (leaving the east out temporarily because its a different situation). The use of Marxist class-based or economic criticism is still useful though in confronting certain aspects that reveal themselves in art, if you wish to engage in art criticism at all. It would have to be supplemented by many other perspectives, but this is one of the late trends in literary criticism. The postmodern impact on literary criticism, and much else, has been to make it reasonable (forgive the un-postmodern word) to engage in criticism without an end in mind. Deconstruction is a perfect example of a tool that takes apart mostly for its own sake. The postmodern view is too shun altogether the modernist ideas that means need to progress in a linear fashion toward ends. When a one takes a Marxist view to get at one element in a work of literature the old modernist may ask, "now what?" The current strain of thought sweeping across academia is that the that something needs to be constructive is exactly the problem. In any case, this was a very quick reply in more stream of thought fashion...I suggest two problems with the way Ryan approaches Marx: 1) although he knows that good Marxism is not economistic he still has trouble not leaning on that strawman at times...historical inevitabilities are rhetoric and bad marxism...2) he is not accounting for the postmodern influence in criticism where the need to work toward ends itself has been deconstructed as a modernist western "grand narrative."

Despite the fact that the conclusion to this article is hopelessly trite:

But what, we have to ask after the 10th or so MXC contestant's grimace of pain, is the enticement that would lead anyone to submit to such physical debasement and injury? According to MXC's American publicist, the prizes are decidedly banal offerings like oven mitts and trays of food. We are left then with the same uncomfortable impression created by seasons spent watching average citizens debase themselves on American reality TV shows: Humiliation on national television is itself the big prize. MXC's cathartic physical tests obliquely but nonetheless eloquently illustrate that in the game of culture, as in sports, there is no gain without pain. Perhaps Warhol's prediction was only slightly off, and what contemporary Americans really demand is their 15 minutes of shame.

There is perhaps a small bit of truth to it. I think, however, that the writer is ultimately clueless in assessing the show's audience and appeal. Those humiliating games look fun to the young men, including myself, who like the show. I would love to participate. As proof I offer the special episode where Americans re-enact the show with Tony Hawk as host. I hate to judge someone I know nothing about, but I'm guessing the author has never partaken of or understood the fun of that sort of activity.

Is Marx a Zombie?

It's a strong conviction of mine that religious impulses will find expression in even the most atheistic among us. Much like a zombie, religion may be dead but it keeps moving. These impulses will make themselves felt as a will towards some indeterminate objective. Dealing with this problem is something I consider one of the major questions of my life.

Two years ago I was forced to read Pablo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (oh the irony!), a book I found interesting if ultimately useless.

Why I found it useless, however, presents an important question. Freire's book is basically a form of Marxist pedagogy, and like any good Marxist pedagogy its objective is clear, if implicit: revolution. In class, I raised the objection that I couldn't really support Freire's pedagogy because I had no interest in starting a Marxist revolution. Interestingly, I think I was the only one in the class, including the teacher, who considered this the objective of the book. My classmates found the book useful, if rather abstruse, as a means toward...well, I'm not sure what it was a means toward, if not revolution. It was not something anyone could pin down.

What, I reasoned, was the point of Marxist pedagogy without revolution? Marxism seems to me in my ignorance to be a philosophy that is, for better or worse, bound up with its historicism and activism. History would culminate in communism and while the mechanisms of history would act of their own accord (and here is a strange contradiction of his philosophy) it is the duty of the individual to "change the world" as Marx himself said of philosophy. But change it to what if not communism? I think my point here is that I feel Marxism needs a discernable purpose to be meaningful.

And so we find ourselves in a post-Marxist world, where literary scholars practice Marxist criticism as a means toward something unknown. Oh sure, there are justifications, but they are strange ones to reconcile with their inspiration: liberalism, self-consciousness, knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Like a zombie, and like religious impulses finding outlets in strange new ways, Marxism lurches on towards some indeterminate objective. One gets the feeling of going through the motions, of a cottage industry of dissertations and pointless and unreadable scholarly books to no end but self-perpetuation.

My final question is one that I think deeply concerns our Weblord: What is the use of Marxism in a post-Marxist world?

Philosophy and Art: Salvation through Formalism?

"Philosophy has been sought in vain because man has sought it by the path of science rather than the path of art."

-- Schopenhauer

"Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial--out of profundity. And is not this precisely what we are again coming back to, we daredevils of the spirit who have climbed the highest and most dangerous peak of present thought and looked down from there? Are we not, precisely in this respect, Greeks? Adorers of forms, of tones, of words? And therefore--artists?"

--Nietzsche

Role of Government, Part 3

Allow me to clarify a bit the distinction I was trying to make. While I admit to having “what the nature of man?” on my mind, this was not in fact the question I was attempting to address. Instead, perhaps obtusely, I was asking, “what do different theories of government say about the nature of man?” Being as there are roughly two views of the nature of man, I guessed that there were two forms this took in theories of government.

In this sense, I take Hobbes to stand for an idea that government (or society or whatever, I think we both understand that I am using this term loosely) keeps us from being at each others necks, preventing a “war of all against all” as Hobbies stated. It does this, I presume, by organizing the self-interests of all citizens to benefit everyone as much as possible.

Lenin (but not that Lenin) writes, The role of government in Hobbes’ system is not to protect depraved people from the depravity of others and themselves, but it is to order the allocation of resources and to provide harmony among the interests of men, which would otherwise clash and lead to a state of permanent war.

I’m not sure I see a distinction here! Depravity was a poor word. Self-interest, as you put it, is much better. I would further argue that the innate form that self-interest takes is always detrimental to the interest of someone else—but it’s probably not something I could prove. Hobbes’ state perhaps (and you can help me with this and tell me if I’m wrong) directs this destructive self-interest into a form that benefits everyone. The originating factor, though, is a problem. How to convince everyone to play along, even the strong? A plausible guess would be that the innate form that self-interest takes is not only destructive towards others, but even mutually destructive. I think this would qualify as depraved, but it is not something I can attribute to Hobbes.

Lenin writes, I again must take exception to the premise posited by our learned scholar of the arts. It is stated that Rousseau assumes "man is essentially good." I think that Rousseau believes that the "natural man" is essentially free and primitive.

Yes, but doesn’t Rousseau imply that man being in chains is essentially immoral? I mean to say that I think there is an implied moral judgment that anything that restrains the freedom of man (and in a Hobbsian sense, anything that restrains the free pursuit of his self interest) is immoral. What is the end of freedom in his view? I suppose for many of the French Enlightenment philosophers freedom was its own end—a very problematic position I think. I think it follows from this that in the absence of restrictions Rousseau believes that there will certainly NOT be a “war of all against all.”

I am conflating Rousseau with the general Enlightenment view so please disabuse of me of any simplistic views I am attributing to Rousseau that really belong to the zeitgeist. But also please remember I am using him as a label, one that perhaps no actual philosopher fits under.

I’ll avoid the question of human nature for now, for the sake of organization. I will only say that, of course, questions of man’s nature independent of society are pretty dubious.

I think my simplistic original thesis, that Rousseau = man is good, and Hobbes = man is bad, has been rightfully refuted. On the other hand, I still think these views of human nature permeate pretty deeply into different political philosophies, and maybe in ways that neither thinker explicitly acknowledges.

Overall I think Hobbes comes out a bit better--not least for the fact that his theory fits pretty comfortably into modern evolutionary theory (see The Selfish Gene for a good example).

Schopenhauer

Another passage from Nihilism before Nietzsche, that I found pretty amusing in its despair. (Is there something wrong with me since I read these words with a barely contained glee?) Anyway, not completely on topic, but it's good stuff nonetheless.

The world in Schopenhauer's view has a demonic heart of darkness at odds with human happiness. At eighteen, Schopenhauer asked himself if God created the world and concluded that the world was in fact the work of the devil. This opinion was tempered in his later thought but still reflects a profound moment of his fundamental insight. Eichenwal, a Russian Schopenhauerian, described this element of Schopenhauer's thought in 1910: "Something meaningless and lawless lurks in the world's foundation--hence, the world cannot but lie in evil." Will is not the magic word that unlocks the world, but the name of the enemy of truth and happiness. The will constantly tortures itself without rhyme or reason. It is a monstrous inhuman force that through its blind and aimless activity makes this world into a hell. And even more monstrous is the fact that we ourselves are nothing other than this self-torturing will, that we ourselves in our heart of hearts are this dark, malevolent god.

Standing atop the various objectifications of the will as the most fully individual being, we are the masters and possessors of nature. We live on other beings; their existence is sacrificed to our comfort and enjoyment. However, we are not the happiest but the most miserable of beings. As the most individual being, we are the greatest enemies of our own happiness. Knowledge which shows us so clearly how to attain what we desire shows us as well the infinity of other desirable things that are concealed from beings who live only by their instincts. Each individual seeks only his own aggrandizement and is willing to sacrifice not merely all of nature but all of his fellow human beings to this end. Man, the master of nature, cannot master himself and thus repeatedly inflicts the most terrible suffering upon himself and his fellows.

Human beings have tried to solve this problem. The formation of the state, as Hobbes pointed out, is an attempt to harmonize all interests and wills in the interest of human happiness and prosperity. In Schopenhauer's view, however, there is no political solution, since politics itself is always employed as an instrument of torture by egoistical individuals striving to aggrandize themselves. Moreover, even if a political solution in this conflict were possible, it would not produce happiness, for peace and prosperity lead only to a "life-destroying boredom, a lifeless longing without a definite object, a deadening languor." Life, as Schopenhauer sees it, is thus a constantly prevented dying, and the alertness of man a constantly postponed boredom. There is no way out; the life of every man is a tragedy.

Now I had something to say about all that, but I forgot. I will hope it comes back to me later, and if so, I will post it.

In Reply to: "The Fundamental Role of Government"

Lets begin with the title, "The Fundamental Role of Government." Now one would expect reading that title that the essay would be focused on what government essentially does. I fear that our author may have couched a more important aspect of his theme in the role of government, and that is the nature of man. Notice that in his brief capsules on the political theories of Hobbes and Rousseau, respectively, priority is given to what their supposed views on the nature of man are and then the role of government in response. Likewise, I will focus on the "nature of man."

Beginning with Hobbes, the author asserts that Hobbes theorized "man is depraved." I must begin by taking exception with this reading of Hobbes. "Depravity," as defined in the OED refers to: "1) a. moral corruption; wickedness. b. an instance of this; a wicked act. 2) Theol. the innate corruptness of human nature." The common strand running through the various ways depravity is defined is a sense of morality as a point of reference, morally unjust, morally wrong, etc... This seems, on its face, to be at odds with Hobbes premise that man in the state of nature is amoral, that morality is constructed in society. Hobbes' pre-social arrangment is made up of balances and clashes of power, and self-interest whereby man "has a right to everything, even to one another's body." The only right or principle guiding actions is that of self-interest, its the precursor to the Realism that was so en vogue during the Cold War.

I think Hobbsian moral insight is better described as a foreshadowing of the position advocated by Nietzsche, most clearly to my recollection in the 2nd essay of The Geneology of Morals. Morality is a social construct, perhaps necessary to complex social states, and even relatively objective (objectivity can arise, it need not always have been I assume). I believe that this is Hobbes most important insight on the "nature of man" and worth a brief investigation.

In an article entitled "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense," Nietzsche posits the origin of truth and lie. He suggests that it is the development of language that brings about a sense of primitive "truth." Originally, language was needed as a tool to foster or meet the needs of more complex social arrangements. Language arose by people creating designations to refer to the mental images that accompany sensation. To put it more simply, and not how Nietzsche would, man created designators for things in nature. Man to Nietzsche is naturally a crafty and ingenuous species, and the origin of language was followed almost immediately by its manipulation to meet the needs of the speaker. The idea of truth and untruth arises when man begins to use these designators to make the unreal appear real, and initially this rubs his "society" wrong because the deceptions have materially detrimental consequences to those around the deceiver. So here we have a pretty clear theory of man as "naturally" amoral and self-interested, I think this would have met with approval from Hobbes.

The role of government in Hobbes system is not to protect depraved people from the depravity of others and themselves, but it is to order the allocation of resources and to provide harmony among the interests of men, which would otherwise clash and lead to a state of permanent war. The moral center of the universe that is required to have concepts like "depravity" or "goodness" arise later, after the submission to sovereignty. This is why Hobbes is most usually noted as the original theorist of sovereignty, and that idea that speaks to the role of pure power in Hobbes' deduction.

Moving to Rousseau, I again must take exception to the premise posited by our learned scholar of the arts. It is stated that Rousseau assumes "man is essentially good." I think that Rousseau believes that the "natural man" is essentially free and primitive. You can arrive at this kind of a reading through the theme that runs through most of Rousseau's writing of the "noble savage," or that oft-quoted phrase from The Social Contract, forgive me for the imprecision, "Man is born free, but everwhere he is living in chains." Rousseau's project differs from that of Hobbes in that Rousseau is not working on a theory of power, but is trying to explain how sovereignty can be maintained while reasserting the freedom of man. This is achieved by self-legislation, obeying a law one prescribes for himself (later echoed in Kant's placing autonomy in obedience to a moral imperative). There are certainly moral undertones in Rousseau that Hobbes may not agree with, for instance I think its fair to say that Rouseau believes people are capable of social cooperation, both before and after civilization. This does not require an explicit and favorable moral take on the goodness of humanity, in fact, John Nash arrived at this same consclusion starting with a premise of personal interest in his famous "Nash Equilibrium."

The role of government for Rousseau is to reassert the autonomy of man by creating an arrangement where man can self-legislate. This is made theoretically possible by the theory of the general will, sort of an ideal collective will. Society does not necessarily "corrupt" man, if we are keeping with the moral theme, and certainly opposed to the assertion that "man is essentially good." Society does, however, make people institutionally subject to the will of others, makes people heteronomous. Hobbes believed that man in the state of nature had the right to do whatever he needs to do to preserve himself, but upon submitting to the sovereign man must confer the right to self-remedy to the sovereign. Hobbes would agree that man has lost his "natural freedom" when entering into society, of course Hobbes is not concerned with this, he is concerned with order...man has contracted away freedom in return for order and when self-preservation is all you want that is not too bad of a deal. For Rousseau, coerced order is not enough, it limits the development of the individual and consequently the social output of the body-politic, so Rousseau wants to know how to square the circle, have order and chaos, sovereignty and freedom.

Its fair to say that there are merits to both theories. As I stated earlier, I look favorably on Hobbes theory of morality as constructed socially, but I also agree with Rousseau that pure coercion is unduly limiting on the development of the individual and society (this bears out empirically I believe when one looks to the output and development of liberal societies versus absolutist societies). This is speaking more to the role of governments, but not to the thesis of the author's article, the nature of man. I think that one make a grievous and violent error of logic to extrapolate either authors' views on "natural man."

Both theories are abstract theories of the state, and the "states of nature" are premises that begin the deduction. Neither author is theorizing on the natural state of man, or as it is commonly called today, "human nature." All deductions begin with assumptions, or premises, and these states of nature are fictional thought experiments that undergird the later deductions. It is an error of logic to assume that these assumptions are themselves derived or tautological truths. There was clearly never a state of nature as concieved of by any of the social contract theorists, and I belived it is absurd to talk about a "state" of nature or its permutation, a natural "state."

Man, and his development, is not a set of discrete points along a progressive, regressive, or indeterminate line...man's development is a continuum or a process. There is no clearly delineated natural state, and any attempt to posit one runs into a problem of drawing the line. To agree or disagree with the theory of natural man established by either Hobbes or Rousseau is to choose among fictions unless one is prepared to provide and independent derivation for such a position. I challenge anyone to pose a coherent and static view of man's natural state, and I think one would find this a most daunting task. All one can really say logically about human nature is that it is "natural," and that is true via tautology, rather unsatisfying as it is I believe many theories of man reject the idea that man is natural.

I will have to comment further on the role of the market as protector against man's depravity, but I will first have to restate it as "the market as the modern incantation of the Hobbsian sovereign." From this one may infer where I am going, but don't get ahead of yourself!...because the market may also be a manifestation of Rousseau's project to reassert the autonomy of man, make man the designer and participant in his own destiny.

Brando

"What are you rebelling against?"

"Whaddaya got?"

RIP

Required viewing?

The Battle of Algiers

A few worthwhile links

Nicholas Kristof calls for moderation:

Mr. Bush got us into a mess by overdosing on moral clarity and self-righteousness, and embracing conspiracy theories of like-minded zealots. How sad that many liberals now seem intent on making the same mistakes.

And here is a petition for a free Iran:

If you oppose all terrorism and acts of violence against those who wish to live in freedom, then your support and unity with the Iranian people should not be based on whether you are a democrat, republican, libertarian, conservative, independent, green, left, right, or center, but should be based only on your belief that the destiny of the human race is freedom and the unending pursuit of our wishes and our dreams.

Orwell's Apocalyptic Vision

I can think of no better argument for the greatness of Orwell's 1984, and its colossal importance as a fundamental text for the 20th century and beyond than this passage from Micheal Allan Gillespie's Nihilism before Nietzsche:

The Russian Revolution has been called the god that failed. This mistaken conclusion is the consequence of a fundamental misunderstanding of the theological and metaphysical essense of the revolutionary movement in Russia. The Russian revolution is in fact the story of the god who triumphed, but this god was not a god of light who inhabits cities of aluminum and glass but a dark god of negation who lives within the secret souls of the Bazarovs and Rakhmetovs of the world and enters into actuality in the form of Nechaev, Lenin, and Stalin.

What we discover in the afterglow of this great event is that the fire this new Prometheus brings down to earth is not the hearth flame that is the center of the home but a conflagration that consumes civilization. The fiery heart of Blake's demonic destroyer when liberated from its animalistic shell does not assume a symmetry and humanity of its own but remains the formless force of chaos, as essentially negative will. At the end of modernity, the dark God of nominalism appears enthroned within the bastion of reason as the grim lord of Stalin's universal terror.

Taking Sides

"We take this position because we know what dictatorship is. And in the conflict between totalitarian regimes and democracy you must not hesitate to declare which side you are on. Even if a dictatorship is not an ideal typical one, and even if the democratic countries are ruled by people whom you do not like. I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfield is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein."

Adam Michnik in Dissent.

Besides the actual side Michnik advocates here, I found this statement to be pretty powerful. (This also relates to the political dilemma of passive nihilism discussed below.) Is there a moral imperative to taking sides? Is it merely a form of weakness to opt out, or, as much of the current left has decided, to have it both ways? Is Michnik's postion hopelessly Manichean?

It boils down to making a choice. And as Sartre said, doing nothing is choosing to do nothing. Michnik's statement is a challenge, and a daunting one at that.

Nihilism and Revolution

In response to Lenin's post here.

If we clarify the objection here to be towards "passive nihilism" (the kind I would advocate over destructive "active nihilism") then we run into a strange problem. If active nihilism is the desire for the destruction of existing orders, with the naive implication that once destroyed a new, better order will somehow arise, then passive nihilism is in some sense an opting out of the political process. A refusal, a self-negation. The implied judgement in Lenin's post is that passive nihilism is detrimental to the human cause, but for the passive nihilist the human cause is essentially worthless. How do you criticize on humanist grounds an trans-human philosophy? (Maybe we can work on that term "trans-human"--antihumanist doesn't seem right either.)

The fact that passive nihilism is perhaps impossible maybe speaks to his point. If it is unattainable, then are we obligated to move in the other direction?

Topic for dicussion: The Fundamental Role of Government

It seems to me that there are two basic views, based on either Hobbes or Rousseau.

Hobbes: man is depraved. Government serves to protect us from ourselves and each other. (I think perhaps an extension of this view would be that government serves to protect us from our environment, but perhaps that's another subject.)

Rousseau: man is essentially good. Government corrupts man with the seduction of power. (The extension here would, I suppose, be that nature is corrupted and exploited by government.)

Within these distinctions, "government" is perhaps easily traded for "civilization."

So some questions.

1) Are these the only two fundamental views? Is everything else merely somewhere in between?
2) For me, Hobbes is obviously right. Those who agree with me here might ask: does government also enable our depravity or encourage it? Has the state, as Hobbes saw it, betrayed its purpose? In other words, how much of Rousseau's view must be taken into account by a Hobbsian?
3) Our Marxism expert weblord Lenin can perhaps answer this: to what extent has capitalism (and capitalist materialist culture) taken on the role of Hobbes' state? Does mindless consumerism protect us from our darkest impulses?

The Spirit of the Discussion Group

"To conduct a conversation means to allow oneself to be conducted by the subject matter to which the partners in the dialogue are oriented. It requires that one does not try to argue the other person down but that one really considers the weight of the other's opinion."
Hans-Georg Gadamer from Truth and Method

Emerson and Passive Democracy

"So far as man thinks he is free, nothing is more disgusting than crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a 'Declaration of Independence,' or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act."

Nihilism, Hegemony and Rebellion

in an article i am reading about Gramsci's theory of hegemony the author discusses examples from literature that suggest hegemony (a couple from kafka)...the most poignant is from Joseph Heller (from a story called "Something Happened" i think...the authors notation is off i believe). anyway, the following quote gets to what we were talking about earlier (rebellion and nihilism) and suggests a role hegemony plays in it:

"What would happen if, deliberately, calmly, with malice aforethought and obvious premeditation, I disobeyed? I know what would happen: nothing. Nothing would happen...My act of rebellion would be absorbed like rain on an ocean and leave no trace. I would not cause a ripple. I suppose it is just about impossible for someone like me to rebel anymore and produce any kind of lasting effect."

The notion is that hegemonic leadership disseminates the idea that the existing order is satisfactory, or at least the best we can do, or in any case has no viable alternative. Through civil institutions and practices (mostly cultural) the "dominant" are reinforced when their world-view becomes reified...it transforms itself into "common-sense" as Gramsci would suggest. Three characteristics of hegemony are that it presents itself as universal, natural and rational...hence the dominant interest is "everyone's" interest and is the natural and most rational ordering. This implies that any sort of rebellion against current ordering would be irrational, contingent, and unnatural...or doomed to fail before it begins (the latter of which is largely true because of the pervasive nature of hegemony, hence Gramsci's call for a war of position over a war of manuevre). People's consciousness and conception of the world is so affected that they are often incapable of seeing any other way. So injustice is not experienced with open rebellion, but "a vague sensation of loss and resignation."

I am not a nihilist, I am sure you know. I tend to find a lot compelling in Gramsci and am apt to believe that the kind of nihilism of existential rebellion is a conscious state of personal misdirection. This would fit better into existentialism with its humanist components...one feels resignation, nihilism in the face of aborted rebellion, because of the troubling paradox of freedom. Its much easier to resign oneself to being a thing, an instrument of one's own domination in the case of hegemony, than to assert one's radical freedom...to rebel.

I want to quickly highlight the idea of the act of rebellion being "absorbed like rain on an ocean." This is another aspect of hegemonic leadership that was studied most explicitly by Herbert Marcuse who suggested that modern society has successfully co-opted and/or marginalized dissenting views, making society "one-dimensional." An example is gays, feminists and blacks being "welcomed" into the umbrella of the Democratic Party, and effectively sapped of their substance...institutionalized subordination. I have long argued that the two-party system does this...to assert one's political self one must first streamline one's self...objectify one's self. The options are transformation (which implies self-denial) or subordination.

All this ought not be read as an outright denial of nihilism (although as I said, I am not a nihilist), but to suggest another possibility...social nihilism as a means of dominating dissenting voices. I think this fits more into the existentialist theme than positing a "humanist nihilism" (although this may be precisely what Nietzsche was getting at with his "European," idealistic nihilism).

Take a quick look at these suggestions for what women ought to do to succeed in interviewing/business, www.fortune.com/fortune/annie/0,15704,652442,00.html?cnn=yes

There is one theme that predominates these suggestions...women, to be more successful in business you need to be more masculine, be more like a man...you need to deny yourself. Its always good in meetings to have something in your hand, like a pen! I wanted to die laughing! Men are more responsive to women who carry something fallic on their person. In some ways we ought to just let Freud rest in peace (preferably in his more sexist themes).
Does this bother any of you like it bothers me. Why not demand that the elite males that dominate positions of authority be a little more reasonable, more open-minded...or at the very least, a little less like a troupe of cavemen? If we want "women" in the workforce, which we most certainly do, then why can we not let them be women when they get there. Women in business should not mean pseudo-males.
The women's movement did a lot of good (it hurt itself greatly by not staying in touch with practicality), but it is currently at risk of being bludgeoned to death by popular culture and rolled back institutionally. My humble suggestion, from a rather poor perspective, is that women not lose the forest for the trees...that, while it is absolutely necessary that one succeed on the terms that success may require at a given time, it would be wrong to fall into the trap of thinking that current arrangements are either fair or natural. Women can be themselves and successful, and the burden of adaptation is not on women, but on institutions (and the elites that occupy them) that require women to choose the either/or...EITHER subordination OR transformation.

I sent this along to friends a while back and was struck by two things: 1) that i got only one reaction, and 2) the reaction suggests that it is important that women become role models and leaders, by whatever means necessary. I will disagree with this position for several reasons.
I used to believe that gradual reform would eventually transform society, that eventually unjust domination would rupture under its own weight by having, by the nature of its own founding principles, to have to accomodate itself to death. Eventually the untidy, even ugly, juxtaposition of just reform and illegitimate leadership would cause an internal collapse. My beliefs have changed considerably.
Now I believe that the kind of gradual reformism that is advocated by a "whatever means necessary" approach is much like chasing a bump in the carpet. It will never progress to the point of exposing, and counterposing, in the consciousness of unjustly subordinated individuals a view of thier own servitude and submission. Secondly, the idea that the ad hoc nature of reform and its internally contradictory reality would eventually create its own collapse was born of a naive reductionism that I am embarassed to admit I once espoused. The nature of power ordering in contemporary society is extraordinarily complex, Gramsci's unilinear approach to hegemony was brilliant and helpful, but does not answer Foucault's challenge of the diffuse nature of power. You reassert the legitimacy of a social order everytime you seek to make reform on its terms. What some women gain in material advance all of humanity loses in cultural and spiritual diversity.
I do not have an answer to this problem. Women must work and get the most out of it that they can in order to feed their children and abusive unfaithful husbands. It would be unfair to demand they support "the cause" in the abstract at their own expense, there is no "cause" in general, only particular instances of injustice. The question must be posed, how can a movement accomodate the needs of the people.
Finally, its undemocratic and illiberal to suppose that justice must wait for the hearts and minds of a few elites with a lot at stake to come around. Liberal Democracy ought to be naturally averse to entrenched dominance.