Pragmatic Studies:

I want to meander and fumble around on my last point a little more. But I would start with another quote from Rorty’s essay “Philosophy as Metaphor, Science, Politics” in Essays on Heidegger and Others:

“The latter are better metaphors for metaphor, because they suggest that cognition is not always recognition, that the acquisition of truth is not always a matter of fitting data into a preestablished scheme. A metaphor is, so to speak, a voice from outside logical space, rather than an empirical filling-up of a portion of that space, or a logical-philosophical clarification of the structure of that space. It is a call to change one’s language and one’s life, rather than a proposal about how to systemize either.”

What we are getting at here is not just the important role that metaphor plays in post-Neitzscheian philosophy (once again:

“Sartre’s being-for-itself and being-in-itself? Baudrillard’s Simulacrum? D&G’s rhizomatic network? Rorty’s mirror of reality? What are they if not metaphors: a new way of talking about things that forces us to change our repertoire of sentences?”

(but the very real pragmatic function it can serve. Anyone who has come to know Deleuze to any degree can appreciate the role that osmosis (via free indirect discourse (can play in that process: that vague sense of having been altered. And like free indirect discourse, metaphor works in an oblique manner. The pragmatic/practical potential of it goes back to a point I made about conflict or what Layotard referred to as differends: the way opposing views can break down to assumptions that, from the nihilistic perspective, ultimately, float on thin air. Once again:

“I would first point out what may be one the consequences of recent discoveries of neuroscience and the data that increasingly leans towards a more materialistic description of the relationship between the meat of the brain and what we experience as mind. Now don’t get me wrong: I still hold out for the possibility of participation in defining mind as an interface between the body (and its brain (and its environment via a non-linear feedback loop between the two. But as neuroscience shows more and more that we are who we are because of the physiological structure of the brain (and in the sense that Chomsky asserted (you start to recognize the futility of different dispositions fighting (that between left and right or that between continental and analytic approaches to philosophy (and the silliness of it given that, as neuroscience learns how hard-wired these dispositions are in us, it makes no sense to alienate those who don’t share our disposition especially when some of those people may be people we love. I mean we are always more than the ideologies we adopt.”

The point here is that given how hardwired ideologies may be in the minds of people who risk our destruction through man-made climate change or our enslavement through global capitalism, direct confrontation through reason may not only be futile, but actually counter-productive in that it will only alienate them and push them deeper into their system of beliefs. And outside of Rorty’s other two means of adding beliefs, perception and inference (both of which are means the other must go through on their own, metaphor or indirect poetic methods are the only means by which we can hope to resonate with, seduce, and participate in adding to those systems of beliefs.

Brian Massumi , in his User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, approaches this when he points out the import of camouflage in his Deleuze and Guattarri based manifesto. And who better to undermine a king (a tyrant (than a joker saying pretty and entertaining things?

I felt this way for a long time. It’s a waste of time trying to change reality on this level.
It’s easier to just focus on the good aspects of your self and your fate.
Some things in reality are completely solid. Like a diamond.

Thanks, Dan. I agree, but would frame it as focusing our own processes.

So the perfect metaphor to represent this lack of recognition, is the metaphor inherent in Sarte’s inauthentic for-it’s-self, but cleverly and jokingly displacing with another similar but hidden metaphors,
In the fashion of of a possible language analysis, as Fixed suggests, per Wittgenstein. Here Wittgenstein appears to reduce the difference,the camouflage , by repeating the metaphor. But on whom will the joke be on? The joker, or, the King?

So in the hopes of sounding like I’m writing a real philosophical exposition, my intention here is to zero in and expand on a previous quote from Rorty’s essay “Philosophy as Science, Metaphor, Politics” in Essays on Heidegger and Others and hopefully push further into the nuances of metaphor in philosophy. Anyway:

“Both perception and inference leave our language, our way of dividing up the realm of possibility, unchanged. They alter the truth-values of sentences, but not our repertoire of sentences. To assume that perception and inference are the only ways in which beliefs ought to be changed is to adopt what Heidegger identified as the “mathematical” attitude. It is to assume that the language we presently speak is, as it were, all the language there is, all the language we shall ever need.”

Now the thing to note here is that Heidegger is noted as taking the “poetic” lean in philosophy –that is as compared to the scientific or political. However, as Rorty points out in a later essay (and that is if I understand him right (Heidegger fell short of his promise by turning his emphasis on the poetic approach into a mandate towards the obscure and esoteric language of the priest or shaman. In other words, Heidegger, by giving the poetic privilege over the political (that which is about social justice (showed the very elitist colors that may have been flying when he so blatantly subscribed to Nazism. This, as Rorty points out elsewhere, was the result of Heidegger’s reactionary disposition in the face of technology. And we should note here Heidegger’s rather eccentric choice of appearing before his classes garbed in the traditional German outfit you often see on polka bands.

Rorty then turns to Davidson’s take on metaphor (something I will have to drive into after I understand it better, but what it ultimately comes to is a quote from pg. 14:

“Another way of putting this point is to say, with Davidson, that “the irrational” is essential to intellectual progress. In a paper on Freud, Davidson notes that “mental causes which are not reasons” –that is, beliefs and desires which play a role in our behavior but which do not fit into the scheme of beliefs and desires which we would claim as ours- are needed not only to explain “deviant” behavior (as Freudian psychoanalytic theory employs them) but also to “explain our salutary efforts, and occasional successes, at self criticism and self improvement.”

(First of all, note to self: need to dig deeper into Davidson.)

That said, we can see here a bridge or overlap (or maybe even a premonition of (with modern discoveries in neuroscience and, contrary to the bah-humbug attitude of more scientific approaches such as that of Dennett or Searle, the import of the metaphoric/ poetic (that which Heidegger failed to follow through with (that, despite their seemingly irrational nature, can add to our evolution in terms of brain plasticity. (And it allows for a connection that can eventually be made with Deleuze.)

My window is almost out, so I have to do this quick and elaborate later. But as J. Allan Hobson points out in Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction, dreaming (that which we would normally think of as an irrational experience (actually may play a vital role in the process of brain plasticity….

Unfortunately, I have to let this go for now. But elaborating on that last point gives me my rhizome for tomorrow.
*
Appendix (something I had time to write earlier that goes to the pragmatic point:

“(Biological evolution can be defined as change with modification over a period of time.)
In the context of the past, the past tense of change is changed. This implies that the fossil records are about things that have changed. And subsequently, (this implies) that we cannot know they have changed. For the knowing of change is contingent on our past experiences of what those things looked like before. Therefore, with reference to the past, biological evolution cannot be confirmed.” –David Salako: facebook.com/groups/philoso … ment_reply

I think we can consider evolution as having passed the pragmatic truth test of warranted assertability. In ways described by Eren, as well in other ways, it just works.

But to tentatively jump on David’s side of the fence, we could resort to the inductive limit and argue reasonably that there is no way of knowing that some guy with cloven hooves and horns didn’t plant this evidence to throw us off his tracks. And the best one could do is snort, “yeah, but it isn’t likely” and walk away leaving the argument pretty much unchallenged.

However (to jump back to the other side), were we to follow that argument with an assertion that, because of that, evolution must be false, we would be making a clear turn into bad reasoning. But then all we would have to do is change one word (a mere qualifier (and argue that because of the previous point, evolution could be wrong. But then we would just be saying the same thing as the first: simply converting our premise into a conclusion.

But this is all a lot of semantic play with minor references to existential reality. But once we move from the semantic to the existential, we return to the pragmatic force of warranted assertability in front of which semantic arguments fall limp.

Thanks. I alongside will need to do digging to get the full import.

Thanks for just participating, Orb.

“Another way of putting this point is to say, with Davidson, that “the irrational” is essential to intellectual progress. In a paper on Freud, Davidson notes that “mental causes which are not reasons” –that is, beliefs and desires which play a role in our behavior but which do not fit into the scheme of beliefs and desires which we would claim as ours- are needed not only to explain “deviant” behavior (as Freudian psychoanalytic theory employs them) but also to “explain our salutary efforts, and occasional successes, at self criticism and self improvement.” –Rorty

“That said, we can see here a bridge or overlap (or maybe even a premonition of (with modern discoveries in neuroscience and, contrary to the bah-humbug attitude of more scientific approaches such as that of Dennett or Searle, the import of the metaphoric/ poetic (that which Heidegger failed to follow through with (that, despite their seemingly irrational nature, can add to our evolution in terms of brain plasticity. (And it allows for a connection that can eventually be made with Deleuze.)

My window is almost out, so I have to do this quick and elaborate later. But as J. Allan Hobson points out in Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction, dreaming (that which we would normally think of as an irrational experience (actually may play a vital role in the process of brain plasticity….”

To elaborate: the body sleeps; meanwhile, the brain, restless with the movements of mind and consciousness, prods itself in a kind of inventory (perhaps out of a resistance to its own non-existence (in which it ransacks its contents, picks randomly through all the mental artifacts it can in a given window, and juxtaposes them in a kind of bricolage or collage until it finds patterns that happen to work (the pragmatic word for resonate or seduce (that it stores as artifacts that it can further use as artifacts in further dream related inventories.

But not only are dream motifs being created. It may well be that the very structures by which the brain (via brain plasticity (interacts with its real-world environment. We get, in this materialist sense, how even the more irrational actions of the mind can participate in its “intellectual” evolution. We see now how our evolution as individual intellects or a culture does not exclusively require the strict methodology that our more neo- classicist peers would have us believe. Rorty, later, in the same essay, goes on to say:

“Davidson’s insistence in that paper on the importance of “mental causality that transcends reason” is focused on self-criticism and self-improvement in individual human beings, but I think his point is is even more striking and plausible for the self-criticism of cultures. The “irrational” intrusion of beliefs which “make no sense” (i.e., cannot be justified by exhibiting their coherence with the rest of what we believe) are just those events which intellectual historians look back upon as ‘conceptual revolutions’. Or, more precisely, they are the events [note the Deleuzian possibility here -me [which spark conceptual revolutions –seemingly crazy suggestions by people who were without honor in their own countries, suggestions which strike us as luminous truths, truths which must have always been latent in ‘human reason’. “

Here, I would stand on Rorty’s, Davidson’s, as well as Deleuze’s shoulders and note the folly of the tyranny of the functional: the guilt and inferiority complex the neo-classist disposition seems to feel in the face of science and not being able to create an i-pad. If we really look at our cultural and technological evolution, there is no way of distinguishing the value of the functional (the technological (and the non-functional (the creative (approaches to our intellectual evolution. Case in point: the 90’s, under Clinton, are considered a period of major economic expansion. And from a more conservative (neo-classicist (perspective this might be attributed to a major technological boom. However, this was accompanied by a major creative boom: Seattle grunge, electronic, industrial, etc… Now how could the conservative disposition argue that this creative boom followed the technological boom when there is every reason to believe that technology was working to meet the demands of the evolving sensibility of the creative boom? There was no privileged participant in what was basically a chicken and the egg dynamic.

The truth, as I see it, is that there is no way of knowing what product of intellectual or creative inquiry will be useful. Take, for instance, the engineer’s of WW2 planes who based how they painted them on Picasso. And even if that product is not useful, we’ll never know since all it will do is slip into obscurity. This is my main argument with the neo-classicist sensibility: given that we can never know what we might or might not use, does it make any sense to smugly dismiss any method until it has clearly proven itself to cause real harm? Wouldn’t it, rather than establish an arbitrary and power backed criteria by which an assertion may be deemed worthy of participating, be better to play things by ear and let the discourse weed out the wrong?

And I would pull this into the political by pointing out how wrong the Republicans in America are in their dismissal of the arts, their hard-on against such cultural institutions such as the NEA or public TV and Radio. They fail to see the very real connection between unblocked creative energy and economic prowess. And leaving that to the forces of Capitalism can only stifle that resource… Think: reality TV.

“Baudrillard took the theory of simulacra from Deleuze. But he was a fierce enemy of Deleuze and Foucault - he wrote the critical: Forget Foucault (“Oublier Foucault” in French). Though he was a colleague of Deleuze in Nanterre as a professor and sociologist, one of his “Hobbies” seems to have been to undermine the influence of Deleuze, the Althusser school, and a lot more. Perhaps he was being antagonistic to provoke discourse.” –Harald: facebook.com/groups/2232336 … up_comment

Actually, as I understand it, the concept of simulacra goes back to Plato or maybe is applied to him. And while Baudrillard may have gotten wind of the concept via Deleuze, the two approaches to it are quite different. Deleuze’s sense of it seems to be in what he called the virtual which, as I understand it, has to do with the way time works in the presence of consciousness: the way the present is always some unknowable transition point (if you could call it a point (between an approaching future and a receding past. This comes up a lot in my readings on Deleuze in terms of the “past present that was never truly present”. This is why Deleuze is said to have argued (perhaps in opposition to Baudrillard (that it makes no sense to pine for the good old days when everything was more real when we have always worked in the virtual: a flashback, perhaps, to Kant’s distinction between noumenon and phenomenon.

Baudrillard’s approach to it, on the other hand, shines on his being described as a Sci-fi writer who happens to be writing philosophy. In his case, we have to make the distinction between simulacra and the Simulacrum. Besides the having to recognize “simulacra” as the plural of the singular “simulacrum”, in the case of Baudrillard, we have to recognize the almost paranoid connotations of The Simulacrum: the entity that, via media, puts a delusional and hegemonic sheen on the Capitalistic machinery we all live with, that which we cannot point to in the same way we might that water at atmospheric pressure boils at 212 degrees, but nevertheless seems to have a very real effect on our lives.

But you’re right: Baudrillard was an arrogant character. As I remember reading him, he reminds me of an old board nemesis of mine who seemed to punctuate every statement with a triumphant “Hah!!!”. Still, he is fuel for the fire and I hope to eventually get back to him. And he was a major influence on movies such as The Matrix –even though most of them miss the point as concerns Capitalism. And Baudrillard did have a Marxist cynicism when it came to Capitalism. He just (a lot like Zizek (felt like we were resisting it in ways that only contributed to the Capitalist cause.

“So, while Baudrllard is a fierce enemy of Deleuze, Rorty is not very Deleuzian.”

Yes! There is a clear difference between Rorty and Deleuze. And as you suggest, that difference of sensibility was not nearly as hostile as it was between Baudrillard and Deleuze. Rorty, as far as I know, mainly expressed that difference through indifference. I’m really not sure if he ever acknowledged or even knew of Deleuze’s existence. And all I have seen from Deleuze on Rorty was a funny little aside referring to the bourgeoisie nature of Rorty’s style (that which Rorty himself jokingly referred to in interviews (in What is Philosophy: dinner and conversation at the Rorty’s.

And we have to consider here that most of Deleuze’s works were starting to get translated in the 90’s while Rorty’s salad days were in the 80’s. And Deleuze died around 95. Had the timelines been different, there is every possibility that the two might have developed a better appreciation of what the other was doing.

Where I see the overlap is in their common desire to facilitate (via creativity (our evolution as a species and their recognition of the kind of blockages that come from traditional and neo-classicist dogma’s concerning what constitutes a legitimate assertion. And it would be a lot easier for me if I could distinguish the style of Rorty and Deleuze by noting Rorty’s emphasis on discourse (a social thing (as compared to Deleuze’s emphasis on the individual process. But I would argue that Deleuze (while earlier emphasizing personal evolution in such books as Difference and Repetition (w/ the influence of Guattarri (was approaching Rorty’s appreciation of discourse in The Anti-Oedipus and all its talk about things like machines and social production.

Maybe it’s just me. But I’m finding it real easy to consolidate the two.

By centering in on “the obscure and esoteric” aspect of Heidegger’s preference for “poïesis” you missed its most important aspect. You ended up talking about his “elitist colors” and his “eccentric choice of appearing […] in the traditional German outfit you often see on polka bands.”, but I wonder if you grasped the most important reason for his preference for poïesis.

Another closely related word to poïesis is mimesis, which can be loosely defined as representation (but that doesn’t complete its meaning). Heidegger sought to engage with our metaphysical presuppositions that had their roots in the earliest works of philosophers. Heidegger’s poetical engagement in philosophy was an attempt uncover primal understanding of Being which had been overlooked or distorted in tradition of philosophy as it stood before Nietzsche (who he believed to have begun a revolution in metaphysics by making a definitive break with the then dominant Platonic (or Socratic) metaphysical position (though to be fair we would have to say that both Plato and Aristotle were deeply influenced by various branches of metaphysical inquiry taking place at the time).

Heidegger’s philosophy is meant to contribute to a new starting place. Without work of his sort (and I don’t mean here that it must be deeply obscure) philosophizing takes for granted not only concepts but ways of looking at the world and builds on the ideas of the past. Heidegger contributes to a new foundation which can be built upon.

It is another question whether his obscurity was entirely necessary. I do think though that work of his sort is inevitably going to be at least difficult because he create a lot of new terminology, he is attempting to uncover a new way of looking at the world (which being new will not be easy to sink into the first time around certainly, besides the difficulty of engaging with the terminology), and also because he goes after his subject with rigor in that he does not speak colloquially or stop to explain what he had just said in other terms for clarification but continues to delve into the inquiry.

“By centering in on “the obscure and esoteric” aspect of Heidegger’s preference for “poïesis” you missed its most important aspect. You ended up talking about his “elitist colors” and his “eccentric choice of appearing […] in the traditional German outfit you often see on polka bands.”, but I wonder if you grasped the most important reason for his preference for poïesis.

Another closely related word to poïesis is mimesis, which can be loosely defined as representation (but that doesn’t complete its meaning). Heidegger sought to engage with our metaphysical presuppositions that had their roots in the earliest works of philosophers. Heidegger’s poetical engagement in philosophy was an attempt uncover primal understanding of Being which had been overlooked or distorted in tradition of philosophy as it stood before Nietzsche (who he believed to have begun a revolution in metaphysics by making a definitive break with the then dominant Platonic (or Socratic) metaphysical position (though to be fair we would have to say that both Plato and Aristotle were deeply influenced by various branches of metaphysical inquiry taking place at the time).

Heidegger’s philosophy is meant to contribute to a new starting place. Without work of his sort (and I don’t mean here that it must be deeply obscure) philosophizing takes for granted not only concepts but ways of looking at the world and builds on the ideas of the past. Heidegger contributes to a new foundation which can be built upon.

It is another question whether his obscurity was entirely necessary. I do think though that work of his sort is inevitably going to be at least difficult because he create a lot of new terminology, he is attempting to uncover a new way of looking at the world (which being new will not be easy to sink into the first time around certainly, besides the difficulty of engaging with the terminology), and also because he goes after his subject with rigor in that he does not speak colloquially or stop to explain what he had just said in other terms for clarification but continues to delve into the inquiry.”

First of all, thank you for your astute and intellectually sincere response and today’s around 500 word project. It’s what I always hope for when I post.

Secondly, I would ask you to keep in mind here that what I was mainly responding to was Rorty’s Heidegger in the context of what I know about him via secondary text. And given how you have clearly gone into him a little deeper (and have likely gone into Heidegger’s original text (I would not even try to speak from any position of authority here. It would be silly for me to even attempt to dismiss your take on Heidegger or his importance as a philosopher. But then that was never my point. Nor do I think it was Rorty’s. And because of that, I’m not sure our two takes on it are totally incompatible.

Still, I would stand by Rorty’s point that while Heidegger started out with his heart in the right place (the rejection of scientific standards for philosophy: what Heidegger referred to as the mathematization of philosophy (he still went wrong by clinging to the platonic hierarchy of mind, heart, and body. The only difference was that Heidegger, unlike Plato, did not choose to exile poets from his republic, but rather chose to treat them like philosopher kings. This is what led to his sense of philosophy as being the language of the shaman, high priest, or guru. I can fully sympathize with you when you say:

“It is another question whether his obscurity was entirely necessary. I do think though that work of his sort is inevitably going to be at least difficult because he create a lot of new terminology, he is attempting to uncover a new way of looking at the world (which being new will not be easy to sink into the first time around certainly, besides the difficulty of engaging with the terminology), and also because he goes after his subject with rigor in that he does not speak colloquially or stop to explain what he had just said in other terms for clarification but continues to delve into the inquiry.”

I too often question whether such obscurity is really necessary when a writer could as easily approach those aspects of reality that are beyond words by working the reader towards it until they can take off on their own. However (from what I’ve read of and about him, I get the feeling that Heidegger’s use of poessis has a different intent than the French use of it (Deleuze, Foucault, Lacan ( which centers around Barthes’ writerly text in which the reader is allowed to arrive at their own conclusions. In the case of Heidegger, it feels more like some corporate ladder that you must climb in order to achieve the vision that he has as your guru. In his case, it is as if he is saying:

“I will make you work for the level of understanding that I have. And if you choose not to, then you are worthless.”

As Rorty called him: a Schwarzhog Hick. And what Rorty seemed to be working at was the connection between Heidegger’s philosophy and his involvement in Nazism which, as far as I’m concerned, is not a bad attempt. And I would note here the recent publication of his Black Notebooks (as reported by Philosophy Now: philosophynow.org/issues/107/Ne … l_May_2015 (that establishes Heidegger’s anti-Semitic views and was cause for the resignation of Gunter Figal as chair of the Heidegger society.

Once again, I do not (would not (discourage you from pursuing Heidegger as you seem to be doing. I hope to get a little deeper into him myself. Still, I hope you will allow for some credibility in the criticisms against him.

The reason I made the response that I did is because I feel that Heidegger has many important things to offer to those engaged in philosophy and otherwise.

That Heidegger was revealed as anti-semitic doesn’t really surprise me since he was engaged under the Nazi regime, and it doesn’t bother me in terms of reading and contemplating his work. As someone engaged in philosophy, I consider it my role to contemplate whether what he said is true, not whether those things agree with my politics.

I do wish that Heidegger had made an effort to be more clear, and I can admit that when I read him I have even found myself for a long time on a single sentence trying to think of what he means — this is sometimes because he is using a term that he introduced and defined prior and which I was unable to remember and contextualize as I moved on. It remains to be seen (for me) whether his writing style was necessary for his project, and again whether his project led to the discovery or aided the pursuit of truth.

I personally find more value in Heidegger than Foucault. I have not read Deleuze, Lacan, or Foucault’s lectures. This point of view might change in the future, maybe because I grasp something in their work I hadn’t before.

So again, the reason I made the response I did was because I feel Heidegger has something to offer and reducing his work to his politics (or prejudging it on those grounds) will be a disservice to philosophical pursuit.

It might, in the future, be worthwhile to engage in something like a study of one of Heidegger’s works going over each paragraph, but that is only as yet an idea.

“The reason I made the response that I did is because I feel that Heidegger has many important things to offer to those engaged in philosophy and otherwise.

That Heidegger was revealed as anti-semitic doesn’t really surprise me since he was engaged under the Nazi regime, and it doesn’t bother me in terms of reading and contemplating his work. As someone engaged in philosophy, I consider it my role to contemplate whether what he said is true, not whether those things agree with my politics.

I do wish that Heidegger had made an effort to be more clear, and I can admit that when I read him I have even found myself for a long time on a single sentence trying to think of what he means — this is sometimes because he is using a term that he introduced and defined prior and which I was unable to remember and contextualize as I moved on. It remains to be seen (for me) whether his writing style was necessary for his project, and again whether his project led to the discovery or aided the pursuit of truth.

I personally find more value in Heidegger than Foucault. I have not read Deleuze, Lacan, or Foucault’s lectures. This point of view might change in the future, maybe because I grasp something in their work I hadn’t before.

So again, the reason I made the response I did was because I feel Heidegger has something to offer and reducing his work to his politics (or prejudging it on those grounds) will be a disservice to philosophical pursuit.

It might, in the future, be worthwhile to engage in something like a study of one of Heidegger’s works going over each paragraph, but that is only as yet an idea.” -The Artful Pauper: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=187860&p=2536528#p2536528

First of all, I hope that I am reading in an apologetic tone to this since it would be completely unnecessary. And on second thought, I can’t help but feel that bringing Heidegger’s anti-Semitism into this may have been a bit of a red herring. Thank God (whatever it is (that I have the denial of nose-blindness in my corner. I only brought it up to point to the clearly anti-democratic disposition that he had and what was the issue for me and Rorty. But that is a different issue than the one you are bringing up and are doing an impressive job of arguing. I mean I haven’t seen a point I could disagree with. Still, what I was arguing (via Rorty (was that Heidegger appears to have used a good method to bad ends by rebelling against the classicist hierarchy only to establish the hierarchy of the poet/priest.

What might help us here is Rorty’s distinction, in Philosophy and Social Hope, between interpretation and use when it comes to reading text. And what seems most important to me here is that you are finding things you can use in Heidegger. And that is all that should really matter as long as you are aware of the risks involved as Heidegger demonstrated. I myself, found something I could use (and still can (in the first essay of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness: the idea that accusations of selfishness can too often be expressions of the selfishness of the individual making the accusation. But then by the 3rd or 4th essay, I got so nauseous with the smug fascism of it that I had to put it down. I just couldn’t go any further. But I can still use the point about selfishness without being obliged to accept the rest of her nonsense. And the same goes for you and Heidegger.

Luckily, this offers me a smooth segway (for the purposes of this rhizome (into an article in Philosophy Now (issue 107): Yonathan Listik’s Derrida’s Performance:

“Derrida’s use of the performative aspects of language attempts precisely to take the road not taken. His argument is that proper and improper uses of language are not separate, but in fact dependent on one another, because language is built not on its successes, but on its failures.” -https://philosophynow.org/issues/107/Derridas_Performance

The term I want to focus on here is “uses”. If we focus on use, as compared to interpretation, how do we distinguish between “proper” and “improper”? A use is a use –proper or improper. The neo-classists may zero in on a gotcha moment and argue that this is exactly why we should focus on proper interpretation rather than use. But then doesn’t that constitute just another “use” (perhaps proper, perhaps improper (of language?

I don’t want to derail your thread, but I will just add one thing since it is relevant to what has gone before. You (and others interested) might consider checking out the works of Heidegger generally collected under the title Basic Works. In them you will find a Heidegger much more generous in his presentation than in his other works. Also, a little bird told me that if you find out their names and search for them you should be able to find them.

I will add though, to understand Heidegger’s focus on poïesis you have to understand his stance on modern technology and the problem he felt arises from a hegemony of instrumental reasoning. Poetry, you might admit, does bring humanity closer to its connection with nature, the world, existence, or what have you, than for example creating machines. — I might say that creating machines is something essentially human, but it doesn’t really improve out spiritual connection with Being. Heidegger’s position was that thinking of Being brought us closest but poetry has the ability to absorb us and make us feel closer to existence even as an audience if not as performers or creators.

Has our modern world of ubiquitous technology brought us closer to eudaimonia (roughly, ‘the good life’) or have we perhaps even lost something that older civilizations had by living closer to nature? Is it desirable for humanity to change its trajectory? Is it possible any longer or have we entered an era where we are determined by our technology to pursue conquest at all costs?

Yes, as was starting to come out in Rorty’s book, Heidegger considered poetry (or poessis (the language of Being.

Yet another good point, Artful. I hope to hear more from you.

This will be my next letter for Philosophy Now and I’m hoping to get some input before I start working on it my next workweek:

But I’m starting to note an aspect of the neo-classicist approach that turns on itself. And while it may not be a paradox, it may be every bit as detrimental to it as the skeptic’s paradox thrown at non-classicist positions -pragmatism, Post modern and structuralist approaches like that of Deleuze’s –or, at least, to the extent that the neo-classicists seem to think they are undermining the non-classicists with it.

It comes down to a conflict between neo classicism’s agenda’s of finding some kind of absolute truth about the nature of reality while seeking an objective basis for ethical claims. On the ethical side, it attempts to undermine the non-classicist/anti-platonic with the sweeping generalization of relativism and an application of the skeptic’s paradox (that which I hope I have undermined in previous posts (by arguing that the progressive position cannot be supported by a sensibility that sees no solid foundation for any ethical or moral assertion they might make. According to them, their way must be better since they are in a position to establish a solid and objective foundation to their moral and ethical assertions in such a way that no one can deny them. They see their way as the only real way, the only real solution to all the problems in the world. As long as there are those nasty relativists in the world (those nihilists (we cannot possibly hope for people to behave as they should.

The problem is that the neo-classist ethicist is inherently, in its claims to an objective criterion of the ethical and moral, beholden to the scientific method which, via neuroscience, is showing that our actual participation in our choices are, at best, minimal. Beyond that, all they really have is a Kantian de-ontic appeal to duty which is an assumption that clearly floats on thin air: that which the nihilistic perspective thrives on. In other words, they’re making their ethical claims as if they were scientific assertions. At the same time, they’re arguing that their way is the only way we can counter bad behavior based on a scientific method (objectivity (that shows that no matter what objective basis they might actually find, no one is somehow certain to follow their principles just because they know of them. This would require that the neo-classicist ethicist accept the old ghost in the machine which is about as counter to their scientific peers as could be. And they can’t just pick and choose since the so-called objective world they are claiming to exist can only be of one nature that all of them (at least the neo-classicists (must share.

At the same time, those on the scientific side of the neo-classicist equation are equally beholden to their ethical/moral peers since they are arguing as if our duty to the scientific method and objectivity is a moral and ethical one. Why else would they put so much effort into dismissing thinkers like Rorty or Derrida? That is rather than take a live and let live position?

To sum it up: you have to ask what is it that would be changed if we arbitrarily (and it would be arbitrary (accepted the neo-classicist position and it’s claims to objectivity and the authority of the scientific method; you have to ask if the so-called objective argument for an ethical claim would be so powerful and undeniable that it would over-ride the wiring that neuroscience describes. You have to ask what it is they expect to gain by winning the debate and the fascism of somehow undermining all other approaches to understanding.

First of all, Yoni (or should I be prefixing that with Prof. or Dr.? (I’m finding myself energized by this exchange (or what I like call a jam: an American term (perhaps even western (referring to what musicians do when they improvise and bounce off of each other. And it is good thing since I came to today’s task feeling a little tired. I am grateful for and flattered by the opportunity you have offered me.

That said, one of aspects of my rhizomatic approach is that I work these posts out on Word by posting your point then breaking it down point by point. So I apologize for the repetition. The other aspect of it is that I like to cross-pollinate by re-posting what I’ve done on one board in the hope of provoking discourse elsewhere. That has the added benefit of letting other people know what is out there –in this case, Philosophy Now. That said:

“Feel free to steal as much as you want. I wouldn’t be a good follower of Derrida if I said anything different.

I must say I am not a big fan of pragmatism but I see where you are coming from. As I see it pragmatism has a certain conservative/reactionary aspect to it. If you stick to what works you will never ask the question of the power of such structure and even less the question of changing it (I am aware I might be misrepresenting the theory but I think there is something to my description even if it is simplistic). I like to talk of a more aesthetic use of language. Language as fiction, as an attempt to create a narrative and therefore as a performance of a profession. Every use of language is an “as if…” but not in a sense of being untrue, rather in the sense of being a an action in the world so as to not have any truth value (or at least this value not playing a central role). So Rorty’s question of pragmatic interpretation is relevant but it does not cope with what I am trying to argue about language. Perhaps your example of seduction helps me explain myself. In seducing someone you are not only pragmatically using language and therefore playing with the code and its interpretation. You are acting (in all senses of the word) since you are pretending to be interesting (“as if…”), you are professing your qualities and values and you are asking to be taken seriously as a candidate. Or in other words, you are creating a fiction where you are the hero and asking the other person to believe you.

I must confess I am not that acquainted with Ayer’s work but from the limited range of contact I had I did not find the performative there. In fact I think he represents the exact opposite perspective on language (but I might be wrong). As to Wittgenstein I think he is a big influence and he does call our attention to some performative aspects of language but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that all there is not the performative is language-games or the other way around. I think the obvious source of the performative is Austin’s theory. There I think we have a serious challenge of the purely descriptive aspect of language and the argument that we actually “do things with words”. –Yoni (A.K.A Yonathon Listik: forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopi … 23&t=15253

“I must say I am not a big fan of pragmatism but I see where you are coming from. As I see it pragmatism has a certain conservative/reactionary aspect to it. If you stick to what works you will never ask the question of the power of such structure and even less the question of changing it (I am aware I might be misrepresenting the theory but I think there is something to my description even if it is simplistic).”

One might get that impression, especially based on Rorty who liked to joke that he was basically a bourgeoisie liberal. And reading him, you get the feeling of some upper middle class intellectual from the New England area. As Deleuze and Guattarri said in a sly aside in What is Philosophy: “dinner and conversation at the Rorty’s.” And were one to stop at the criteria of “what works”, they would be treading dangerous ethical territory since we can assume that the criteria by which Neo-Nazi’s prop up their ideologies is that it works for them. So there is something to your theory.

However, it gets a little more complex when it comes to what we mean in terms of something working. We also have to ask other questions like how it is working, for whom it is working, and why it is working for them. This also requires the reverse issue of who it is not working for and why. This is illustrated in the issue of Global Capitalism and the 1% it is working for and the other 99% it is not. And I would also note that the cornerstone of Pragmatism is the pragmatic truth test which served as a synthesis of the inductive and deductive truth tests and then some. What it recognizes is that both are only useful because they work while recognizing that there are ,yet, other ways of working that don’t fit neatly into either category. A good example of that is religion which works for the individual that is practicing it while not not working for the individual that doesn’t. If it works for people to believe in ghosts, it should equally work for people who don’t since such a belief has no real effect on their life.

But then that is the uptake. The downside lies in a point made by Rorty in Philosophy and Social Hope that even if someone like Heidegger could be or was pragmatic in disposition, that would be no guarantee against the kind of moral folly that he wandered into. But then what ideology is? The pragmatist, if they are a pragmatist, must recognize the futility of thinking any ideology will, by necessity, change human activity. Ideology, along with the language we use to express it, is a tool by which we deal with a given environment. And ideology presupposes language. Hence Rorty’s emphasis on discourse over transcendent epistemological systems that could underwrite any assertion we might make as true and Deleuze’s (w/ Guattarri (emphasis on social production: the network of machines rooted in his transcendental empiricism. And your point concerning Derrida’s Performance fits easily into this –at least for me. This is because I believe that, in evolutionary terms, the advancement of our culture must be a process of brainstorming (simple discourse between a lot of different people using a lot of different methods (without the constraints of transcendental criteria, of throwing it all on the table and picking through it to find what works and, ultimately, what keeps working: the gift that keeps on giving –a little like evolution.

Anyway, ran out my window on one point. And I am exhausted. Will have to take this up again tomorrow: Same Bat time; Same Bat place……

“Also: isn’t the idea of performance rooted in Ayers who recognized that language never actually gets outside of its performative function? I think Rorty was heavily influenced by that given his faith in discourse –what you refer to as performance and Wittgenstein as language games.” -me:http://forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15253

“I must confess I am not that acquainted with Ayer’s work but from the limited range of contact I had I did not find the performative there. In fact I think he represents the exact opposite perspective on language (but I might be wrong). As to Wittgenstein I think he is a big influence and he does call our attention to some performative aspects of language but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that all there is not the performative is language-games or the other way around. I think the obvious source of the performative is Austin’s theory. There I think we have a serious challenge of the purely descriptive aspect of language and the argument that we actually “do things with words”.” -Yoni: Ibid…

Actually, Yoni, mine was a throwaway sentence that sometimes occur in the on the fly manner in which we work on the boards. I would put my money on Austin. But I’m not altogether sure we can separate the performative aspect of language from the language game. But I’ll have to think about that and reserve it for another rhizome.

“I like to talk of a more aesthetic use of language. Language as fiction, as an attempt to create a narrative and therefore as a performance of a profession. Every use of language is an “as if…” but not in a sense of being untrue, rather in the sense of being a an action in the world so as to not have any truth value (or at least this value not playing a central role). So Rorty’s question of pragmatic interpretation is relevant but it does not cope with what I am trying to argue about language.”

Actually, you’re talking to someone who started out as a musician then moved on through poetry, fiction, and art to my present fixation on philosophy. In fact, my first encounter with philosophy was Will Durrant’s The Story of Philosophy which I picked up in a second hand store in order see how Aristotle’s Categorical Imperative would affect my music –which goes to show how much I knew about it back then. At that time, I thought it my manifest destiny to be a rock star. And I’m not sure I ever got over that. Like everything else I have gotten in to, I have pretty much approached philosophy with the purpose of making it rock and roll. So your point concerning performance and Derrida has always been waiting for me to arrive. Which brings me to zero in on a particular point:

“Language as fiction, as an attempt to create a narrative and therefore as a performance of a profession.”

Until I caught this, I had thought that the difference between my sense of performance and yours was that you (via Derrida (had generalized it into discourse in general. And that makes perfect sense to me given that discourse is ultimately a creative act. One person strings a sentence together based on previous sentences they have strung together. Then the other responds with a sentence built off of other sentences they have previously strung together. The above sentence, however, makes it seem like it is strictly a matter of how we talk about philosophy or any other discipline, like it’s strictly a matter of nomenclature or technical jargon.

?

That said, I had previously arrived at a conclusion or conceptional construction that might roughly correlate to yours. When it comes to writing, there are two pole in a spectrum of approaches: the functional (roughly correlating to Austin’s performative function you attribute to Derrida (and the aesthetic (roughly correlating to the performance aspect of your point. The functional is that which merely attempts to get a point across and can be as simple as a grocery list. The aesthetic is that which attempts to resonate and seduce as well as impress. And when it comes to writing, the functional is that which me must turn to when we’re working on-the-fly until the momentum of it pushes us into the aesthetic. The two are intimately entwined and I’m not sure that either can exist in any pure state anymore than craft and art can.

Once again: it’s like your article and Derrida was waiting for me to arrive. But then I’m always several steps behind the wave in front of me.

Where your article took me a step further was in the imperative presented by the double meaning of Performance in Derrida: performance itself and the performative function. What I saw was a sturdy response to a common neo-classicist dismissal (as well as a lot of other continental approaches which they group together in the erroneous category of relativism –that is along with Rorty and Pragmatism: this fantasy they seem to entertain that anyone who follows Derrida’s lead is just sitting around and reading texts only to come up with any interpretation that suits their fancy. As I understand it, Derrida encourages us to analyze text which is a lot different than just reading them. The idea, as you describe, is to follow the aesthetic through, respond as you will, then play that response against the reality of Derrida’s text. As you point out, Derrida is not just being pretty for the sake of being pretty, he is doing it to mean something. I would suggest that we have to approach it a little like the last lines of Donald Finkle’s poem Hands:

Lean back and let its [the poem] hands play freely on you:
there comes a moment, lifted and aroused,
when the two of you are equally beautiful.

"I like your question about “work” because I feel it is deeply connected to to point I am trying to make. You are right, for me the performative is part of something much bigger. It is impossible to talk about profession and knowledge production without transiting into this central topic. So the question of what works is central here and Derrida is aware of this, when he talks about the “University without condition” he is talking about the university that is free of capitalism at the same time that it has no condition of ever existing in our current social structure. In a sense what I trying to say is that I disagree with you when you say that capitalism is not “working”. In fact it is working perfectly because that is how it works, there is no capitalism that is not the 1% over the 99%. I believe that is precisely the problem in front of us, how to break with what works in the name of that which lacks any conditions of existing. In simple words, how can we perform the impossible and still get away with it? That is, to think that which is absurd in our current division of the world and therefore unpragmatic/unreal. So to some extent the criticism towards Derrida you mentioned does make sense, he is talking about something unreal but exactly for that reason we should listen to him. He is proposing that knowledge function differently. The question for me is not pragmatically coping with the situation but breaking it. Your proposal of an infinite discourse creating evolution is not enough for me because it would be just the infinite return of the same discourse, the same order appearing in different angles (Derrida’s iterability in a sense). To perform must be to propose something different. It must demands a new reality “as if” it was possible/real (I believe current philosophers such as Ranciere and Nancy formulate this question).

I would like to add that function and aesthetics are not separate (I know you never said they were but I just want to reinforce a point). The function of something is its aesthetic function. Aesthetic in the sense of being the organization of the sensible, the determination of the visible at the same time as the meaning associated to it. To talk about aesthetics is to talk about the functional organization of knowledge/power." Yonathon Listik (A.K.A Yoni: forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopi … 23&t=15253

Once again, I apologize for posting what you already know -that is since you wrote it. But as I said before, as I am writing this, I am always prepping it for cross-polination. Plus that, I think some of my other jam-mates might be interested in what you have to say. It’s certainly interesting to me. That said:

“So the question of what works is central here and Derrida is aware of this, when he talks about the “University without condition” he is talking about the university that is free of capitalism at the same time that it has no condition of ever existing in our current social structure. In a sense what I am trying to say is that I disagree with you when you say that capitalism is not “working”. In fact it is working perfectly because that is how it works, there is no capitalism that is not the 1% over the 99%. I believe that is precisely the problem in front of us, how to break with what works in the name of that which lacks any conditions of existing. In simple words, how can we perform the impossible and still get away with it? That is, to think that which is absurd in our current division of the world and therefore unpragmatic/unreal.”

First of all, I am perfectly in sympathy with the political aspect implied in the first part. The increasing influence of corporate financing in universities that corresponds with decreasing state financing is clearly a concern: that which is the reason for Marx’s exile out of the economic departments into the Humanities and the dominance of analytic approaches (that in which clear expression is assumed to be a sign of clear thought (in philosophy departments. And outside of the fact (and may the wrath of Strunk rest in its grave (that universities were created to be a bastion of democratic enlightenment, while that may seem a superficial issue, in terms of what we’re getting at here, it still seems like a worthy segway when you consider that what seems to dominate a lot of the training (especially when you look at its products like Searle, Dennett, and Pinker (is the idea of being able to sell books. You suggest (at least to me (this concern in:

“I believe that is precisely the problem in front of us, how to break with what works in the name of that which lacks any conditions of existing. In simple words, how can we perform the impossible and still get away with it? That is, to think that which is absurd in our current division of the world and therefore unpragmatic/unreal. So to some extent the criticism towards Derrida you mentioned does make sense, he is talking about something unreal but exactly for that reason we should listen to him. He is proposing that knowledge function differently.”

If I am anywhere in the ballpark with you, I see a loose connection to a point made by Layotard in the Appendix to The Postmodern Connection in which he points to the terroristic aspect of the accessible and easily communicable and offers, as an antidote, the Avant Garde. This resonates with and seduces me in that I see the fascistic pockets that are emerging everywhere in America (that is thanks to producer/consumer Capitalism and the adolescent phallogocentrism that drives it (and propping themselves up through the accessible and easily communicable. To give you an example, I once watched a debate on C-Span between Cal Thomas (a hardcore conservative (and Lewis Lapham (the progressive editor of The Harper’s Review. Cal Thomas went through this smooth exposition that ended with that smack of the lips I too often sense in conservative editorials as if to say: that’s just the way it is. Lewis Lapham, on the other hand, kind of fumbled around and struggled to make his point which, of course, did not come off as nearly as impressive (in the sense of common doxa (as Thomas did –even though Lewis has shown himself to be highly intelligent in his writings.

Now the lean towards the accessible and the easily communicable would see this as a victory for Thomas. But all it really reflected was the stunted intellectual process of Thomas and the endless process of self deconstruction (the this, but that (that Lapham (as a true progressive (worked from. Thomas worked from the finite position of common Capitalist doxa. Lapham, on the other hand, was struggling to define the infinite much as I believe Derrida and Deleuze (and to a limited extent: Rorty and Pragmatism (was .

Anyway, like Lapham, I am always dealing with an infinite network of connections that come up with your points. It’s a little like an expanding universe with various big bangs creating their own expanding universes. It’s just too much to capture in any one sitting. Got to rest my head before I go on. And I didn’t even get to the points I started out with!!!

First of all, Yoni, I just finished Joe Hughes’ reader guide to Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition and did not get a chance to comment on it -mainly because my daily rhizomes have been focused on responding to you. This tells me that you’re presenting a flow that, while distracting me from other things I should be doing, faces me with an itch that must be scratched. And, sometimes, the only way out is through. The only way I can hope to get past the jam we have been engaged in is to focus on it for a couple of weeks.

I had planned to move on to Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy. And I tend to plan my process out in terms of my workweek. But given your clear influence by Derrida (I could see it in your Telos article -and BTW: you look like Seth Rogan (I decided to spend the next week on Derrida: a very short introduction -that is since I can easily finish it in a week between the e-book and the audio-book. Then I want to follow that with a week of just going through your work and posts and responding to them.

But before I engage in this experiment, I need you to understand a few things. First of all, I am not obsessed with or stalking you. This is purely about my process and what I can use in yours. You, for my purposes (and I don’t mean to sound mean –especially given that this comes out of respect (are a wave that I have to ride through so I can move onto other waves. Secondly, just because I am focusing on you does not mean that you need to focus on me. Once again, this discourse has been, in a metaphorical sense, a personal big bang that has set off an expanding universe of rhizomatic networks. All I need you to do is what you have been: commenting as you feel compelled to do. Even if you don’t, I still have a backlog of points you’ve made that I can easily bounce off of. Also, if and when the second part of this experiment happens, you may find yourself bombarded with a lot of writing that you may not have time to go through. Don’t sweat it. Just skim through it and cherrypick what you can respond to if you have to.

The main point is that you do not feel any pressure to do anything outside of what you normally do. This is my process. What you do outside of that is just embellishment which I can only welcome.

And since I know a little about you (via Google (you should know a little about me. First of all, I am not a philosopher. That would require a reading list I may not have time for in my lifetime. Being self taught, as far as philosophy’s concerned, I just like the idea of taking in a lot of different influences and seeing what I can produce because of them. I like to consider myself more of a writer who tends to write about what they experience, which for the time being is mainly philosophy.

(I should also point out that my primary experience with Derrida has been secondary text: what I have read about him. I have read through A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (but didn’t get much from it. I do have in my library his Specter of Marx. But that has thus far been one of those books I keep hoping to get to if I can ever get past that other damn Frenchman: Deleuze. And I mean it: damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway!!!

Okay! Let the jam begin:

“I think your avant-garde proposal is very interesting but at the same time limited. I suggest you read Ranciere’s “The paradoxes of political art” in Dissensus. There he opposes Lyotard’s and suggests that avant-garde too is problematic since it demands an absolute anesthetization of life which is impossible since art and life are always separate. Life cannot be art and art cannot be life without creating a problematic situation (for example hype and artsy commodities that just perpetuate the world configuration). This is basically (and superficially) his argument but this does not mean that avant-garde is completely useless. As I mentioned earlier the project is still an aesthetic project in the sense of thinking the (re)organization of the world. That is, of thinking the knowledge the world IS in the sense of how we sense it, i.e, how we are present in the world and always “touching it”.

On this note I would to problematize your usage of the world “antidote”. I don’t think we should be looking for an antidote, i.e., a pharmakon that is absolutely good. I don’t think this is the question Lyotard was proposing but more importantly this is not the question of politics. When you demand the antidote you demand the absolute, you demands the infinite as you mentioned towards the end of your post. I agree with you we are seeing a conservative turn in world as a result impossibility to cope with the question of politics in the way it is being proposed today but in my opinion this fascist turn is precisely the infinite answer to the question that demands the infinite. In that sense everything is working out perfectly as I mentioned in my previous post. Politics in thought in absolute terms of either infinite justice or infinite love or infinite anything else and therefore always terrorist even if in a limited sense. I just believe the moment you propose the infinite/absolute answer you are just replacing one master by another (as Lacan warns the students in the “Analyticon”).

And I also agree that Derrida, Deleuze and Rorty (and many others) think the infinite but I still think it is possible to extract something different from their theories.To be more precise a “finite thinking” (as in Nancy’s book). A thinking of our limitedness and togetherness that is not whole. This is exactly your final question. I don’t like to talk in concepts of mind, I prefer the notions of Being or presence/existence but spirit is the same I think: our reality is always limited/finite in a sense, so the meaning/truth of the world is always already despite barely being it. I think once we shift the question towards this finitude, we might be able to cope with the political issue of being-together since politics is nothing more that being this “togertheness” (am I clear or have I transited into ontological gibberish?)”

Okay, focusing on:

“I think your avant-garde proposal is very interesting but at the same time limited. I suggest you read Ranciere’s “The paradoxes of political art” in Dissensus. There he opposes Lyotard’s and suggests that avant-garde too is problematic since it demands an absolute anesthetization of life which is impossible since art and life are always separate. Life cannot be art and art cannot be life without creating a problematic situation (for example hype and artsy commodities that just perpetuate the world configuration). This is basically (and superficially) his argument but this does not mean that avant-garde is completely useless. As I mentioned earlier the project is still an aesthetic project in the sense of thinking the (re)organization of the world. That is, of thinking the knowledge the world IS in the sense of how we sense it, i.e, how we are present in the world and always “touching it”.

On this note I would to problematize your usage of the world “antidote”. I don’t think we should be looking for an antidote, i.e., a pharmakon that is absolutely good.”

:I don’t think Layotard’s point was to exchange one absolute for another. He did, after all, point to postmodernism being about the undermining of all grand narratives. My blue-collarized (perhaps even vulgarized (take on it is that it primarily about pre-empting fixed semiotic systems of meaning. Hence his argument for the avant garde as an antidote. And I respectfully question your point:

“On this note I would to problematize your usage of the world “antidote”. I don’t think we should be looking for an antidote, i.e., a pharmakon that is absolutely good. I don’t think this is the question Lyotard was proposing but more importantly this is not the question of politics. When you demand the antidote you demand the absolute, you demands the infinite as you mentioned towards the end of your post.”

Now that we have wandered into the analytic study of meanings: I would argue that the word “antidote” does not describe an absolute solution, but rather a fix for a given situation or problem. I, personally, see traces of that same temporary fix in the thought of Derrida. I see Frost’s point concerning poetry: that it is a temporary stay against confusion.

As I see it, Derrida is an expression of a movement that started in Saussure’s recognition that the words we use to refer to things are arbitrarily chosen (via a human agreement (and moved on to recognize that since language can never truly reflect reality, there is no reason we shouldn’t just Play with it: Performance.

P.S., brother: the main goal is for us to get through this without ending up at each other’s throat. There can be no discourse so volatile as that which works in the second person perspective of speaking in terms of “you” which implies an “I”. As I have every reason to believe based on what I have seen of you: the point isn’t to win. It is to push our individual processes further than they have ever gone before.