Pragmatic Studies:

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.

Author’s note: my quote was a reference to both Deleuze and Rorty –that is just so you know why I am posting this here.

“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.” –me: forum.philosophynow.org/posting. … 53#preview

“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 philosopher such as Ranciere and Nancy formulate this question).” –Yoni: ibid

Okay. But you’re going to have to explain how you are going achieve this end outside of the evolutionary process I am describing. I return to my point concerning language:

“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 only other alternative to me is divine inspiration. It just seems that if there is any hope of achieving your goal, we will have to take our cue from the computer programmers who work mainly by working off each other. Here I have to take the Deleuzian approach of repeating what we know until the momentum and inertia push us beyond it through difference. Even Derrida cannot claim to have happened in a vacuum. As radical as his moves in the language game of culture may seem, he is still a product of the trajectory of that perhaps evolutionary process.

“But then it is all about seeing what the mind can do, isn’t it? The way I see it, Yoni, we believe in things like afterlives, higher powers, and higher principles; but our point A to point B is a given. And what better thing can we do with that than see what the mind can do and do some good in the process?”

“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?)”

First of all, if anything seems unclear to me, it wouldn’t be because you were talking gibberish. The only reason I see for that is your training having given you a level of comfort with the terminology that is well above my pay grade.

That said, I have to respectfully challenge you again as to how you get to concepts of Being without seeing what your mind can do. I sense a spiritual element in your point. So I have to ask mainly so I don’t do anything to offend you: are you Jewish?

That asked, I have to take an off bounce/ trajectory on your point about Being as concerns my own experience with it (perhaps out of a desire to show off –that is mainly in the spirit of the experiment of seeing what your response will be. Back in my old Sartre/Existentialism days, I use to talk a lot about Being and Nothingness -not Sartre’s book, but the actual concepts. I actually formed a lot of my intellectual constructs around it. The problem I came up against was that while Being (via beings (was incontestable, the concept of nothingness or non-being was always contentious since we can never look at it directly. I eventually came to the tactic of talking in terms of presence/absence since absence seemed like a much more credible term. But, as far as I’m concerned, the two are not interchangeable. The Being/Nothingness dyad is an ontological issue. The presence/absence dyad, on the other hand, is a phenomenological one.

So I guess the only important question here is: any comments?

I totally agree with the above, glad You did get around to it. The problem with Sartre has always been one of sufficient ground, of a universally applicability. Areas of applicability will not really solve the dilemma, which the positivists tried to do, and in my view,Mohave succumbed to the fate that becomes of apologists. Apology for what?

The starting point by those looking for a logical way out, seems futile, they are surmounted by the predicament of the objective/subjective bar to universal understanding of the ‘thing-ness’ of the Nothing Sartre talks about. That argument gives an opening to the positivist interpretation of language
based on the resembling features of it, whereby thingness is inherent even in a no-thingness, the ultimate simple yet most complex question reduced to the formal logical level of either of two scenarios.
Either a nothingness is part of a being which is encapsulated by it (Being), Or, it is not, thereby nihiliting it. Sartre tried to lay a credible logical foundation, trying to identify a system whereby the identifiers can be held in suspense and re-applied.
This having failed, the differance was introduced, to salvage identification by a process of exclusion by dis identification a a logical process. Excess value, as the base of the Captial of meaning, remains, and thus is the modus operand of territorialization/de territorialization. In this view, the problem of being and nothingness resolves by the idea that there are no absolutes, hence there is no ultimate idea as a logical necessity. As per evolutionary principle. The idea HAS BEEN reduced, and what was left? The differential function of a quantifiable process.
This is where the mathematization of psychology has failed, according to critics of both, philosophical and psychological end games. Freud’s economy of the ID, Levin’s quantumization of the patent periphery of the personality failed in this level, critics point out.

However is this really so? I think critics will always be just that. Their reduced position to VO, which can not differentiate between either positions, are demonstrateable only on common sense principles, such as those which were laid down by the positivists.

What is a hundred years in the history of human endeavor? A lot, as can be deminstrated by the exuberance of scientific attainment, which unfortunately was inversely proportional to the depth to which nihilization of basic , by now, non identifiable connection.

So You are warranted in using presence/absence in your own mind, here to fore, You may have been accused of total misuse of concepts. Nothingness and Being have become disengaged to the point, where their meaninglessness can not be thought in terms other then so called common sense ones, totally phenomenologically de-territorialized.

The Freud idea resurfaces here again, and the phenomenologically reduced ideas, have primarily an effect of attempts to salvage or restructure confidence in a badly shaken system.

The surplus value is the result of this salvage, of trans valuing, in order to effect the semblance of shifting the meaning, whereby the choice between either/or becomes anathema.

The last century was a battle ground primarily between values of meaning against the defensive moves of an apology, for losses which such battles sustained. The reduction was sustained at the logical
level by those who her to the idea that no-thingness was a differance, a product of disenfranchisement, of de-territorialization. Critics did not attack this, they simply stated that there can not be held such a difference, in fact to say that nothing was simply the same as no-thing. The differance in being, is, that they are different, predicated and fought on different fields. As such, no universalized ion is possible without qualification, mathematization of quantificatiable , logical language. seems so simple, but it is by virtue of those semantic subtleties, that a hundred million plus lives were lost on the grand chess board of Europe and the world in the last century, the last millennium.

The most simple, is the most complex, and to affirm an identifiable field of reference, is simply akin to a denial of accepting basic logical relationships, in favor of trumpeting popular yet so misleading and apologetical conundrums, to attain an effect of utility.

Down the line, this may result in many apologists in singing a new song, a new revision, of ‘well, I told you so.’ Unfortunately, this is the way the world works, as it always worked. Regret always comes
last.

The uncertainty is so utterly convincing, that like in the art of pointillism , we may loose the picture at the point of getting lost in it , as we move beyond the aesthetic limit of distance.

But there is something entirely deep here, which may trump this argument, and that is, beyond the scope of this, and harbors on the idea of magic and the mystical, and begs credence itself in faith in ultimate principles. When Sztalin was god, he was known to have said,that it is easy to kill millions, but entirely difficult to kill one man. Perhaps, the prevailing uncertainty has changed the equation, totally so, the moment Adam accepted the apple. And maybe redemption is hiding in this betrayal after all, as Christ was hiding in the wise serpent, as Faust was able to trick Him.

Orb, I always enjoy your input in the same way (and I do not mean this as an insult: Guattarri does something similar in his Anti-Oedipus papers (that I’ve always thought the rants of schizophrenics were cool. There is always a kind of obscure poetic about them. And while I attempt to do a similar thing, my weird and d.constructive use of punctuation seems almost superficial compared to how similar your style is to actual schizophrenic discourse. At the same time, I trust (and have seen evidence (that you’re not just randomly stringing words together. You mean to mean something. And I always go into it in the hope of getting a glimpse of that meaning so I’ll have something to respond to. So if I don’t respond as much as I would like to, or you would like me to, just know that I’m am reading it and am always looking for that opportunity.

I do want to respond to this, Artful. But I have another rhizome I have to address today. Sorry I missed it. Will get to it tomorrow.

[quote=“d63”]
Orb, I always enjoy your input in the same way (and I do not mean this as an insult: Guattarri does something similar in his Anti-Oedipus papers (that I’ve always thought the rants of schizophrenics were cool. There is always a kind of
obscure poetic about them. And while I attempt to do a similar thing, my weird and d.constructive use of punctuation seems almost superficial compared to
how similar your style is to actual schizophrenic
discourse. At the same time, I trust (and have seen evidence (that you’re not just randomly stringing words together. You mean to mean something. And I
always go into it in the hope of getting a glimpse of
that meaning so I’ll have something to respond to. So if I don’t respond as much as I would like to, or you would like me to, just know that I’m am reading it
and am always looking for that opportunity.[/


Thats exactly right! We are all victims to the sort of divided soul, and as to the literacy of philosophical movements, what better way, then to fill it up with a substantial figurative representation. if this was true,
I would be especially privileged to gain insight. Alas, it is not. I am not mimicking the French stream of consciousness, and neither am trying to play up the psychological angle, kniwing full well Attari’s qualification as a psychiatrist. perhaps that pertains to his qualifications and depth perception as to the relevance of psychology to the study of philosophy.

That I did not make quiete the sense to You as I wished to have, is perhaps due to my lacks of tuning in to Your particular mind set, and heretofore, will,me when occasion should arise, communicate to You via standard philosophical jargon.

later

“That I did not make quiete the sense to You as I wished to have, is perhaps due to my lacks of tuning in to Your particular mind set, and heretofore, will,me when occasion should arise, communicate to You via standard philosophical jargon.”

The following, Orb, is from a discourse I was engaged in with someone who wrote an article for Philosophy Now. I think it is relevant here:

“Again I hope it is clear and if not I am sorry. I was trying to be as direct and to the point as possible.”

Unfortunately, my friend, you may be engaging in a noble but, ultimately, futile project. I’m thinking here of Lacan’s point that language is like an attorney that represents us to the attorney (the language (of the other. Even though, as I would still argue, language is an agreement, it is not an homogeneous one. It is rather heterogeneous in the way a language can arrive at slight variations of agreements in the various circumstances it can find itself being practiced in (ex. Ebonics. And this can go down to the individual themselves in their own individual context. This is how two individuals can actually be in agreement yet can still find themselves in a debate –sometimes to the point of hostility.

As Voltaire put it: if you want to talk to me, you’ll have to define your terms.

And this aspect of it seems to get amplified when it comes to philosophy since every philosophical process involves an individual accumulation of terms and meanings and associations (via di̕fferrance (that aren’t always translatable to another process. For instance, I have read through your article about 5 times now, and there are still parts of it that seem impenetrable to me. And I do not blame this on you as much as I attribute it to my symbolic filter (as Hofstadter put it (as well as the terms (and their associative networks –once again: di̕fferrance (we have picked up along the way. And you are in good company. I find myself, for instance, experiencing the same thing with Joe Hughes’ reader guide to Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. And that is secondary text.

And all this makes sense in the context of my recent excursion into Deleuze’s Logic of Sense in that communication is not so much a matter of the direct exchange of information as the rather oblique manner of working from the sense of what the other is communicating: the performance. This is why I should also preemptively apologize if I’m not directly addressing your points or if I seem to be going off on my own trajectory. If I seem to be doing so, it is only because your suspicion is likely true. But that would only be because I am often working from a sense of what you are saying. It’s the only process by which (through repetition and difference –that of playing what I’m doing and saying against what you are doing and saying (I can hope to get a clearer understanding of what you are doing.

On the uptake, though, your article has participated in a revision in my approach to my process. Up until now, I had thought the best approach to a difficult philosophy (once again: damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway! (was to familiarize myself with the secondary text until I had enough information to delve into the actual text: to use it as a ladder until I was ready to climb into the thought of the actual philosopher. But my five readings of Joe Hughes’ book as well as the very short introduction to Derrida I’m reading now is starting to suggest how ineffective that approach is. Now I’m starting to see the secondary text as secondary to the “performance” of the actual text. I’m starting to see secondary text as supplemental to just diving into the original text and working from the sense I get from it.

I agree with You in that basic tenets are as important in any philosophy, as do confirming voices which may or may not correspondingly validate, whether a cynical performance, or, a truly driven attempt at understanding.

That, Sartre was the take off point is obvious and the point of a psychological backdrop is unavoidable. Scherzo analysis was long in coming, and there is some neat things about it, which Deleuze has said about it, he did not share the enthusiasm given to anti Oedipus,in fact he felt strange among disturbed people. It became dated, to the point in time when
Anti psychiatry was starting to feel obsolete, as a consequence of the fading of the 60’s. Attari did much better with a Thousand Platos, in seeking a
Non philosophical way to understand communication.
the thing is, Voltaire is dated, the structure of language not yet prone to the kind of entropy post modernity has excercised upon meaning. So kind in kind, with only one absolute on my part, and that is an absence of even a hint of hostility or suspicion.

later

The point I would like to mention, is, that the very basic ideas are the ones which are pretty determinative. Attari went around negating the concept of reductionism, vis, reducing complex ideas into their elementary forms, instead, his starting point was the problem, the situation, and worked himself up into more and more complex derivatives.
In fact he was a structuralist. In this scheme of things, derivations lost their footing, and developed into meanings within themselves. The analysis was anti Freudian Oedipal, and meaning could only be gathered through the schizoanalysis, of finding meaning within these trunkated ideas.

In the spirit of Facebook, Orb: 2 likes.

“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?” –The Artful Pauper….

“I don’t want to derail your thread, but I will just add one thing since it is relevant to what has gone before.”

I think that too often we encounter people on these boards who take what they’re doing way too seriously –or may be posing as people who do when all they’re really looking for is an opportunity to heckle: this constant bitching about “serious philosophy” and staying on topic. This comes from a failure to see message boards for their real value: that as a workshop or jam in which we engage in a kind of play in order to find material for our more serious philosophical pursuits. I, personally, see any string I start as a catalyst to a rhizomatic series of associations (experimentation (that must go where it will to produce. And if anyone is responsible for bringing it back to topic, it is the person that started the string.

“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.”

This works with my sense of it. Clearly Being and Time is not the best place to start. Along with your suggestion, I have Walter Kaufman’s Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre which I need to get back to if I can ever get out of the mire I find myself in with these other GODDAMN Frenchmen. I mean it: Damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway!!!

But one way or the other, I do hope to get back to Heidegger –if through nothing else, at least secondary text. I have found things in him I can use, not just what I will describe below, but his concept of Anguish which, as Mary Warnock describes it, is about being tapped into the underlying nothingness of things. Or as I got from a documentary on him (topdocumentaryfilms.com/heidegge … g-the-unth…/ : the ungroundedness of things. This closely parallels my concept of the nihilistic perspective –which I would need another rhizome to articulate on.

“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?”

As Keats said: poetry is the pick-axe by which we penetrate the frozen sea of knowledge. Art is a direct confrontation with being that passes into the evanescence of abstraction into nothingness. Philosophy, on the other hand, works in abstraction and struggles away from the evanescence and the pull of nothingness back to that confrontation with Being and existence.

And Heidegger’s anti-technological stance is a little hard to deny given that we face our own self destruction through our arrogance and man-made climate change. And while our current approach (modern technology (hasn’t so much given us the “good life”, it has given us the comfortable life very similar to junkies with a full stash of heroin or the narrators in Tennyson’s Land of the Lotus Eaters.

Capitalism and technology has turned us into the Land of the Lotus Eaters. Heidegger has relevance, despite his flaws.

Roger and Sydney’s Posts:

“ I’ve seen a lot of arguments that are fallacious because they depend on slippage of meaning. If a person can be induced to accept the meaning of a key word and then induced to miss the fact that the meaning has been changed, then they can be induced to believe that they may have been out-debated. A lot of arguments, such as Ontological Arguments, depend on this.

Given that “most” people probably think wrongly that words are defined to have meaning which is immutable, they are easy prey to this strategy. Therefore it’s legitimate to explore the mutability of the meanings of symbology. I’m not sure that Derrida and the Continentals have a clear enough grasp of the simplicity of this idea and so there’s a lot of empire-building going on, which only really serves to make clarity of language more easily evaded.

When “philosophers” discuss complex ideas in terms of other people’s ideas, whicgh, in turn, are discussed in terms of yet other ideas, none of which may be clearly connected to the subject matter, all we get is obscurantism. These aren’t real philosophers. They are academics whose job it is to show people a range of ideas. To be worthwhile, we have to be very clear.”
*
“When “philosophers” discuss complex ideas in terms of other people’s ideas, whicgh, in turn, are discussed in terms of yet other ideas, none of which may be clearly connected to the subject matter, all we get is obscurantism"

And hermeneutics!

I think that the tradition of engaging in philosophical dialectics has had a profound impact on the history of western thinking.

Its almost like Jazz; you have to somehow start off in a key, and maybe play a melody as an indicator to your audience that this is the musical universe you are in, and from there its your opportunity to make your own unique expression/contribution to alter the expression of the whole.

The ‘other people’s ideas’ is the head.

The ‘none of which may be clearly connected’ is what we would call ‘soloing over the changes.’

The outcome of Jazz is often movement, hopefully in the form of dancing.

The outcome of dialects is profound shifts in public attitude and a sense of progress in history.

Analytics has its place, but its not all there is to thought.”

I have, in my process, developed and held onto a sound bite (that which for the intellectually and creatively curious is what Frost called: a momentary stay against confusion (that pretty much describes my process:

I am drawn to French concepts while being equally drawn to the Anglo-American style of exposition.

And because of this, I find myself sympathetic with both Roger and Sydney –that is with the qualification that while I agree with Roger on a lot of particulars, I am also in disagreement with his general conclusions (him being neo-classicist to some extent (while being more allied with Sydney.

And Sydney, I had decided yesterday to commit today’s limited window to Roger’s rather impressive post. I’m hoping, given time, to get to yours which I’m full in agreement with. I’m even hoping to slip some of yours into this. But enough with the preliminaries:

“I’ve seen a lot of arguments that are fallacious because they depend on slippage of meaning. If a person can be induced to accept the meaning of a key word and then induced to miss the fact that the meaning has been changed, then they can be induced to believe that they may have been out-debated. A lot of arguments, such as Ontological Arguments, depend on this.”

Nothing, Roger, could be more frustrating than trying to have a discourse with someone who is talking in etherspeak and offering up an interpretation of and response to what they’re saying, only to have them smugly reply:

“No, you don’t quite get it.”

I’ve actually been considering a satirical piece for Philosophy Now that describes just such a discourse and the intellectual arrogance involved. This, to me, shines on a point Rorty made in Philosophy and Social Hope concerning Heidegger who started out with his heart in the right place with poessis (etherspeak (then turned it all right back to the platonic hierarchy that modernism and postmodernism was working to undermine with his turn to a kind of esoteric priesthood with their exclusive semiotic system.

This is why I was with Mary Warnock when she, in an interview with Nigel Warburton, expressed regret at Heidegger’s desire to create a new language for philosophy. Still, Heidegger has, via secondary sources (including Warnock, given me things I can use. I’m equally split on Searle. On one hand I’m put off by his smug dismissal of continental approaches. On the other, I can also see the compassion in it in that it feels like an old pro taking taking someone under their wing and saying:

“Listen: you don’t need to go through that kind of alienation and degradation to have knowledge.”

And I do admire the step by step process he takes in his writings. Still, it is all fuel for the fire as Sydney points out:

“Analytics has its place, but it’s not all there is to thought.”

None of us can claim to have the all-purpose answer that will make everything work like a fine tuned machine. And that can only set us up for the risk for something authoritarian and possibly fascist in nature –for example: Heidegger.

As I see it, our situation is too complex to not think it’s going to take a lot of different people using a lot of different methods to fix it. This is why while any talk of a “Real Philosophy” concerns me, I am not going to sit here and try to convert you to the continental approach to philosophy. That would be futile given that you are clearly not wired to be open to it: to treat it (as compared to a direct exchange of information( like a poem or meditation you just keep reading until something happens. Nor do you need to be. I mean we all gotta find our flow.

But to offer you an example that might help you understand why I get into it: I have found, lately, that after reading a lot of and about Deleuze, it is often hard for me to go back to Rorty who works in the Anglo-American style of exposition. The guy is an important influence on my process. And I must always pay tribute to that. Still, it’s just not as challenging. It’s a little like going back to Ginsberg’s poem Howl (an easily accessible one for any reader of poetry just starting out (after experiencing the subtlety of someone like Levine.

An instance of being rhythmically coordinated without any indication of pitch.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ux66A1sjC4[/youtube]

The narrative is like this in the sense that it is recognized by its similarity and proximity to some basic theme; ‘root’ notes, or the ordering master concepts of the process (what you like to call it) around which the narrative is constructed, and is analogous to soloing in a way. Many philosophical exchanges work this way, and the better the virtuosity of the philosopher (like musician), the more he/she can do within and around the rhythm that works and is not unrecognizable (like rambling) as part of an overall theme.

As long as one’s listener has knowledge of the master concept (the key), and as long as one’s notes are not out of time, it will be a recognizable part in an overall melody. Juxtaposing two antithetical concepts in philosophy is like playing an out of key minor diminished over a major in music. It can be done, but takes a skilled technician. Making something like that work would be taking philosophy and music ‘beyond good and evil’.

Now it would be a more consonant experience if both music and philosophy were always in key and without contradiction, but in doing so certain tensions are missing… and it is out of these that major changes can occur in the directions of both philosophical and musical discourse.

“The creation and destruction of harmonic and ‘statistical’ tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and ‘regular’ throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only ‘good guys’ in it, or eating cottage cheese.”- FZ

Just edited: the first video was missing a part. The above video is the complete version of the song.

“Our opponents say [the Kantians and Neo-Platonists –me] that the correspondence theory of truth is so obvious, so self-evident, that it is merely perverse to question it. We say that this theory is barely intelligible, and of no particular importance –that it is not so much a theory as a slogan which we have been mindlessly chanting for centuries. We pragmatists think that we might stop chanting it without any harmful consequences.” –from page XVII of Rorty’s intro to Philosophy and Social Hope.

I would first point out that while I always have some reservations about going back to Rorty (especially after a less accessible philosopher like Deleuze(mainly because it feels less challenging and too familiar a territory, I’m still impressed by Rorty as a writer who can find some really cool ways of expressing what I already have thought.

That said, while I am in full agreement with Rorty here, I can’t help but feel he is overlooking what is implicit in his very point. He points out that:

“Our opponents say that the correspondence theory of truth is so obvious, so self-evident, that it is merely perverse to question it.”

:then focuses on the unintelligibility of it. True enough. But what gets marginalized is how superfluous and redundant the theory is since the very reason it is so “obvious” and “self evident” is because people tend to naturally use correspondence (as well as coherence (in dealing with their environment. In fact, these tools can be said to be evolutionary adaptations and, therefore, wired in. And I think the same can be said for such terms (or slogans (as “objectivity” or “rationality”. This can even be said of the “scientific method” since everyone uses it in the way they go into their own little mental labs, form ideas, and test them against reality.

At the same time, this brings me up against another hesitation I always feel coming back to Rorty. His main attraction to me, from the beginning, was as an antidote to the trolls I encountered on these boards who threw the terms described above around like badges of authority, who acted as if because they said words like “objectivity” or “facts”, they had every right to treat you like some kind of intellectual inferior that they, through “tough love”, were tasked with shaping. I mean I’m naturally thrilled when Rorty later says:

“We must repudiate this vocabulary our opponents use [the trolls –me], and not let them impose it upon us.”

But I can’t help but feel like the cliché of an old Japanese soldier stranded on an Asian island who thinks World War 2 is still going on. The problem is that trolls really haven’t been that much of a problem lately on the boards –not that I’ve seen. I can’t help but feel, when I turn to Rorty, that I’m riding on the momentum of some past battle.

Still, there is a big difference between a battle and the war it is part of. And given the complexity of the war I find myself confronted with, the pragmatic approach of taking things on a case by case basis (as compared to a grand narrative (cannot help but feel like the only way to go.

When I suggested PMN, I was actually thinking of a twist on a popular question about philosophy in general: if you were stuck on a desert what island, what Rorty book would you choose to have with you? Therefore, I chose the more difficult one because it seemed the one most likely to keep yielding results. However, if the question were framed in terms of what book I would recommend to someone who only had time to read one book by Rorty, I would recommend Philosophy and Social Hope which was put together for a general audience.

At the same time (and in terms of the subject of philosophy as writing, and even though the book reveals itself a little too readily, I still see some value in going back to Philosophy and Social Hope (along with those study points I do at the “library” (in that I see the possibility of being able to get to know (to focus more on (Rorty as a writer. I mean he does have an attractive style (that kind of provincial/bourgeoisie generosity similar to that of Jaspers: the kindly professor (I hope to absorb into my own.
*
“Living with this kind of cognitive dissonance is simply part of being alive in this jarring moment in history, when a crisis we have been studiously ignoring is hitting us in the face— and yet we are doubling down on the stuff that is causing the crisis in the first place” -Klein, Naomi (2014-09-16). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (p. 3). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

As I go further into Klein’s book, I am starting to recognize the very real and topical applications of the pragmatic agenda as described by Rorty in Philosophy and Social Hope -among others I’m sure. I’m starting to see the folly involved in the Cartesian subject/object dichotomy in that it is what props up our ability to act as if we are this ethereal substance distinct from the objects that occupy our space and allows us to think that we are perfectly able to overcome any problem those objects might present to us. It’s why, for instance, the religious right can act like we’re perfectly free to keep exploiting our environment since “God will save us”, while the secular right can act as if the new god, the invisible hand of the market (and the technology it has used to addict us (will step in. As Klein writes:

“Or we look but tell ourselves comforting stories about how humans are clever and will come up with a technological miracle that will safely suck the carbon out of the skies or magically turn down the heat of the sun. Which, I was to discover while researching this book, is yet another way of looking away.”

What both come down to is our ability to think of ourselves as somehow distinct from the world of objects that surrounds us: as some ethereal substance that cannot be touched. And it is one thing, as Rorty describes, for such a state to result in a stunted philosophical process. But I have to wonder if Rorty realized that his point, in terms of man-made climate change, may well be a matter of life and death for our species (all species (as a whole.
*
We can also see the import of Rorty’s insistence on philosophy as literature (or writing (as well. As Klein points out, climate change denial is that point at which reason fails. We simply cannot expect to reason with what is basically the equivalent of addicts. On top of that, we have the analytic snobs that are too busy slobbering all over themselves and looking for a place to hide and jack off at the latest technology to actually address the issue of manmade climate change. Now I haven’t read that much of them; but when have Searle, Dennett, or Pinker ever addressed the issue of our possible self destruction? I mean: thank you corporate sponsorship for saving our universities as state funding was depleted because our politicians didn’t want to raise taxes on their country-club buddies.

And doesn’t it put a kind of shine (an aura even (on Rorty’s pragmatic/continental/literary approach in that we have come up against a wall in which reason fails. And when reason fails, all that is left is force. And what force could be more gentle than good writing: that which resonates and seduces?
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I don’t want to pat myself on the back here, but much to my surprise, I find my approach to understanding as a writer (I do not consider myself a philosopher (tends to be confirmed by writers like Klein who are capable of a lot more research than I am. Nothing I have seen in Klein’s book surprises me. And this is because I have always worked to try to understand the other side in terms of how their logic must work -for instance: the logic of Capitalism. And I mainly bring this up not to brag, but to point to the potential effectiveness of Rorty’s pragmatic/continental/literary approach in the face of our present crisis.

First of all, Alexander, watching young guys like you (as well as Steven (work is a thing of beauty: like walking down memory lane: the same sensibility as well as a lot of the same places I have been. But don’t get me wrong here. What I see happening is analogous to when I first started my present job around the same time that 2 other young men did and quickly realized that as I was fumbling around on my own on night shift (being self taught (those guys would be well ahead of me a couple of years down the way (they having the brain pool of the day shift to follow around and find out what they needed to know. And I think the same applies here: me being pretty much self taught while you guys are right in the middle of the system following around the brain pool. Therefore, I have to get in what I can to help you before you are well ahead of me. Hopefully, you’ll have time to read it and it helps you with your paper.

I start with what I am most confident about:

“For that reason I want to try to give a short “story” on what happened (and went wrong) from Descartes to Locke to Kant to nowaday’s philosophy of language (actually just paraphrasing Rorty here, but with a critical look at the “joints” of his arguments, meaning: do I find his perspective plausible or not). I have a limitation of around 6000 words, I think, so I can’t really tell the whole story en detail, but I have the intuition that one can only define Philosophy as a literary genre, as a kind of writing, when one drops the whole epistemology then, philosophy of language now-business.”

Bertrand Russell described philosophy as lying in that no-man’s land between science and religion. And as accurate as this sounds (religion having the faint scent of metaphysics about it (we do live in a more secular age. Therefore, I would humbly (with all due respect (revise this to: philosophy lies in that no-man’s land between science and literature.

And this involves a spectrum throughout which various philosophers choose to work. You say:

“What I hopefully will be able to show, is, that a division between Philosophy and Literature only occurs, when one associates the task of Philosophy with the Kantian project in its (now) analytic philosophy-form (analysis of language instead of epistemology but with the same aim, namely to bring Philosophy “on the secure path of a science.”)”

I say it is all fuel for the fire. I say that, ultimately, there are lots of different people out there using lots of different methods to come to understanding and that we should use whatever tool seems to work in a given instance –even those of the analytics. Your point, however, seems to come from the same conflict I have had with the analytics: the smugness they often display when referring to the more literary approach to philosophy such as Searle’s dismissal of Derrida as a philosopher for those who know nothing about philosophy or Hawkin’s declaration that physics and science would make philosophy obsolete which, BTW, is the result of a rather half-assed understanding of philosophy: that which leans towards the scientific side of the spectrum.

That said, I want to address another point before I run out my daily 500 words:

“Thinking of Robert Frost now actually, but instead of mending the wall, I ask myself: Why is there a wall, a defintion, a distinction in the first place? What’s so bad with tearing down walls, if we agree not to interfere (or come to some other kind of agreement)? “

The thing to understand about Frost is that he was a neo-classicist much like the analytics we are dealing with. As he said in an interview:

“We rise out of disorder into order. I would sooner write free verse as play tennis with the net down”

What was cool about him is that he was a little more open to the romantic sensibility he was reacting against. This was why he would pause before a wood on a snowy evening, consider walking into it, but choose rather duty or act like it would make any big difference what path he chose when faced with the dilemma. In Mending Wall, there are 2 refrains:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall:
nature, beauty, anything that is not the system.

At the same time: Good fences make good neighbors. In other words, there are these human agreements that seem to go against our nature. Still, as opposed to the romantic sensibility, our happiness as human beings may be dependent on those artificial distinctions: the Lacanian Symbolic Order.