From: haraldba-AT-online.no
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 11:43:10 +0200
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism.



Merely a semi-articulated counterpoint:

Sort of interesting discussion, or bewildering -- for me at least.
Then I never quite could understand how you can divorce social
revolutionary thought from humanism and  the capacity of
transcendence. 

I do not understand why Law should be married to the thought of 
"transcedence," when it may as well and more reasonably from
my point of view, imply: beyond Law.  But then I rightly or wrongly
find that all this talk about "immanence" fits a bit too well into
the increasing dominance of commodity production here, there
and (almost) everywhere.

Nor do I understand this reduction of humanism to a human
rights "discourse,"  in particular given that a humanist critique
of Law and bourgeois human rights ideology is very, very
very old,  And very anti-humanist of the past decades have
ever gone as far. Even if I also believe that the idea of "human
[universal] rights" in all the abstraction and unreality  (and
wedded with very real oppression and exploitation)  a rights discourse
implies, might once upon a time be considered historically
progressive ( a term I seldom use)  in a very real sense. It is
very, very hard to see how a movement towards communism/
anarchism  could ever have been  born without it. On the other
hand, Hardt  and (Negri?), judging from the formers reply to
Dough, might as well be said to evolving towards a bourgeois
humanism Enlightment style. Or so it might appear to me.
And there are far worse places to go. 
I am neither convinced that behind the "constiuent power" of
Negri we do not precisely find Law (as in Spinoza, for that). 
Although I could be wrong.

Personally I find anti-humanism a blind alley and a potential
dangerous path to follow, although I do understand that many
on this list sees it as opening up radical avenues. As
best, I find it an overkill. To me anti-humanism is no more
reasonable than saying farewell to communist thought due
to Leninism, even if I might understand why such a reaction
takes place. But I really do not understand how others manage
to divorce libertarian communist thought from humanism
and the capacity and potential of transcendence.

Harald









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