Subject: Re: Inner experience vs. Descartes
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 08:05:27 -0500


On Wed, 17 May 2000 20:25:55 +0200, EINAR WAHLSTR¯M at  mosquito-AT-c2i.net
posted the following:

>I wonder if anybody has any thoughts about the "inner" experience to
>Bataille and the "inner" mind to Descartes: thinking here about the strange
>dilemma between transgressing the limits set by "rationality", but still
>maintaining the "rationality" to be able to experience the transgression.

Let's not overlook the fact that Bataille has his own "thoughts about the
'inner' experience . . . and the "inner" mind to Descartes" in Part IV of
_ L'experience interieur_ (though you may not find this pertinent to the
"strange dilemma" that interests you).


On Wed, 17 May 2000 19:06:11 -0500, djschenk at 
djschenk-AT-blue.weeg.uiowa.edu posted the following:

>I joined this list just a few days ago for this very purpose-- I very much 
>want to know why postmodernists are postmodernists and why they reject the 
>obvious criticisms of their views.  I have similar interests in coming to 
>understand the "poststructuralists"/deconstructionists.  Lately I've been 
>going through _Simulation and Simulacra_ and _The Postmodern Condition_,
plus 
>I'm re-reading _Of Grammatology_ (when I find time).<<1>>  Thus far I
>have not 
>found any plausible arguments for these philosophers' central claims. 
>Derrida 
>came just short of providing phenomenological arguments for his antipathy 
>toward Western metaphysics in a few of his earliest papers found in _Writing 
>and Difference_ and _Margins of Philosophy_, but even there he fell short as 
>far as I can tell.

The type of response which you request would require more specific
information, no? When you report that you "have not found any plausible
arguments for these philosophers' central claims," what is your
understanding of these claims? For example, what would identify as the
"central claim" of Lyotard's _La condition postmoderne_, or Derrida's "La
structure, le signe et le jeu"? Or, since this is the Bataille list, the
"central claim" of any of Bataille's work, perhaps _ L'experience
interieur_? Once we've established the "central claim" of one of these
texts, we can proceed to discuss the adequacy of arguments and the
adequacy of argumentation.


Jim
--
J. Comas
Department of English
University of Missouri-Columbia
<http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/>
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