From: "Soren Pedersen" <speder-AT-post2.tele.dk>
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 23:19:54 +0000
Subject: Re: The existence of existence



> It strikes me that you need auctorites to prove your point. Is
> postmodernism a new theology? If existence did exist by itself, it
> would have to be selfevident wouldn't it? Moreover if existence would
> exist by itself it would be utter useless and unknowable, because it
> wouldn't depend on anything else and so be excluded from the rizhome
> of causality we call world. If it would exist depending on something
> else, then that something else would have to exist for itself or not.
> Existence can only be thought as relative. There isn't anything that
> be thought as not relative, reality included.

Erik, I read your post through once more and came to the conclusion 
that you conceptualize the existential world (the world apart from 
human beings, i.e. what Bhaskar calls the intransitive realm) similar 
to the way Saussure conceptualizes the linguistic realm. All 
existential objects should be defined by "their non-coincidence with 
the rest". This would make the concept of thing-in-itself senseless, 
because everything would be relational. Perhaps this is the 
Nietzschean world as will-to-power:

The properties of a thing are effects on other "things": if one 
removes other "things," then a thing has no properties, i.e., there 
is no thing without other things, i.e., there is no 
"thing-in-itself." (Will to Power, 557)

Of course, Nietzsche forgot the singular existence of non-existence 
and therefore of the Baudrillardian simulcrum, cf. my last post (ha 
ha ha).

Best, Soren
Soren Pedersen
Institute of Political Science
University of Copenhagen
Denmark

e-mail: speder-AT-post2.tele.dk
telephone: +45 32 68 01 49

"Reality is a bitch"