Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 15:53:21 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: God help us, back to TMB


On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Paul Bryant wrote:

> And in this associative linkage that TMB practices so artlessly,

I think it's quite the contrary.


 isn't
> there something of a Hegelian beautiful soul to be discerned, a sort
> of venom that parades itself as the mask of the "ethical"?  The logic
> of identification is so easy to discern here.  "You are not it,
> because I am it!" is the murmur that can be seen hiding beneath the
> wave of imposing names and terms, moving about in a disjointed pattern
> of the most vapid free association imaginable.  

I don't think so.


> Thus, the voice of the
> other, of the interlocutor, is used as a mirror whereby the
> master/slave dialectic can repeat itself in the form "I am good
> because you are bad!"  But in the end, what ought to be Difference--
> and that is indeed an ethical "ought" --falls apart into mere
> diversity by virtue of a refusal to stand anywhere and attend to what
> is being said. 

This is downright funny. I think if you attended to what was being said,
you'd see that I am not being merely "freelly associative" at all, and
that further, much further, there can be little doubt, given the
unpopluarity of my stand, that not only do I take a stand, I do so
strongly, consistetely, with rigor and judiciousness, with a certain and
definite courage. Sorry to toot my own horn, but there's so much spit in
yours right now I have to.


> A banal self-rightousness indeed...  For it attempts
> to point at the universe and ultimately points at nothing.

Nope, what I'm doing is better than that. I know what you mean, though.
But I think you'd like simply to use sheer force to get me to agree. But
isn't that really the violence of philosphy? That it generally doesn't
cooperate with sheer force?

TMB