Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 08:49:17 +0200 (IST)
From: Gabriel Ash <ggabriel-AT-zoot.tau.ac.il>
Subject:  Power


Hello,

Is power essentially 'bad'? 
I have Derrida in mind when reffering to that 
question, which compells me to say ( I wish it wouldn't) that the answer 
is unqulified *YES*.
	What is the Good if not peace, perfection, immutability, life 
eternal, knowledge, autonomy (self-sufficiency), self-identity (in truth, mon
hypocrite lecteur, I say it earnestly)? 
and what is power if not disturbance, mutability, breach of peace if not 
war, the death of the soul, the seducible nature of imperfectness, the 
obstruction to sight, hetronomy, tearing apart?
	Which makes of power not only bad, but indeed, The BAD, the enlightened 
transformation of that old master of self-transformation and beguile, the 
devil, that angel who introduced discordane amidst heveanly harmony by 
striking a note against (but there shouldn't have been an  *against* in 
heaven) contemplating perfection.

But, then what about life and death? is life 'good' or 'bad'? The problem is 
precisely that to take the precedent remarks seriously: life is good, and 
'good' is death. so there must be something 'good' in all this 'bad' 
which saves (meaning soizein?) life from being as 'good' as 'dead'.
  
In brevi, We cannot escape the badness of power so easily, at least, not 
without escaping a whole metaphisical tradition, which I must stress, one 
shouldn't leave so hastily (to live, yes, but not hastily), as it is not 
altogether so bad. Yet, if I am 'called', if not to say 'seduced' by 
something so indeed 'essentially' bad as *power*, it is also in order to 
resist the immutable blith of death.

	It is a point to ask, when, historically, the idea of life so 
changed, that it opened up an abyss in the middle of the 'Good'.

 ---------------------------

Gabriel Ash
Tel-Aviv
ggabriel-AT-zoot.tau.ac.il

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