Date: 	Sat, 23 Aug 1997 13:04:42 -0400
From: "kenneth.mackendrick" <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: Re: HAB: Communicative and Strategic Rationality



> [Ken M. wrote:]
> pss.  erik - BEING-IN-THE-WORLD is far too one-dimensional to 
> describe my position but your thoughts on empiricism are well 
> received.

> The work of art, given by the OTHER through emphatic 
communication, discloses
> a WORLD.  
> 
> Can you sense it?
> 
> The Temple of the Other--in which you can "participate" via the 
Other's consent.

This IS theology.  The OTHER is a metaphysical conceptual 
graveyard where ideas go to die.  It is a black hole that sucks 
difference in and levels everything into one all encompassing 
category - OTHERNESS.  To be honest with you - I've never 
encounter "the OTHER."  I meet people and i touch things.  My gaze 
lingers of material things - objects - and occassionally i encounter 
those difficult to understanding human beings - who are NOT others - 
but neighbours, friends, relatives, flaneurs, strangers, and pariah's.  
Raising the idea of the Other to a consensual relationship makes 
nonsense of the real dimensions of power and domination that afflict 
our relations.  The OTHER cannot consent - because the OTHER in 
this understanding is different - and would bear the marks of an 
asymetry, through mystery and the unknown, that would make the 
idea of consent incoherent.  Right now i'm not speaking to an OTHER 
- i'm speaking to YOU - of which i have a concrete sense - because 
you are human - because you have responded to me - and because 
even if you don't respond i still have an empirical sense that you are 
out there - with needs, wants, desires, relationships, loves, reasons, 
and thoughts.  Email distorts all of this a bit because it reduces 
relationships to type-bytes - but nonetheless i'm not sending these 
messages out in a bottle addressed to no one.  its not that i'm 
anticipating a specific audience - rather i'm trying to mediate my 
understanding of something to those on the list who i want to get to 
know - to argue with - and encounter.
ken "not quite communicative but not quite strategic either" 
mackendrick
centre for the study of religion
university of toronto


> Erik (and I don't even like Heidegger) Davis
> EDavisMail-AT-aol.com






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