From: Dag Helge Moldenhagen <Dag.H.Moldenhagen-AT-rlvphs.no>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 13:31:50 +0000
Subject: HAB: Adorno/hab:Being in my body.



>From 

Dag Helge Moldenhagen.

Ken Wrote: "This is theology- The other is a metaphysical graveyard 
where ideas go to die, It is a black hole that sucks difference in 
and levels everything inti into one all encompassing category. 
otherness."

I remember what H said to the memorial of Adorno. The program of 
Adrono is to save the "non-identical" . Adorno wishes to make a 
philosophical ground for consoliation and closeness to the strange 
other .
H refers Adorno and says that this demands a concretization of the 
"non-identical" with the general. 
So his program is the opposite of what you assert. 
Beyond dobut is the human body our closest other. Being in the world 
is the same as being in my body. My body is "me" as the same time as 
it can be see as an "other " or as an "stranger" (for example in 
sickness periods) . 
The body witnesses to me that I have not a static self, but a self 
who is in transition.  The body stands for an inner communication- an 
intense inner level of communicatiojn. Modern medicao sciewnce wil agree 
that the body can both consent with me and resist my way of living 
life.  
We find this view by Adorno some place in "Dialekthik der 
Aufklarung".
My question is then: When "the other" is so close to me-"the other 
side of myself" - why should I not be capable of making decisions which
take otherness into consideration. Actually- our 
embodiment/corproreality- the fact 
that we are rooted in earth - is the ground for opening us up to 
others. Because I have a principle of otherness in myself - my body 
will teach me each very day to be open for the otnerness in other persons.
The body can be seen as a moral instance different from "the ratiohal 
I".
Then- my questin is:  is it possible  to make concrete analysis of how the human 
body can be seen as an  instance - a "bearer of moral"?

>From 

Dag H. 
Norway.

takens as an im 

I thin Habermas is aware of thos aspect.


> > [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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