File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_1997/habermas.9708, message 46


From: Dag Helge Moldenhagen <Dag.H.Moldenhagen-AT-rlvphs.no>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 11:05:40 +0000
Subject: Re: HAB: Adorno/hab:Being in my body.


Thanks for replying ,Ken. your answer was of great interest.
 
> > 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. 
 
 
> The idea of Otherness that i was refering to regards its useage 
> in postmodern theology - where Otherness is truly 
> OTHERNESS - totally undefinable and totally unknown - 
> unknowable.  For some theologians this idea is used to make 
> theology a legitimate field of study.  "God" is unknowable and 
> hence, being the creator, creation is unknowable...

Could you pleace explicate which theologians you are thinking  of. 
Mark Taylor ? Or maybe Barth?
Paul H. Santmire has an other idea. He defines nature as "sacred 
otherness" and defines our ethical task as to "comtemplate nature" 
responding to its needs.  
Yet, I aklnowledge that his idea is contradictory.  How can we 
respond to nature's otherness if  it is genuine otherness.
The answer could be that nature (or God in nature) in someway 
communicates itself us and that there is a continuity between  God, 
the creation and the human-being.  The human- being in his tension 
towards the ground of hso own  being is capable of identyfiing the 
non-identic by objectifiing it.


> In other words - the idea of the OTHER, when subjected to a 
> marxian analysis, plays itself out as 1. replacing one ideology 
> with another and 2. justifying the status quo.
'
Could you pleace refer to other authors which means this?

I think this idea is very interesting and I would like to consider if 
this idea is right.  
Anyhow, Marxism (Karl Marx)  is often accused of being antroposentric and 
even antropo-teistic. (Man = superman).  Nature is to be subjugated 
so that the human being can create nature according to his own 
wishes. Eric Voegelin traces this tendency back to late gnosticism.
That is the reason why it is impossible for marixist to acknowlege 
that nature has a hsitory of its own- aprat from what the human being 
is doing unto it. It is imposible for marxism to acknowledge nature as a genuine other- 
something non-identical, because then we have to ask if there is 
something beyobnd "the human sphere" that is genuinely other and even 
can include a belief in a God immanent in creation. 

> This is my beef with this particular manifestation of 
> OTHERNESS - which, as I'm fairly certain you would agree, is 
> very un-Adornoesque.  Adorno thought that elements of 
> non-identity could be illuminated - through reason, art, 
> enlightenment, critique etc.  The concept of non-identity in this 
> sense is very different from OTHERNESS (BIG CASE).
> 
> > 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"?
> 
> i would hazard a guess and say yes.  but i'm wonder here 
> what the term moral means.  embodiment is a good start - as it 
> embeddedness - but i'm concerned here that the term moral 
> might just be a block in the jail house - rather, or more to the 
> point, i am trying to illuminate how morality or moral norms 
> become or are used as blocks for jail houses.
> ken

If I understand you right, you mean that "moral"  can be seen as the 
same as "decriptive moral"- the moral we can observe that human 
beings actually perform.  When moral is used in this way I will agree 
with you. But my opinion is another. My point is that the human body 
can also be seen as resisting peoples moral. Moral is always rapidly 
changing  (faster than we usually will acknowledge) . The human body 
can be a bearer of moral in the sense that it possess a moral which 
is non-intencial with the common or public morality of a life-world . 
The human -body has ist own rhytms and "tacit knowledge."
  
 
> 
> 
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