Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 09:47:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Gary D <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: HAB: Balancing practicality & self formativity



--- kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca wrote:
K:.... without the thing-representation - there can be no
communication - and, ever more to the point - the *image* serves as
the (narcissistic) guarantee of any possible communication. Far from
a self-centred aesthetic luxury, emancipation qua education is
coherent *only* insofar as the the unconscious accomplishes *more
than* the conscious thought. 

G: You're exhibiting the common confusion between (1) *nonconscious*:
competences, background knowledge--the tacit dimension of cognition;
and (2) *unconscious*: repressed experience, blocked content,
willfully motivated unawareness. 

......

K:.... isn't...the aim of psychoanalysis - and, in fact, ethical
discourse in general - to bring the subject into a place where they
can take (recognize) responsibility for the internalized "foreign
territory"? 

GD: Sure, in part.

K: For the idea of responsibility to make sense, the "foreign
territory" must always already be self-posited. Certainly we
'inherit' a great deal of Otherness, but insofar as it is
constitutive of the self, it is already "ours" - whether we recognize
it or not - which, in terms of moral theory and individuation, must
necessarily be understood as tradition constituted by us as
tradition. 

GD: Sounds good! But a confusion between unconscious (the invisible
alien) and nonconscious (the invisible constitution) confounds what
is  disownedly "mine", ownmost mine, and *my appropriation* of
tradition (which is an individualization of common ground which
others as recognize as *theirs* too).

K: If we don't constitute it "as us" already, then it is possible to
avoid responsibility for it: "that's not me, it is the alien Other -
I'm not responsible for it."

G: Distinguishing unconscious from nonconscious provides for
distinguishing lack of skills to solve one's own problems from lack
of access to the problem one needs solved--distinguishing (1) growth
of competence to take responsibility and sustain responsibility; and
(2) repair of capacity to grow.


K: The thing is, life is a dream. The entire charge of aestheticism
is somewhat misplaced. 

G: Wake up, Ken. :)

K: The more appropriate emphasis should be placed on fantasy, or the
imaginary. 

G: Whatever. This is an old theme in Analytical psychology (the
Jungian vein of psychoanalysis), which James Hillman has expressed as
 a "re-Visioning" of psychology, for several decades. 

K: When translated into Habermas's tripartite model - it appears
aesthetic... 

G: No, I think it appears as *individuation*.

best regards,

gary





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