From: "bob scheetz" <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com>
Subject: Re: capitalisms
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 23:43:38 -0400


>but comrade bob, do you mean that slavery ought to be
>preserved then, for the sake of brute humanity ?

jan,
yes, that's the proposition--
as a form of being, chattel is less degraded than commodity
(nietzsche didn't know the half of it)

>the whip, the tool of cruelty, what homage could it offer ?

a testimony to resistance, no? 
the ground for hope. 

>and where, whether in the torturer, in torture or
>in the one who is tortured, is honor found ?

what of our litany of saints --
socrates to oscar romero ?
...isn't martyrdom, an event of stunning clarity,
a place where meaning is made?
a grounding of meaning? 
a sticking place?
redemption?

>there exists no such thing as nihilism,
>nihilism is an illusory desire based on ignorance.

i don't understand what you can mean by this?
...especially given your affinity for celan?
isn't capitalism thee ultimate nihil-ating gestell?
...as, with its advance "all that is solid melts into air"?
it obviates entirely the moral universe.
once formidable traditional structures,
as the hippocratic oath
with its condemnation of abortion and euthenasia,
are now held ridiculous.
even so basic a propostion 
as e.g.,  a father's possession of his child,
weighed against disnyland, mcdonald's, etc., 
is held for nought almost unanymously in the highest circles.
...and then there's your chauncey gardener/ronald reagan, no?
...and on and on and on
...surely, as never before,  the old tale-told-by-an-idiot, no? 

anyway, obviously we're in accord on the quality
of our moral universe, so how am i missing your point?

thanks,
bob




-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl>
To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
<heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 5:00 PM
Subject: Re: capitalisms


>On Tue, 4 Apr 2000 00:35:23 -0400 <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com> wrote:
>
>>i consider this an unconscionable slander on slavery?
>>which yet preserved a shred of brute humanity;
>
>but comrade bob, do you mean that slavery ought to be
>preserved then, for the sake of brute humanity ?
>
>>the sting of the overseer's whip did homage to it --
>>what remained to be broken in a man.
>
>the whip, the tool of cruelty, what homage could it offer ?
>
>the whip brought forth nothing other than madness, e.g.
>--- Nietzsche at Turin on the Piazza Carlo Alberto
>
>and where, whether in the torturer, in torture or
>in the one who is tortured, is honor found ?
>
>>proletarianization, the transforming into so much "labor commodity,"
>>is,  thus far in history, the ne plus ultra, the extremest pitch of
western
>>nihilism.
>>the abjection of being here is a perfection.
>
>there exists no such thing as nihilism,
>nihilism is an illusory desire based on ignorance.
>
>yours,
>jan
>
>      "if there is no existent thing,
>       of what will there be nonexistence ?" [Nagarjuna]
>
>
>
>
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