Date: Fri, 06 Jun 1997 09:31:07 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Lyotard & Derrida


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Lois Shawver wrote:
> 
> Darren quoted a passage from Derrida's "Spectres of Marx".  Hugh wondered
> if it wasn't an overly intellectualized way of talking about people's
> souls.  I see something more here than talk about "souls", at least "souls
> in the quasi-religious or Platonic sense our ears are use to, so I would
> like to show you how I read the excerpt that darren gave us.
> 
> Myself, I read through Derrida like an editor who is working with a badly
> written manuscript, one in which the sentences are too long and the
> general words are too vague.  I break them up, put in more specific
> references to aid the reading and then try to read my "translation".  What
> I come up with is generally interesting (to me, and sometimes to others)
> and I feel, often enough, that I learn from it.  These translations are as
> tight as I can get (in terms of being coherent) without obviously
> betraying the meaning detectable in the sentences.
> 
> I thought some people here might find that process interesting, and
> perhaps add to my transalation.  There are certainly cases in which I take
> vague and ambiguous words and make guesses, but they are not wild guesses.
> I choose them from within the possibilities I see to make the most
> interesting sense I can imagine, according to my own ear and
> sensibilities.  The test of the pudding is always, for me, whether or not
> it opens up the text that follows so that it makes more sense to me than
> before.
> 
> I love doing this, by the way, and, as I say, invite you to join in with
> me. I am certainly not an expert on the textual excerpt I am working with
> here. I haven't even read the "Spectres of Marx".  This is just the way I
> pull it together for myself.  Once I work through a text in this way, I
> like to re-read the original to see if it is more "open", and then, if I
> am really feeling into it, do the whole thing again.
> 
> So here's my suggested first translation.  I hope someone who has read the
> entire text goes through my translation and edits it and makes it
> better.  Again, the point (as I see it) is not just to capture Derrida's
> intent.  It is to develop the most coherent, interesting and meaningful
> restatement of the passage I (or we) can without doing violence to the
> manifest meaning of what he is saying.  Derrida's passages are preceeded
> by the '> >' marks, and mine are indented.
> 
> > > "And one does not have to wait for the objection: To whom, finally,
> > > would an obligation of justice ever entail a commitment, one will
> > > say, and even be it beyond law and beyond the norm, to whom and to
> > > what if not to the life of a living being?
> 
>    If we are obligated by the call of justice to have a commitment, to
>    to whom would this commitment be if it were not to a living being?
> 
> Is there ever justice,
> > > commitment of justice, or responsibility in general which has to
> > > answer for itself (for the living self) before anything other, in the
> > > last resort, than the life of a living being, whether one means by
> > > that natural life or the life of the spirit? Indeed. The objection
> > > seems irrefutable.
> 
>    Is there ever a call to justice that has to answer to its own conscience
>    in any way other than to support the life of a living being?
>    Whether this is the natural life of the living being or the life of that
>    being's spirit?  This seems irrefutably so.
> 
>  But the irrefutable itself supposes that this
> > > justice carries life beyond present life or its actual being-there,
> > > its empirical or ontological actuality; not toward death but toward a
> > > *living-on*, namely, a trace of which life and death would themselves
> > > be but traces and traces of traces, a survival whose possibility in
> > > advance comes to disjoin or dis-adjust the identity to itself of the
> > > living present as well as of any effectivity.
> 
>    But if this call of justice to support life is irrefutable, then this
>    justice carries life beyond the present life, not towards death, but
>    towards a living on after the present.  And, if this is so, then the life
>    we are supporting is but a trace, and a traces of traces.  That trace of
>    the future always disjoins itself from the identity of the present
>    self.  By doing so, it undermines any ability of the present self
>    to be effective in the present -- unless it imagines the trace
>    of its future and is inspired (or filled) by it.
> 
> There is then *some
> > > spirit*. Spirits. And *one must* reckon with them."
> 
>    And this means that the trace of the future haunts the just conscience
>    in the present like a spirit.  In this way, we have spirits in our
>    hearts, and we who have a conscience must reckon with these spirits
>    for our spirits of the future tell us there will be a payment if we
>    do not do so.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> What I am reminded of as I work through this passage is the Anaximander
> fragment, which Heidegger tells us is the oldest fragment of writing in
> Western world (Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking, p.13).  It was written,
> we are told, somewhere from the end of the seventh century BC to the
> middle of the sixth.  The fragment reads (in Nietzsche's translation):
> 
>     Whence things have their origin, there they must also pass
>     away according to necessity; for they must pay penalty and be
>     judged for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time.
> 
> And according to the translation of Wilhelm Dilthey:
> 
>     But where things have their origin, there too their passing away
>     occurs according to necessity; for they pay recompense and penalty
>     to one another for their recklessness, according to firmly
>     established time.
> 
> Can you see a connection between the Anaximander fragment and the fragment
> we have taken from Derrida?  Darren, I do not have Spectres of Marx, but I
> wonder if you would tell us a bit more of the context of this Derrida
> excerpt.  I am not so much asking for an exegesis as a some information as
> to whether Derrida is talking about some work in this passage (such as
> something from Heidegger or Marx).
> 
> ..Lois Shawver%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Lois, Darren, et.al.,

Appreciate the translation, although, for me, the quote wasn't that 
difficult, just wordy.

Attach some thoughts on "souls" (not mine) which may be of interest.

The Derrida quote reminds me of Lyotard, Le Differend, on "Obligation".
Derrida speaks of "traces".  One observes many ways by which we are 
"obliged" and respond to hidden, far away, ancient, internal voices.  

Any comments on this chapter of Le Differend?

Hugh



Technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by
their own means or with the help of others a certain number of
operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and way
of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a
certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or
immortality.

Nature must be described in such a way that man's very existence
becomes understandable.  Otherwise, and this is what happens in the
mechanistic world view, the scientific description of nature will
have its counterpart in man as an automaton endowed with a soul and
thereby alien to nature.

the modern church presumes to be able to save the soul as an
eternal piece of private property."

the body is a kind of scrip issued by the Great Company Store in
the Sky which can abe cashed in to redeem the soul but is otherwise
worthless."

I have always felt it was human arrogance that assumes that only
people have souls.  

He did not need to struggle for autonomy, to forge a conscience in
the smithy of his soul, to seek a self-made final vocabulary.  

How did I come into the world?  Why was I not consulted.. but was
thrust into the ranks as though I had been bought of a kidnapper,
a dealer in souls? 

A soul is that part of you that takes over in emergencies.  You don't have
to be religious to believe in a soul or to have one.