Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 18:06:13 +0100
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com>
Subject: Re: Sublime & Self


Hugh

As said before I enjoyed your post. However...

"The fact that must constitute the point of departure for any discourse
on ethics is that there is no essence, no historical or spiritual
vocation, no biological destiny that humans must enact or realize. This
is the only reason why somthing like ethics can exist because if humans
were orh ad to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no
ethical experience would be possible - there would be only tasks to be
done.

This does not mean, however, that humans are not, and do not have to be,
something, that they are simply consigned to nothingness and therefore
can freely decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt
this or that destiny (nihalism and decisionism coincide at this point).
There is in effect something that humans are and have to be, but this
something is not an essence  nor properly a thing: It is the simple fact
of one's existence as possibility or potentiality. But precisely because
of this things become complicated; precisely because of this ethics
becomes effective...." Agamben The coming community 1990/3

As for the below. Where this is problemtic is in the continuing evidence
of the secularization of society. Part of which is evidenced by the
substitution of the science/technology couplet for the
religion/theocratic pole of the social order. This is not to deny the
impact on the social of the irrational and stupid belief in the
spiritual and the religious for which there is ample evidence. This in
itself is no more a problem than the irrational beliefs that emerge from
the science/technological pole for example believing in the 'big bang'
the 'antropic principle', eugenics or anything else. But it does not
mean that the return of religion to the place of power, the return of
theocratic power to the social instead of science/technology is either
good or desirable. However the return of theocratic justification for
inflicting pain and suffering on humans, animals etc is impossible to
accept. Science and technology is at least based on attempts at making
sense of the world and not on irrational fears of oblivion, death and
the plain insignificance of the self and subject in the face of the
immensity of the universe. This is not to imply that science, technology
and its methods cannot be irrational  - consider once again the antropic
principle, eugenics, systems theory etc. All are or contain elements
that are plainly irrational. But non can be considered as irrational,
stupid and as founded in fear as worship, christianity, islam,
hinduism... doctrines and ideologies which have slaughtered millions and
abused tens of millions.

Religion and spirtualism may have there place as ways in the social of
dealing with the awgfulness of things. But they should become or remain
marginalised from the inhumane treatment of humans and other creatures.
The core arguments for the  rejection of religion and spirtualism are
founded on the proposition that on the basis of your theology you should
treat others. That way leads to terror and death which has been part of
all human societies since we invented the city/state at around the time
of neolithic industrial revoultion 10,000 years ago. The city and the
state with the irrational elements of the indo-european myths lead to
these excessive and murderous forms of behavior...

The superiority of science and technology over theocratic and
spirtualist forms of thinking should I trust be obvious.

sdv



hugh bone wrote:

> To all,
>
> especially, Eric, Reg, Steve, Edwin, who have been curious about
> views of  "self".
>
> First another quote, then short anecdotes :
>
> "God is like us, but more powerful and kinder, the man or woman in our heads
> is like us, but invisible; while the gene is like us, but
> smaller and smarter.....we explain order anthropomorphically; when we create
> order, we draw on our knowledge according to certain designs,
> reasons.....these ways of organizing reality are so fundamental to us, at
> least in the Western tradition,  that when we attempt to come to grips with
> our own mental processes, we do so by placing another "we" inside us, the
> mentalistic ghost in the machine."
>
> This sort of dilemna, the "designs, reasons," which  Lyotard might call
> "stakes",  may have been part of his motivation in studying Kant and the
> sublime.
>
> Art and the notion of the sublime are, to me, critical in philosophy and
> science, in the sense of starting points:  Why is there something rather
> than nothing?, which I recall from somewhere in one of Hannah Arendt's
> books, and in scientists' ideas about what is matter, what is mental,  what
> is Nature,  the Universe(s) etc.  Starting points seem to take us in a
> circle, but the journey can be interesting.
>
> Anecdote:
>
> Zadie Smith, the 24-year old author of  "White Teeth".
> spoke of characters in her book as being interested in their London
> neighborhood.  She said that in her story, they watch TV  maybe once, are
> interested in their friends and people they know in stores, shops etc.,
> ignore communcations and entertainment
> poured on them by the media.  She says this portrayal is "naive",
> meaning it doesn't exist in the real world.
>
> Anecdote2:
>
> Jonathan Kozol, a sixtyish Harvard graduate and teacher, has written a book
> about a school in the Bronx.  He says the school is in  the poorest
> Congressional District in the U.S.
> His respect for the grammar school, its teachers and its pupils,  as seen in
> a short TV interview, is passionate and contagious
>
> His childhood in a devout Jewish family gave him a religious base which he
> more or less abandoned in Harvard, where religious belief was regarded by
> his fellow-students as a deviance which might require medical attention.
>
> He was touched by the belief and devotion of  Christian schoolchildren in
> this school in the Bronx, and when a little Porto Rican boy asked him to
> pray with him, he did.
>
> Anecdote3:
>
> A PBS travelogue about  Turkey visits about 3000 years of  Turkish history,
> and some of the most famous and beautiful cathedrals, mosques, and palaces
> ever built.  They are located  in some  of the most beautiful natural
> scenery on earth.
>
> It was a reminder that even before the Greek philosophers of 5th century
> B.C., earlier Greeks and  other peoples were experiencing their own
> sublimities in religion and art.
>
> And huge crowds of worshipers in this documentary are an example of  the
> power of religion over billions of people today.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Interim Conclusion:
>
> Selves and souls refuse to go away.  Biology - being,  being
> alive -  "what it is like to be a bat" or a cell, or a human, is the
> beginning of this circle.
>
> The deconstruction of  selves and souls in the writing of the continental
> French philosophers and others, added new and perhaps useful opinions to
> human concepts of the "what it is like" phenomenom.
>
> These opinions may have some effect on the behavior of persons who study
> them, and, ultimately, on those to whom they communicate their ideas.
>
> In the meantime, souls of ancient communicators,  as Plato, Christ,
> Michaelangelo, Galileo, Shakespeare, survive in artifact.  The thoughts
> which gave these living authors their unique "self-hood", are re-created in
> living  bodies/minds/selves, as philosophy, science, religion, art.
>
> Regards,
> Hugh