From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:03:02 +0100
Subject: Re: ethics


Eric and all

by the nature of things all readings are mis-readings and appropriations of the text and ideas, it's simply a question of whether you respect the other... which in these cases goes withoput saying.

rgard

sdv



Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

> steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com wrote:
> >
> > Eric
> >
> > Just glanced at this - thinking -
> >
> > Could you expand on your understanding of Lyotard's ethical positions? I'd like to see a concise (mis)-reading of Lyotard's ethics... It seems to me that there is some interesting ground we could explore in there
> ______________________________________________
> Steve
>
> You ask me that, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.  And yet
> at the moment I feel your request as a kind of obligation.  You say that
> even if I misread Lyotard, I will have fulfilled my obligation to you.
> Perhaps.
>
> But if I misread him have I still fulfilled my obligation to Lyotard?
>
> And how to discuss the question of obligation without turning into
> something else?  Making it into a monster in ethical clothing that
> parades as justice while it devours all the children of the village.
>
> Nonetheless I will try.  Obeying in order to better disobey.  My focus
> will be the chapter on Obligation in "The Differend" which I find easier
> to discuss than "Levinas' Logic".  Be patient with me, however, as this
> will require several posts to accomplish. I must collect my thoughts
> even as I attempt to obey before I understand.
>
> I will send out the following posts - Overview, Levinas, Kant, Summary
>
> Overview
>
> The chapter on Obligation is one of seven chapters in "The Differend" if
> we don't count the preface as a chapter.  Thus, it is a major division
> of the book. It recapitulates similar themes contained in "Levinas'
> Logic" and may briefly be described as a comparison between the
> differing approaches of Levinas and Kant on the question of obligation.
> The chapter begins with the following statement: "The splitting of the
> self would, at least, have the finality of destroying its
> presumptuousness.  Of recalling that the law is transcendent to all
> intellection."
>
> This refers back to Lyotard's basic strategy in "The Differend" which is
> to eliminate the Idea of the subject by proposing instead a universe of
> phrase regimes which link onto one another in various contingent ways.
> One of the characteristics of phrases is that the mode of address
> changes and this must be taken into account.  Thus, the phrase can be
> enunciated by an addressor (first person - I), spoken to an addressee
> (second person - you) or used as a referent/description (third person -
> he, she, it).
>
> The paradox underlying Obligation is that it is always second person,
> but the you who is obligated must irrevocably transform this
> prescription into a description to the extent that the obligation needs
> to be justified to another.  This is the problem Levinas attempts to
> avoid by positing that ethics precedes ontology, pitting the Torah (Law)
> against Being and Heidegger.
>
> Lyotard refers to the dilemma faced by the addressee as a kind of
> blindness because in legitimizing the action that one feels obligated to
> take, one is no longer situated as an addressee, but as an addressor.
> The stakes are no longer one of obeying, but those of convincing a third
> partying of the reasons one has for obeying.
>
> The reason for this, Lyotard claims, following the modernist tradition
> is that it is impossible to deduce a prescription from a description.
> We can attempt to legitimize this obligation, but even then, how do we
> know the obligation truly comes from God and not a madman.  Lyotard
> points out that Kierkegaard's paradox of faith can apply to the Nazis as
> well as to Abraham.
>
> There is a kind of blindness therefore in "putting yourself in the place
> of the other, in saying I in his or her place, in neutralizing his or
> her transcendence."
>
> This creates the scandal of obligation.  One realizes oneself as a kind
> of "cloven consciousness". However, as Lyotard points out, even this
> presumes a kind of subject and asks whether or not we might not do
> better begin with the dispersion, without any nostalgia for the self,
> even though we also need to safeguard against results or outcomes as a
> kind of emergent self.
>
> Next  time - the Levinas notice