Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 18:38:15 +1000
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Critique of Badiou


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--Boundary_(ID_XYyDNL4cejARmNrrckRK1w)

Steve/All,

IMHO philosophy is heir to science.  Major transformations of philosophy came after
discoveries of Galileo, Darwin, Einstein.

Watson and Crick, as discovers of DNA, began a new era of bio-science which is having a profound influence on philosophy, especially since electron micoscopes, computers and other tools have given access to new realms of complexity.

The idea of man as cyborgian toolmaker, accelerating his anthropological evolution with language,  and with other tools and stratagems, is attractive for it links nicely with advances in bioscience.

Ethics is a function of the physical - scientists observe a limited version of ethics in other primates - but also a function of ideology.  Thousands of years of religion and myth, like language itself, precede each generation, and influence the parents of each philosopher and scientist.

Ethics can be learned from books at an early age, but children and young adults are
rarely serious students of the subject, and their formative years reflect experience, with parents, teachers, and, in much of the world, religious instruction.

Even as adults, philosophical concepts probably have little influence on ethical practice.  The history of the the species, the early history of each individual, are probably the greatest determinants of ethical behavior, and for hundreds of millions who live in abject poverty, survival is their first priority, ethics a luxury.

regards,
Hugh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Steve wrote:

  Eric,

  looking at my untidy note - sorry for the familiar lack of clarity... however i'll try and be more focused.

  In your references to the 'Other' you are always reproducing it through the mirror of  the ethical propositions that you are foregrounding. Furthermore you have claimed on a number of occasions that an ethical position must begin from a consideration of the other.

  The other in these formulations is always a human other - I regard the suggestion that 'with Levinas, the other is not merely a humanist construct' is simply to miss the point - the other is always a human other. It is this that I have an issue with - it places human beings at the centre of ethics, at the centre of things which is, (shall I say quietly) quite wrong. The history of the rationalist line of philosophy Descartes, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and even the theocratic Levinas informs us that there is a logical obligation  (as a thinking subject) in which the relationship to others ensures a relationship of 'being to being'  and not of knowledge. This implies that an 'I' , a subject cannot know the human other as such but can only consider the other in the subjects own 'being'. Where the 'I', the subject trys to 'think' of him, there is the investment in otherness. This investment is of course an investment in transcendance as I believe you have pointed out previously... 

  The psychoanalytical revolution (I hesitate using that much abused word but it seesm to require it today) is that the transcendance referred to is that this is simply one of the misrecognitions that makes us speak, write, communicate, by constructing us as 'other-beings' . This is the almost post-modern psychoanlytical proposal - a subject speaks/addresses another subject, a subject addresses an other.  The other may be a being, but the other is not me, the other may be a being but obviously in another subject than me. For this reason I can be understood, as not just 'me' but as a subject and that the 'being' is multiple, split. Actually that's what analysis addresses not the I to I but the strange relationship between subject and the split subjects.... I would point out that the transcendence discussed here has no relation to the theocracy or the spiritual. (I used Klein, Kristeva and Frued for this and avoided discussing the construction of the subject through object-relations, narcisism, splits etc... Klein and co are to alarming for that... tonight.) The psychoanalytical subject/other relationship is a means of defining how we become human subjects and further defines to an extent inter-human-subject relations, at least where the humans are capable of communication/language.

  But the problem here is that it remains - the human other, in the psychoanalytical case this is acceptable to me given that the model aims to conceptualise the constitution of the human subject. In the philosophical realm this is not so acceptable. In my scanning of Levinas to ascertain whether your proposition that 'the other is not simply a human construct'  which I read as referring to the other not being simply being a human other but encompassing more than that. But this does not seem to be the case - rather Levinas is concerned with developing a 'postrationalist ethics' dealing with the 'face-to-face with the other '. [references to justify the 'not simply a human construct' would be useful...].  To address the issue: for example: in Alterity and Transcendence (and there are similar examples in Totality and Infinity, Time and the Other, Entre-Nous and so on...) Levinas says "...A going outside oneself that is addressed to the other, the stranger. It is between strangers that the encounter takes place; otherwise, it would be kinship. All thought is subordinated to the ethical relation, to the infinitely other in the other person, and to the infinitely other for which i am nostalgic..." (p97/8).

  For me to accept that the rationalist/postrationalist positions of Levinas were an acceptable starting point for an 'ethics' in these postmodern days you would have to explain how something focused on the human subject other relation can produce an ethics that can adequately address the non-human. Let me propose a few samples of the non-human. In this room there is a 500,000 year old volcanic rock from Iceland, on the chair beside me a cat is curled up asleep, someway beyond the glass window a field exists with industrialised cows who are destined to be slaughtered in the next six months. An ethics has to address these areas of the true non-human beyond, not in terms derived from continental rationalist philosophy that defines the other in terms of an-other human, (because reference points related to human subjects simply fail to impress the rock, the cat or the doomed cow). Ethical positions are often claimed to be universal, but they cannot be if they cannot resolve the differend between the human subject and the non-human.

  To place this back in the relation to the Badiou text - obviously a limited 'autonomist ethics' is more acceptable because the truth of the industrial/information pain that we humans inflict on the doomed cows can be considered more adequately in the ethic of truths which as he suggests is a-social. 

  My point ultimately is that the ethics of the other can never confront what we need to confront because the 'other ultimately is the non-human'....

  regards - hope this helps...(laughs)

  steve


  Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

steve.devos wrote:
But Eric.. the issue hasn't changed for me - the Other always returns to some form of  ethical construction in your discussions - its not thematerial construction of the other which might be human, non-human orindeed anything outside of your skin. All of the reference points forthe Other are 'human' within the ethical constructions you are making -it is this which is the core problem - the only form of the Other inhuman terms I find close to intellectually accurate is in thepsychoanalytical/schzioanalytical formation. But this is not the formfrom which the majority of the ethicical work derives
Steve, you need to go into more detail here to explain the distinctionyou are attempting to make.  I'm not following you (what is thispsychoanalytical formulation?).  Even with Levinas, the Other is notmerely a humanist construct. He always sees it as constituting a break,so again this has to be expanded.I stand by my critique of Badiou.  If we remain inside the context ofthe book, this derivation from theology argument is the only one he isreally making and my contention as I have said is that this argument isfalse because it is incomplete.I actually find a good deal of Badiou autonomist ethics stimulating.  Mypoint is something that ethics at some point needs to confront the otheras well. The attempt to veil the other under the banner of an ethics oftruth merely remains in denial of its own origins.  How does one come toknow the truth, if not through the other?  Badiou never really conf
rontsthis question.eruc



--Boundary_(ID_XYyDNL4cejARmNrrckRK1w)

HTML VERSION:

 

Eric,

looking at my untidy note - sorry for the familiar lack of clarity... however i'll try and be more focused.

In your references to the 'Other' you are always reproducing it through the mirror of  the ethical propositions that you are foregrounding. Furthermore you have claimed on a number of occasions that an ethical position must begin from a consideration of the other.

The other in these formulations is always a human other - I regard the suggestion that 'with Levinas, the other is not merely a humanist construct' is simply to miss the point - the other is always a human other. It is this that I have an issue with - it places human beings at the centre of ethics, at the centre of things which is, (shall I say quietly) quite wrong. The history of the rationalist line of philosophy Descartes, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and even the theocratic Levinas informs us that there is a logical obligation  (as a thinking subject) in which the relationship to others ensures a relationship of 'being to being'  and not of knowledge. This implies that an 'I' , a subject cannot know the human other as such but can only consider the other in the subjects own 'being'. Where the 'I', the subject trys to 'think' of him, there is the investment in otherness. This investment is of course an investment in transcendance as I believe you have pointed out previously... 

The psychoanalytical revolution (I hesitate using that much abused word but it seesm to require it today) is that the transcendance referred to is that this is simply one of the misrecognitions that makes us speak, write, communicate, by constructing us as 'other-beings' . This is the almost post-modern psychoanlytical proposal - a subject speaks/addresses another subject, a subject addresses an other.  The other may be a being, but the other is not me, the other may be a being but obviously in another subject than me. For this reason I can be understood, as not just 'me' but as a subject and that the 'being' is multiple, split. Actually that's what analysis addresses not the I to I but the strange relationship between subject and the split subjects.... I would point out that the transcendence discussed here has no relation to the theocracy or the spiritual. (I used Klein, Kristeva and Frued for this and avoided discussing the construction of the subject through object-relations, narcisism, splits etc... Klein and co are to alarming for that... tonight.) The psychoanalytical subject/other relationship is a means of defining how we become human subjects and further defines to an extent inter-human-subject relations, at least where the humans are capable of communication/language.

But the problem here is that it remains - the human other, in the psychoanalytical case this is acceptable to me given that the model aims to conceptualise the constitution of the human subject. In the philosophical realm this is not so acceptable. In my scanning of Levinas to ascertain whether your proposition that 'the other is not simply a human construct'  which I read as referring to the other not being simply being a human other but encompassing more than that. But this does not seem to be the case - rather Levinas is concerned with developing a 'postrationalist ethics' dealing with the 'face-to-face with the other '. [references to justify the 'not simply a human construct' would be useful...].  To address the issue: for example: in Alterity and Transcendence (and there are similar examples in Totality and Infinity, Time and the Other, Entre-Nous and so on...) Levinas says "...A going outside oneself that is addressed to the other, the stranger. It is between strangers that the encounter takes place; otherwise, it would be kinship. All thought is subordinated to the ethical relation, to the infinitely other in the other person, and to the infinitely other for which i am nostalgic..." (p97/8).

For me to accept that the rationalist/postrationalist positions of Levinas were an acceptable starting point for an 'ethics' in these postmodern days you would have to explain how something focused on the human subject other relation can produce an ethics that can adequately address the non-human. Let me propose a few samples of the non-human. In this room there is a 500,000 year old volcanic rock from Iceland, on the chair beside me a cat is curled up asleep, someway beyond the glass window a field exists with industrialised cows who are destined to be slaughtered in the next six months. An ethics has to address these areas of the true non-human beyond, not in terms derived from continental rationalist philosophy that defines the other in terms of an-other human, (because reference points related to human subjects simply fail to impress the rock, the cat or the doomed cow). Ethical positions are often claimed to be universal, but they cannot be if they cannot resolve the differend between the human subject and the non-human.

To place this back in the relation to the Badiou text - obviously a limited 'autonomist ethics' is more acceptable because the truth of the industrial/information pain that we humans inflict on the doomed cows can be considered more adequately in the ethic of truths which as he suggests is a-social. 

My point ultimately is that the ethics of the other can never confront what we need to confront because the 'other ultimately is the non-human'....

regards - hope this helps...(laughs)

steve


Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

steve.devos wrote:

But Eric.. the issue hasn't changed for me - the Other always returns 
to some form of  ethical construction in your discussions - its not the
material construction of the other which might be human, non-human or
indeed anything outside of your skin. All of the reference points for
the Other are 'human' within the ethical constructions you are making -
it is this which is the core problem - the only form of the Other in
human terms I find close to intellectually accurate is in the
psychoanalytical/schzioanalytical formation. But this is not the form
from which the majority of the ethicical work derives

Steve, you need to go into more detail here to explain the distinction
you are attempting to make.  I'm not following you (what is this
psychoanalytical formulation?).  Even with Levinas, the Other is not
merely a humanist construct. He always sees it as constituting a break,
so again this has to be expanded.

I stand by my critique of Badiou.  If we remain inside the context of
the book, this derivation from theology argument is the only one he is
really making and my contention as I have said is that this argument is
false because it is incomplete.

I actually find a good deal of Badiou autonomist ethics stimulating.  My
point is something that ethics at some point needs to confront the other
as well. The attempt to veil the other under the banner of an ethics of
truth merely remains in denial of its own origins.  How does one come to
know the truth, if not through the other?  Badiou never really conf
ronts
this question.

eruc