From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: 44 and 38
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 21:27:41 -0500


Hugh,

Part of the tension I see in the first chapter derives from what might
be called the 'is/ought' dichotomy. Hume argued that an ought cannot be
deduced from an is and this was picked by a Kant as well. It is the
difference between pure and practical reason, science and ethics.  This
was further developed by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus, which derives in
many ways from Kant by way of Shopenhauer. According to this, the world
consists of everything that is the case; atomic facts in logical space.
A proposition is a picture of this state of affairs. However,
metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical judgments are literally nonsense
because they regard the world as a limited whole, our attitude towards
the facts rather than the facts themselves.  There are things that can
be said and things that can only be shown. As Wittgenstein argues the
world of a happy person is different from the world of a sad person.

This may seem like a pedantic preamble and name-dropping to you, but I
think this whole philosophical tradition is very germane to the basic
argument Lyotard is making in the first chapter. I know it is
fashionable to say that postmodernism reduces all science to rhetoric.
The position, however, is not one that Lyotard ever argued.

What he seems to consistently say, in my reading at least, is that there
is a genre we call science which follows certain rules of cognition, a
game which is paralogical because it permits developments to occur that
may overturn its assumptions. However, this genre is limited because it
restricts itself to the interpretation of empirical facts.

Lyotard distinguishes ethics and politics from science because they form
a different genre. Both deal with Ideals in the Kantian sense, which is
to say that they are universals that cannot be affirmed or refuted in
the empirical sense. However, because of the very condition, such Ideals
are susceptible to differends because the argument of Gorgias can be
applied to them.      

1. The Ideal does not exist.
2. If it exists it cannot be known.
3. If it can be known it cannot be communicated.

Thus, the differend is always somewhat paradoxical in nature and it
derives from the fact that reality is not a given, but can only be
established by certain procedures or protocol. Furthermore, a differend
can be considered negative, in the sense of Holocaust revisionism,
positive in the sense that oppressed groups call upon another tribunal
than the one that the litigating state allows, and even paralogical or
aesthetic in the sense that the differend, like art, attempts to present
the paralogical.  

I think this is the basic argument of the first chapter, simplifying
vastly. Of course, the structure of the differend is such that it too
can be denied, but if it is denied, then Lyotard wins, as the Protagoras
Notice makes clear.

I hope this makes things a little clearer. The abstract-concrete
distinction you are making fails because it does not say how values
originate or how we should deal with them and this is the central
concern of Lyotard in the first chapter. He radically distinguishes
between Ideals and cognition.

eric


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of hbone
Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2002 7:19 PM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: 44 and 38


Eric/Steve/All,

I'm willing to take time to discuss and, hopefully, understand in more
detail (off-List, if necessary) the words and phrases we read
differently.
After a review of the four silences and the Plato Notice, I'll try to
answer
the question.

But, in the meantime some comments at **

regards,
Hugh

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

> Hugh wrote:
>
>
> The trouble with the Kantien Ideal is the trouble with other
> abstractions.
> Sometimes the abstract words do not relate to real objects and real
> events;
> i.e.the thing-in-itself  is not a thing and not a self.
>
> Hugh/Steve/All:
>
> Yes, but isn't this simply the dream of positivism once again. If a
way
> can be found to reduce the abstractions to the concrete, to reduce the
> Ideal to the cognitive, then the differend will not emerge.
**IMO the concrete precedes the abstract.  Time and space,objects,
feelings,
hungers ,satisfactions are experienced repeatedly  by infants infants
before
they learn and communicate their first abstractions, words.
>
> Lyotard's argument in the first chapter, as I understand it, is that
> this ends in merely being another form of terror.

**Yes, there are wrongful actions (concrete events) , some of which
inspire
terror.  The idea of the differend is an abstraction.  The aim is tofind
an
idiom which is acceptable to both plaintiff and defendant.

> The communist  political system that he described saw communism as
merely
> concrete and  cognitive in that sense. The whole problem is that a
hidden
tribunal is
> required to provide the judgment necessary to reduce the genre.
**Public individuals, communist or facist, judged and disposed of
Holocaust
and other victims, whether communist or fascist, and hidden tribunals as
well.

> Otherwise, the danger is such that the situation described in the
Plato
> note emerges.  The dialogue as communication becomes reduced, note
> merely to agonistics, but to monologue.
>
> Part of the issue, as I see it, with the recent conversation between
> Steve and I is that we are talking across genres, from different
levels.
> He is arguing for an Ideal of humanism that incorporates the animal
> without the elevation of the one over the other.  I am arguing that
his
> case is not special and the situation of the differend described by
> Lyotard still applies to the case he mentions.
>
> In other words, as I read him, Lyotard is not speaking of particular
> concrete issues of injustice as much as he is describing the
> transcendental conditions of possibility that allows the differend to
> emerge and how this remains as both a latent and constant possibility.

**The "transcendental conditions" are brain-states, mind-sets of living
human beings.
As judge and jury these persons attend to and act as tribunal to resolve
actual, concrete, disputes.  Communist or Fascist dictators may have
used
"hidden tribunals"
as a pretense.
>
> Perhaps I am misreading your comments, Hugh and Steve, but it seems
that
> at some level you are arguing the differend can be transcended by
either
> a more positivist (Hugh) or a more Hegelian (Steve) philosophy. My
> question back to you is how do you manage to avoid the dreaded four
> silences.
>
> eric
>
>
>