File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0304, message 82


Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 18:33:11 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: the fragility of reality



Geof,

I think I owed you an answer on an earlier post, but Eric had so much to
talk about, I answered him first.

About Dostevsky:  I taped a movie version of "Crime and Punishment" several
weeks ago.  I believe it was made by people from England and filmed in St.
Petersburg.  It might answer some of  your questions about guilt.  As you
may know, Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, lost about a third of its
population in WWII.

I was amazed at the beauty of old streets and bridges.

There's a lot about Dostevsky on the Internet at:
http://www.kiosek.com/dostoevsky/links.html

I first came to this List several years ago when I was reading Le Differend.
I particularly liked his ideas about justice.  Beyond that, the book told
more about how language works than anything I had seen before.   If you go
through the enormously detailed references he provides in the back you get
the big picture.

Tolstoy was another independent Russian thinker.  He talked about the "cult
of the State", which seems very fitting nowadays.

Why do I stay with the List?  Occasionally something new pops up, like the
Second Superpower link not long ago.   If Negri and Hardt had been that
explicit about the "multitude", (could have been written for a seventh
grader) I would have had a better opinion of Empire.

And  some questions come from young people, and some of those are important
whether they get answered or not.

best,
Hugh
And of course there are









>
> Hugh,
>
> Your reply to Eric reminds me of a something that the literary critic,
I.A.
> Richards once said, "If someone can't express themselves in language that
a
> reasonably attentive 7th grader can understand, someone is pulling
something
> over on the other person."
>
> I've raised this quote before in other contexts and I have recieved mixed
> reactions.  While most 7th graders will, of course, appreciate the
commonsense
> behind such sentiments as "don't drink arsenic; it kills"; "don't jump off
the
> Grand Canyon; you'll die," I daresay most middle school kids would not
care to
> engage for long quotes and references from outside sources.  (And that
goes
> with whether it's Lyotard or the rather lucid and heavy metal singer,
Maryiln
> Manson.)
>
> Why?  Because they have the most PERSUASIVE commonplace in the stack:
"Well,
> that's just your opinion" or, one better, "Whatever."
>
> I'm cool w/ that.  I can understand the notion behind saying, "I prefer
not to"
> when it comes to all kinds of discussions, particularly some of the one's
> raised concerning the war, silence, religion and ethics...
>
> ...I wonder, though, for the sake of conversation--and here, I guess I
engage
> again in the mucky-muck of speculation that some folks on this list are
given
> to engage, and given your almost daily commitment to the list, I suspect
you
> are given to, if not somewhat begrudgingly as Eric suggests--what you make
of
> the following quote (!) by Dostoyevsky.  I wonder if it fits I.A.
Richards's
> criteria of 7th-grade clarity, and if not, why not?
>
> Dostoyevsky says, "Each of us is guilty before everyone else, and I more
than
> the others."
>
> What if this were the starting point?  Could one comment on it?  Expand
it?
> Argue something "persuasive" about it, as you suggest?  Would it help, in
> having forwarded this idea, to discuss its context more?  Make connections
to
> other philosophers writers?  Or might one say, "Here's an interesting
> quote...let's talk about it."  Or would THAT be too abstract?  (Are these
> questions about abstractions too abstract?  How might one be more clear
about
> asking questions about how to address matters in such a way so
> that "dismissiveness" is less of a case for you?")
>
> I guess if I were to sum up the above comments into something as directly
as
> possible, I'd say:  What are Hugh doing here? Opps, I mean "you."  =)
>
> As ever,
>
> Geof
>
>
>
>
>
> Quoting hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>:
>
> > Eric,
> >
> > Thanks for a thoughtful reply.
> >
> > Yes, I have been dismissive.  I'd rather be persuasive.  I accept the
> > unconscious as a hypothesis.and wrote my thoughts on the benefits of
> > Freudian psychology;  tried to explain why I don't believe in the
mysteries
> > of the Freudian unconscious.
> >
> > At the end of your message you wrote:
> >
> > > Such a reality does not exist.
> > > Such a reality exists, but cannot be known.
> > > Such a reality exists and can be known, but cannot be described in
> > >language.
> >
> > In my previous message, I included a statement about reality:
> >
> > "What an individual believes to be the case "is the case" for that
> > individual.  If one believes poison or falling  from great height will
kill,
> > that is "reality", and one acts accordingly."
> >
> > You may think that such a  reality does not exist, or that it exists but
I
> > am mistaken in thinking it exists,  or that the words I use do not
express
> > the reality I try to convey.
> >
> > I welcome your opinion.
> >
> > You wrote:
> >
> > >...engage life in concrete  terms without unnecessary abstractions,
then we
> > > would 'know' reality simply and directly.  .
> >
> > I saw a TV program that described how an unnecessary abstraction became
> > useful.  A Norwegian mathematician named Sophus Lie, was wildly excited
in
> > 1867 when he suddenly conceived the idea of a geometry that was not
based on
> > points and lines.  He went on to invent what became known as "Lie
Groups".
> > Roughly half a century later, along came quantum mechanics and  particle
> > physics.  That discipline seized on "Lie Groups" as an appropriate and
> > valuable abstraction, a mathematics that became an integral part of the
new
> > physics.
> >
> > In more personal terms, I think it's true that what is most simple and
> > direct is most real.
> >
> > The religious ideas that claim abstractions as realities, created Heaven
and
> > Hell and peopled them with angels and demons who are
> > "real"  for believers.
> >
> > For months, we have talked about mostly French postmodern authors, who,
if
> > I read our List messages correctly, have developed new ethics.   They
are
> > indicated by author's names and allusions, sometimes quotes. I haven't
been
> > able to understand those  rules, and their application.
> >
> > I look for something to compare with traditional ethics, as "Thou shalt
not
> > kill".,  "Love they neighbor as thyself", and "repair the world".  I
think
> > someone who studies these authors so diligently will one day write down
some
> > of the principles they have learned in
> > plain language.  As an example of brevity, I think of  a sentence Camus
> > wrote in Caligula:  "Man is unhappy and he dies"
> >
> > If someone could be explicit about the pomo ethics, I,  would have an
> > opinion, admissive, or dismissive of the idea, not the writer nor the
person
> > who reads his work.
> >
> > Another thought concerning reality:  "The world is not what it is, it is
how
> > we understand it."  from "The Life of Pi."
> >
> > best,
> > Hugh
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>



   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005