Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 21:47:08 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Todorov and humanism


Eric/all

I'd like to open out the notion of 'freedom' as described in the below. 
Your focus on 'freedom' feels constrained because it seems to avoid the 
humanist use of the word 'autonomy' which is used "...to designate one's 
choice to feel, to reason, and to will for oneself....This is derived 
from Kant for whom autonomy consists  not only of governing oneself but 
also of obeying only the law that we have ourselves prescribed..." 
(Todorov)This humanist assumption seems to contradict the representation 
of the tradition as a normative one. Rather what is presented is a 
structural tension between the desire of the master to dominate and the 
slave to refuse. I deliberately choose the master/slave dialectic 
because it seems to me that it opens out the contradiction of  the 
anti-hegalian attempts to produce a positive freedom - whereas the 
reality is that one thing that the humanist's certainly have got right 
is that freedom is always negative. Autonomy implies action but which in 
some sense finds it's source in the subject itself. - The roots of this 
are well described in Negri and Hardt's description of  'Renassiance 
Humanism' the core of which negri describes as  "...at the birth of 
European modernity humanity discovered its power in the world and 
integrated this dignity into a new consciousness of reason and 
potentiality..." I mention this to bring into play the notion that the 
soul and the sacred have nothing to do with freedom and autonomy as the 
liberal humanist (todorov) or the more materialist line understands it.  
It is not clear to me that Deleuze, Lyotard or Badiou have really 
gainsed that much by avoiding the human or non-human subject....

(Of course 'freedom' is not actually a purely human condition - only a 
humanist would suggest this... ) Can we also clarify that by rejecting 
anon's determinism - we are accepting that wide-range-determinism is 
acceptable and correct.

Perhaps the question that a person in favor of development at all costs 
- could raise is the philosophical challenge raised by the necessity to 
redefine the notion of human freedom in the developing context of the 
increasing knowledge of genetics. To what extent can we be thought of as 
free when what constiutes our wide-range-determined selves is precisely 
made into a narrow-determinsm. What then of autonomy etc ? How to 
redefine freedom and autonomy when the human is restuctured into 
something genetically non-human.  Hence the necessity for the 'subject' 
perhaps ?

regards
steve