Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 16:45:46 +1100
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Essentialism, Morality & Communism


>Date: 	Sun, 8 Feb 1998 03:57:19 -0500
>From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
>Subject: Re: M-TH: Essentialism, Morality & Communism
>To: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
>Priority: Normal
>MIME-Version: 1.0

>Hey Thaxists,
>
>i'll just interject along the way....
>
>> >I guess I was saying there will always be lots to do.
>Boddhi's heuristicreduction of people to their neurons (excuse
>innocent misrepresentation, Boddhi) makes the point (among
>others) that we'll never long be at one (and perhaps
>communism is a social world where this difference is given
>due expression?), either with others or within ourselves.
>
>Nothing wrong with "not being one."  Life would be pretty
>boring if everything was unified....  and i thought the idea of a
>foundational philosophy had been discredited anyway....
>
>>> 'The virtue of uncertainty is not a comfortable idea, but
>> >then a citizen-based democracy is built upon participation,
>which is the very expression of permanent discomfort.  The
>corporatist system depends upon the citizen's desire for inner
>comfort.  Equilibrium is dependent upon our recognition of
>reality, which is the acceptance of permanent psychic
>discomfort.  And the acceptance of psychic discomfort is the
>acceptance of consciousness.'
>
>I'm not very predisposed to accepting that at face value.
>Discomfort, suffering, is the acceptance of consciousness?
>Ouch.  It just doesn't have to be that way.  Yes -
>consciousness is largely based upon a struggle, a painful
>struggle, but it could be otherwise.  We don't need to worship
>at the feet of an abstract ontological principle.
>
>> >>What does it mean to treat others as ends in themselves?
>I can see what it would *not* mean, but as a positive
>prescription, the statement seems empty. One of the problem
>of ethics (or what ethics has been up to the present), as I see
>it, is its emptiness and impotence.
>
>I see the idea of ethics reflected as a critique of current
>conditions.  I really don't see criticism as "mere criticism"  or
>as an emptiness or impotence.  Critique is substantial (well,
>substantial critique is anyway).  It sounds as though this
>quote is a demand to be dominated - "please, someone, an
>ethicist, tell me how to live..."  Ethics can't do that.  Ethics is
>the study of moral phenomenon - it does not and cannot
>generate practical solutions.  Theory just can't do that.
>Reality and action are always one step ahead of theory.
>Theory is reflection, retrospect.  It cannot look forward - it
>dwells in the past - this, ironically, comes to us from the future
>(history is something we learn - which comes to us from what
>we encounter as we move ahead).
>
>> From where I sit (ie. a position of fascination with, and
>almost complete ignorance of, moral philosophy, combined
>with a decisive affection for the young Marx's writings), I feel it
>is important *not* to give too much positive content.
>
>I'm not quite sure what this means.  Positive content in the
>sense of recommendations?
>
>>  Given a Marxian ontology (something like reality is
>> human experience is relations), I gotta go along with your
>>post to Justin re 'social relations and what we do with 'em'.
>
>I don't like ontology.  It tends to focus upon something
>abstract - an abstraction away from human relationships
>toward a principle - which neglects that which it seeks to apply
>itself to.  It smacks of applied ethics.  The idea that solutions
>can be determined ahead of time without any concrete
>relationship to reality.
>
>> 'Others as ends in themselves' is something one applies
>>in, and according to the scope available in, the material/social
>>moment or it is nothing at all.
>
>Ends in themselves is a mathematical formula which doesn't
>really do justice to the complexity of human relationships.  I'm
>much more interested in the emphatic - the creative - and the
>psychic and social imaginary.
>
>> It's amazing how potent a social critique one can, and
>indeed must, construct out of just this one Kantian sentence,
>isn't it?  And that's what Marx is, isn't it?  More than anything
>else, a critic of contemporary society - a moral philosopher
>only so far as he needs to be to point to what's hiding our
>nature from us (and he need not, and probably should not,
>> >say much about what that essential nature might be for this
>purpose - although I posted to M-I last year a set of
>assumptions I thought Marx had to be making).
>
>Marx advocated a certain spirit of critique - a relentless
>criticism.  The adoption of Kant to this idea doesn't quite fit.
>Maybe I'm just tired but I'm not sure where this is going.
>
>> Morals are at once what drives the critique (we are not free
>to be whoever we are because our social organisation does
>not privilege intersubjectivity as our way of being [the 1844
>manuscripts as I, a Habermas fan, read 'em]) and what stops
>us being free (contemporary moral culture is imposed to hide
>and perpetuate our failure to extend the status of subject to
>each other and even to ourselves [CM and GI read through the
>same eyes]).
>
>Criticism reflects a kind of ethical dimension toward other
>people and toward oneself and toward reality.  I'm not sure
>morals drive critique - like an engine.  Criticism can be sheer
>instrumentality - it isn't essentially reflective - although i wish
>it were.  criticism can be irresponsible.  attacking the idea of
>freedom in an ideological or dogmatic way is irresponsible.
>heidegger, leaving ethics out of his philosophy, is
>irresponsible....  So, maybe, yes - criticism has a moral
>dimension.
>
>>>About the essential human, I would rather keep this category relatively
>>>open.
>
>One doesn't have a rational choice about this!  The question is
>structurally open from a reasonable perspective.  How can we
>*know* the future? - and thereby the essence which extends
>both forward and backward....
>
>>> I think what is human can only be elaborated and
>illuminated through praxis, in that it is profoundly social and
>keeps changing.
>
>Sure.  But praxis involves theory - which has fundamental
>limitations.  So the idea that humanity, human beings, can
>only be illuminated through praxis itself limits human
>freedom.  The concept becomes more important than the
>relationships.
>
>>We're essentially social beings and praxis is essentially
>social.  I thinkyou're right here.
>
>I'm trying to make the concept a little more fluid - that's all.
>
>thanks,
>ken
>
>ps.  feel free to forward this to interested parties.  if a really
>intense conversation seems pending then i'll sub to the list for
>a while.  i really miss not talking about ethics with people.


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Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
Fax:    02-6201 5119

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'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

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