From: lambdac-AT-globalserve.net Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 22:48:57 -0500 Subject: The invariable fate of critical thought ------------------------------------------------------------------ DOING HARM TO STUPIDITY (1) 1- The invariable fate of critical thought It is a comical fate which the thought of critical philosophers undergoes. In the beginning, there is rejection, when not an outright effort at repression, of any publicization. But since all codes are leaky, soon enough - often after their death - one finds the formation of congregations around the damned texts, around their interpretation. Then it is a golden rush to hermeneutics, on the right and on the left, usually accompanied by a thorough dose of falsification of the texts themselves. Shortly thereafter, one of the congregations becomes a church with universalistic aspirations, and the thought of the philosopher - even when it might well have constituted an anti-philosophy - is enshrined by an overcode, providing the only legal interpretation of the texts. If the original thought formed an open system, it now becomes closed - and closure is thereby sought for any outstanding controversies. Gathered around a dead text wrapping the mummy of the philosopher, believers seek their identity. And finally, sometime after the inevitable failure of the ecclesiastic systematization, the residues are left to the hyenas, the carrion, the curious, the bookworms and the exegeticists. One might idly suppose that such fate parallels the course of life. Yet, all it parallels is the recourse to survival - with the endless compromises that must be made to neutralize, 'atavicize', banalize, reduce and disinfect the power of the original thought. What survives of the original impulse is a cadaveric appearance, a deformed parody of the philosopher's expression: the commonplaces, the easy interpretations, the Campbell-soup version for edentulous puppies. That is the exchange value corresponding to the wide dissemination of a label, the price to convert the mediocre to any church. Lambda C --- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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