Umwertung aller Werte!

To get, or desire, values presupposes already having values. Be they from biology (for example, possibly, arguably, the desire to become epicurean stems from the initial biological desire for nutrients) or psychology (for example, possibly, arguably, the desire for enlarging/ever-bolstering self-esteem) or socialisation (for example, possibly, arguably, to please parents by being a good child, to please society/capitalism by being a good citizen and/or employee). My point is despite messy tracing of origins (perhaps through complex, chaotic processes and the phenomenon of emergence and/or epiphenomenalism it is arguable just about nothing has real origins: sceptics rejoice) values don’t come out of no where. If someone is in a library they will fixate upon specific books for specific reasons. That metaphor I find bountiful. Why desire? Lacan, we are socialised to desire from realising our caretakers don’t infinitely, always desire us and thereupon we like an infinitely wound-up toy unwind and go about seeking the unfindable. “But desire is each man’s nature or essence (III. ix. note) ; therefore desire in one individual differs from desire in another individual only in so far as the nature or essence of the one differs from the nature or essence of the other.” (My first quotation and reading of Spinoza in a long time, definately owe, as I well knew, and now know even more so, time.)

Back to the beginning, maybe, sort of knowing the place for the first time. Why do we specifically desire what we desire? Because we are contingent, historical beings. Ok. Then how would a subject tell itself to desire? How do we decide what books to read? Or do we amble around the aisles, sit still with the thought forever “I would prefer not to”? To will nothing is still to will, and some will it ardently, but there is clearly no wisdom to it. Even granting nihilism, no purpose to anything (ok we are pretty much at the starting point of existentialism now) bartleby and suicide are not justified, that would be bad faith. How can you appease Nothing?

Now here is a rather interesting q. Must one universalise after each valuation/action, must one take what they value to be in some sense necessary? Otherwise put can the opposite, Richard Rorty’s ironist exist? The ironist is defined as:

“(1) She has radical continuing doubts about the final vocabulary [,i.e. “a set of words which human beings employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives”] she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.”

(Rorty 1989: 73).

Brilliant. First point, doubt/self-questioning: openness. Second point, limitedness: contingency. Third point, humanity (“only human), mortality: I think the takeaway is anti-foundationalism. Yet is this a viable state of affairs? Apart from a few nuts (that is, primarily, the philosophers) could people sustain a life of this? It pained be truly each and every time I learned about Rorty’s biography, much contingent pain, for sure, but his proposed philosophy did nonetheless intersect with someone who I believe through at least, clearly, correlation if not causation had a bleak outlook. Believing the world would not see a good future, probably a nuclear holocaust and that humanity pretty much didn’t have the capacity to lift it’s game. I have long remembered as well Freud’s words about Nietzsche “he represents a nobility inaccessible to me”. The fact is no religion (note, I need to read more on Buddhism) could be successful if it advocated Rorty’s & Nietzsche’s emphasis on limitation, lack of necessity and then self-creation in the face of all (and it’s intrinsic abyss). If Freud, who went on a multiyear sojourn of self-analysis during the 1890s figures himself as a complete class (pretty much the ironist class) distinction from Nietzsche I think it is unlivable except perhaps for the absolute freak genetic predispositions that lead the very few to be Caesars or Muhammads. I still don’t know. I think there is petty necessity “got to get this paper done by friday!” “got to read up on 1980s CCP politics!” which if pushed once will readily concede that it is all to no great/real/necessary consequence.

Ok, lets stay that ironists exist. How do they choose? For one thing, with their emphasis on self-creation and practical “value asceticism” all that they value is by choice:

“But say, my brothers, what can the child yet do that even the lion could not do? Why must the predatory lion yet become a child?

Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yea-saying.

Yes, for the play of creating, my brothers, a sacred-Yea-saying is needed: the spirit now wills its own will, the one who had lost the world attains its own world.”

I started quoted Nietzsche there and didn’t fully remember where the passage lead. I should of known better, that he had an answer to my question prepared. The point is selective remembering, artful forgetting and innocence with vitality guide the ironist to their values. Superficial out of profundity! It is an amazing tension to contemplate. The problem could be one of epoch. Could anyone of modernity (circa. 1800s onwards) be an ironist? Maybe the Greeks were, maybe secluded Buddhist monks in insular temples which remain essentially premodern are, but what about all normal people? Maybe the choosing of values is simply banal. Neurological predispositions favour certain intellectual pursuits which are further supports by one’s environment once pursued, capitalist economies favour the division of labour so people end up pigeonholed in activities which become self-sustaining loops and so on. External pressures, sociology, history also play their part. But I think the psychology existent here isn’t that of the ironist but a sense of necessity.

Quick, cute q. Is everyone an ironist? In a liberal democratic society with globalisation pretty much doing it all vis-a-vis the international system there seems to be no revolutions left to be had: nothing of consequence. Wouldn’t postmodernity make us all ironists? We are all full of doubt (so we shop), we all know everything is contingent (being children of the 20th century we feel it in our bones, I believe, we no there are no assurances) and we are painfully human. I think these are good questions the more I contemplate them but I still believe peopel believe what they do is necessary, even if just in an everyday, non-revolutionary sense. Still need doctors, still need food.

I think managing to be innocent is the challenge and having the courage to value (“don’t be afraid to care”). To step on the accelerator and actually move forward is not favoured in this world of mechanized progress. “This is my morning, my day is beginning: Rise up now, rise up, you Great Midday!”

The Public Sphere & Liberal Democracy

Firstly, I don’t know what Liberal Democracy means. That is, I don’t know precisely. Perhaps at base it is more an impulse, a way of being. Yet sufficiently above the misty foundations we can identify institutions (democracy, representative electives, capitalism and so on) and general themes (transparency, accountability, non-coercion and so on).

Second and last initial point is Kant’s notion of maturity. Kant emphasised the importance to this whole special project of what some call at large “the democratic age” that people have a fundamentally different way of existing. They have thoughts, opinions. Not temporary, reactionary emotions or readily held, undoubted beliefs, or thoughts directly and unquestioningly imported from a group (unions, landowners, aristocrats, religious class etc.) but genuine, reasonable thoughts. This distinction is vague which is why understanding it in a zeitgeist sense is more justifiable then not, we just have to believe these tendencies exist and/or should exist given the changes taking place in society. Maturity has centrally twofold implications. One, people can reason. Two, people can be responsible for their own believes and larger social structures (education, political elites etc.) can never fully absolve them of their autonomy, their individual moral responsibility. This picture readily gets muddied (what about misleading information and more systemic distortions in the public sphere? Can people be blamed for not knowing the truth when political parties or parts of the media systemically skew/mislead discussion?) but I think Kant’s and others arguments stand unhindered, that people must individually take on responsibility for at the very least having broad-brushed understandings of the way society is, the way society should be, and how this relates to the levers of power and the incidental members who control them (Kant link 1).

What shall be put into this essay, and what occupies me an awful lot of the time, is how large the tent of the public sphere can be made and how actively it can exist, what liberal thinkers expected and believed was necessary of the public sphere and then possible shortcomings of the public sphere in possibility and actuality and how this could harm liberal democracy.

I use the term “public sphere” in the streamlined sense of the place (not necessarily physical) where judgements & understandings about politics are formed. In particular, where citizens formulate their individual stance about how society is, and how society should be. I think it is instructive to look at one of the earliest public spheres, a place well known for nourishing Kant’s maturity, the agora.

“Here [in the agora] large numbers of people congregated freely, to take part in the many activities offered by a thriving city: parades, conversation, festivals, buying and selling, athletics contests, public trials and theatrical performances. The mix alone was enlivening; so, too, was the shared sense that flesh-and-blood mortals –men- had the means of governing themselves. Athenian citizens used their square for a variety of public purposes. They lingered, loitered, promenaded, chatted, gossiped, bickered, mused, joked. They met old friends and news, flirted (men with young boys; young men with flute girls), sometimes fell in love. The publicly shared space of the agora was not a place regulated by dead-serious communication through reasonable words (as has often been claimed by philosophers). It was much more a public space for fun and games, for the catharsis of competitions and festivals – a place for entertainment, as we would say today”.

(John Keane Democracy 2009, pp. 12-13).

The agora, commonplace of Socrates and Plato, has been fashionably elevated to a special icon where “civilised”, or what Kant meant by mature, discussions took place. The fact is this is false. There was always a mess of commerce and entertainment. I think this bedevils the ideas of maturity and the public sphere: can sufficient periods of maturity and sufficient space exist for enough people to do what they need to do to ensure those in power don’t abuse and destroy us all?

This is an itemised tax receipt. It is an idea being thrown around in the United States that taxpaying citizens should have a receipt or what they practically pay for. While I can appreciate the positives, namely that people would have a reasonable sense of how government spending is allocated, what concerns me is two things. One, this is a very passive instruction of how government works, that people only (perhaps) pay attention at “checkout”, after filing their taxes. I find it incredibly unlikely Kant would of considered such things within the domain of maturity. This seems to me to be incredibly more like a necessary corrective as opposed to just spelling out the specifics (I doubt many Americans know adequately even in a rough sense how their taxes get allocated into the above categories). Two, this is ridiculously consumerist. Citizenship isn’t buying a refrigerator. It is a forever ongoing process, there is no special piece of junk which neatly ties up the process as with consumption. If politics becomes more consumerist I fear that the maturity necessary to the process will decay and terrible politics and dark days will follow. There are so many points of conflict, the long term concerns of politics versus the short term of consumerism, the activity required with understanding the sufficiently little about what each political party wants to turn the society into with the passivity of gobbling up another consumer good, the holding of values with politics versus consumerism wholly not needing a single value. In consumerism I see Nietzsche’s last man, I see a deadly smallness. Liberals like myself believe that the human-all-too-human element within every person is offset by empathy, intelligent self-interest and a general desire that the future becomes good or even better than the past. I don’t believe in human nature. But I do believe in sociologically observable habits which can be seen to exist for many, many generations. If George W. Bush wasn’t elected twice I probably wouldn’t ask these questions. If Tony Abbott and the liberals didn’t take Australia to a hung parliament I probably wouldn’t ask. My concern is that politics ain’t getting any simpler, and I can imagine arguments being put forward that a more consumerist politics is to be expected given the changing political realities. Now more than ever Sapere aude!

Deal with the Devil

“Si peccasse negamus fallimur et nulla est in nobis veritas

Why then, belike, we must sin,

And so consequently die.

Ay, we must die, an everlasting death.

What doctrine call you this? Che sera, sera.”

You could also call this doctrine realism. By the way nothing is meant by having Nixon in Mephistopheles position, the other way around is the intended comparison. Although when evil intention is involved either could probably switch position. The idea though is why are such deals done? It is because people settle on their weaknesses, imperfections, fallenness and do not aspire to redeem their inherent human all too human side, their absence of goodness (we are born with no achievements after all, all worthy achievements must be striven for). Out of fear, ultimately a kind of fear of death, people compromise their potential for good, ideas of improvement. As with realism the fact is they even perpetuate evil as they enter into the bad faith, and fatalism, of assuming that is all there is. Che sera, sera.

Now this is not do debate the merits of this alliance but to acknowledge the bedfellows of politics and that it involves choices. This leads to why some states emphasise that they will not enter into diplomatic relations with some entities, like Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, yet will enter into relations with Mubarak’s Egypt, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it stands, and the like. With the revolutions across the Arab World it must be understood that parties like the Muslim Brotherhood are practically the Christian Democrats, or would readily become akin to them inside a democracy and that there is no real need to avoid them so stringently. Hamas is a little more difficult but generally engagement with them is preferable (what is their body count next to Mao’s anyway?). Talk with these lesser, even simply minor evils is fine. Talk is no problem, talk is no deal nor is it real action. Talk can often facilitate morally better possibilities anyhow. What’s clear is that talk is superior to just building sure alliances with the Maos and Mubaraks of the world. Aim to engage (read, pretty much, talk) with all, not to ally conveniently with evil.

P.S. I hate the George W. bush vocabulary but nonetheless I think quickly we can realise the majority of lesser, minor evils from the dictators who have been convenient evils. I think the strong term is useful moreover to indict those figures, and by doing so we emphasise improvement. The goal should be to improve ourselves and others, not lapse into simple convenience. Can we avoid that deal?

Work is Love made Visible

Writing is much harder than reading. We must take in before we can produce output. Especially as we have all learned to be consumers. There is much we should consume, that is there is much we should take in. Yet we must give back. We feel the human need to give back and we just acknowledge it. There is no ultimate why to the necessity of giving and that is it’s greatest beauty and greatest justification. Only then can there be sincere giving; love. “and all work is empty save when there is love; and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God”.

Liberal Democracy. John Stuart Mill. This idea and this person have much in common but overall I am struck by fallibility, their failings, really their incompleteness (and with these two I think that is the point. Their projects were dialogic, so they can be incomplete and yet have made achievements at the same time). Mill seemed to have colonial sympathies, perhaps he repented towards the end of his life I’m not sure, while Liberal Democracy has economic inequality amongst other very threatening faults. Namely, it’s questionable ability to protect minorities and individuals (especially Muslims) and the ability of people to ably be citizens in a globalised world with some of the most complicated problems I think round off the 3 main problems. Media dominations, excessive short-term emphasis, politically apathetic citizenry are also issues to be weary of and rather tie in to the about. Equality, rights & justice and a sustaining, functional public sphere. Nonetheless, without the efforts of both (and the latter was, while not necessary, a sufficient cause to the speed at which liberal democracy unrolled in history) I feel wholeheartedly that the world would be in a worse off place. I also feel its easy to take them for granted with the normalisation of their successes and it is hard to learn and comprehend the many many near misses throughout the twentieth century of the utter destruction of their legacies and probably humanity. This is why I loath Marx. I sympathise with his ideas yet believe he would of sided with the “any means necessary” mentality of last century’s destroyers. I believe liberal democracy ensures creation and life to the maximum. Liberal democracy also, I believe, is the surest means of avoiding cruelty, tragedy, destruction. We all must side with liberal democracy “to be men not destroyers”.