Light and Dark

It is funny how in youth, enthusiasm bursts forth with the energy of the brightest star in the celestial sky, only to descend into darkness...ever more intense darkness. That's adolescence for you.

But how does this intense polarization represent something other than nihilism in modern politics? Neither extreme point is "healthy" for the pysche of youth. Perpetual rebelliousness, without understanding rebellion as something more substantive than crude reactions against "something" - authority, rules, "the machine". Rebellion as reaction invariably descends into a neutered nihilism. A majority of the 60s youth have come to accept the values that they rebelled against...they grew up and thought better of it. Their rebellion was empty to start with. Fucking, shooting up, and getting high ain't rebellion; it's just fucking, shooting up, and getting high.

Rebellion is often seen as an all-or-nothing proposition. "Don't you go to rallies or protest or picket?" All of those things are admirable steps towards genuine action, just as long as you don't need to participate for the sake of normativity, i.e. "I think I should", or, even worse, harbour the need to lord it over others in order to reinforce a sense of superiority.

The reactive element present in modern liberalism is an extension of this teenage angst. This isn't new or all that interesting. But the alignment of "good" activism against "evil" corporatism is, first, far too parisimonious, and, second, leads to nihilism. There comes a point when the radical battle is challenged by great adversity, when its constitutive "rebels" are persecuted and castigated. What then? What recourse does an individual sensualist take? The answer is the path of least resistance - the one that requires no thought or work at all. "Can't beat them? Join them!"

By drawing the lines of combat with vitriol, both sides have conceded defeat. The fluidity and flexibility valued by Sun-Tzu is utterly foreign in this context. Darkness is as facile as light. Spirit is absent when light is pitted against darkness in uncompromising antagonism. It is rather the meeting of light and dark is where meaning lies. But, alas, those in power often cling onto purity - in the abstract - rather than confront the contradictions that arise in actuality.

Great Expectations (Disappointments)

What hopes and dreams do we have for our lives? Is it the bourgeois dream; of comforts and security that exist at costs of which we remain utterly oblivious ? Is it the utopian dream of the end of history, the end of conflict, the culmination of all contradictions, and the reign of eternal peacability? Or is it the dream of the Beyond, the survival of spirit in the face of worldly temptations and entanglements?

Attached to grand expectations is crushing disillusionment. Nihilism is idealism gone astray. The choice is not an either/or. What we envision, what the self imagines is brought to bear in the world through action. The creations of the mind requires the labour of man. The idealist who grows disengaged from actuality sees himself as Creator. Sartre held stringently that God was dead, because he wanted to occupy the space of the divine intellect. He wanted to be the one that provided wisdom and hope. The philosopher, since Plato and Aristotle, has wanted to provide ideas that would give people hope, but in the process, establish themselves as prophet, philosopher-king or philosopher-Lord.

Hope is important to life. But hope is empty if merely a program. Hope is vacuous if it produces ends and dictate means. Hope is superficial when salvation is akin to capitulation. Hope can not be promised from beyond, for actualization lies only in our ephemeral encounters with earth and with life. "Abandon all false hope", is that what the title means?

Why does humanity so often look to the heavens for hope? Is it because the majority of human beings are complacent creatures? No, if this were true, the human race would long ago have perished. It is because humanity, since its most nascent periods, have had a belief in the sacred, in something incommensurable beyond the ephemeral.

This fascination with sacredness provides life with meaning and gives the community a spiritual centre. The sacred, although serious, involved a sense of play, such as the retelling of myths from one generation to another. Spirits grew along with the communities who revered them. But as human life 'progressed' from primative villages to modern cities, the emergence of religion codified the sacred, and made the radical exclusion between the chosen and the heathen. This is true of western 'religions', in addition to, as Raymond Aron put it, 'secular religions'. The division between inside and outside, between believer and non-believer, of course has existed since the very beginning of monotheistic worship. But the violence of partition has been most pronounced in the modern world. Why is this the case? Why has "clashes of faith" become the impetus for unspeakable violence in the name of sacred godheads?

In the face of a world where life is extraneous to the process, man is fully aware of his limitations. He loathes his own limitedness - his human nature. His fascination with the universal has forced him to transgress, to dominate, and to devour all others that do not conform to his particular 'universal' world-view. Once religion occupies the universal, the battle has already been lost. Humanity, confronted with the crisis of humanity, has aligned itself with nihilism. Unable to accept the fall from great expectations, it retrenches and clings to the now impossible dream - fulfilling an illusion and refusing to encounter the actual.

Nihilism flowers within the disaffected, be it the disillusioned romantic or the disciple who sees his saviour still laying dead on the third morning.

Chhhange...

Who I am now is not who I will be. The future is unlike the past, but progess often appears as regress. Who am I now is not who I will be. But who I will be is not radically different from now. Lessons are learned and re-learned...and eventually forgotten. Tragedy weighs heavy on the spirit of the thinker. But we return to tragedy again and again. Some overcome it. Others are ensnared in its irrational logic. In the face of unspeakable evil, moral reflexes demand purification, by any means necessary. But the pure exists only in the Platonic world of forms.

In life, purity is a dangerous illusion. Evil and good - we cannot go beyond, nor choose either or. 'Evil' and 'Good' are invariably linked in the life of humanity. The task of man is not to grow intoxicated by the 'good' and absolutely reject 'evil'. This brings humanity only to grief, contributing to a wholesale rejection of the ephemeral as impure and pointing man towards the world of purity, of good in its supposedly absolute perfection. Salvation and redemption, for those who accept this, comes from above. Humanity's task, hence, is simply to obey and to surrender to the divine intellect, conceding that the particular intellect will succumb to imperfection. They wait passively for perfection. However, those who attempt to bring the order of heavens to earth - those who actively pursue perfection - are far more dangerous. They hold the particular intellect as being akin to the divine. The desire for pure uniformity on this earth unleashes the most destructive impulses. Schmitt's desire for homogeneity in the body politic lead him to accept - tacitly or not - repugant means in order to achieve an impossible end. The friend-enemy distinction is built upon a radical antagonism between good and evil. Is such a division possible, when we are confronted with the contingencies of life? Schmitt's thought, hence, did not seek to confront a situation in a sober manner. It seeks to return to a purity that never existed.

Progess oddly resembles regress and return. But it isn't progress. What I am now is not what I will be. What I will be cannot be what I am now. But the differences are never so obvious. I cannot cleanly reject and renounce my past selves. I change and understand that the circumstances that confront me do change as well. Heraclitus was right to say that the world, for those awake, is in flux. But we must not let flux overwhelm us, forcing us to succumb to our own illusions. Accept the unforeseen as flux, and soon you will see that it is not repressive. The unpredictable will appear, for those in the world of the waking, very much like the impulse of freedom.

Rambo Meets Rocky...in Hell

Rambo gets captured, beheaded, and pissed on. Since Rambo is revealed to be an inadequate Nancy-boy ill-equipped to deal with the demands of (post)modern warfare, America looks to a real hero for guidance and inspiration. Rocky, enraged at the news of Rambo's demise, vows to win the War on Terror singlehandedly in a metaphysical fistfight with Mohammad.

Don King, like always, plays a pivotal hand in setting up the fight - although he reportedly torn to shreds by an angry mob for repeatedly saying "Only in America" throughout a press conference in Fallujah. Well, that and he was responsible for promotional posters that prominently featured the likeness of Mohammad, posing in boxing trunks, surrounded by kneeling buxom red, white, and blue beauties - tongues out, ostensibly readied for fellatio. Conspiracy theorists, however, contend a gunshot from the grass knoll ricocheted through several bodies before tearing apart King's skull. "There must have been several shooters," one of them says.

This monumental loss of a virtuous and invaluable American entrepreneur only adds to Rocky's resolve to win. He trains by shoulder pressing American self-righteousness, nearly succumbing to the stress the deed inflicts on his body. Rather than chase chickens for speed, he visits a quail farm to dodge Dick Cheney's relentless barrage. For endurance, he tries to sit through all political speeches that exploit 9/11 for partisan political gain. Having survived the most arduous training of his life, he meets up with a reincarnated Mick to venture into the Abyss, a.k.a. Las Vegas, for the fight of his life. After 15 fierce rounds of gimmicked punches and closeups of the audience's pained pensive looks, the match goes to the cards.

Its a split decision.

Allah scores it 147-144 Mohammad.

Jesus scores it 147-146 Rocky.

Elvis scores it 147-144 Rocky.

Rocky, overwhelmed by the sight of the partisan Muslim crowd chanting at alternate intervals "Rocky", "USA, USA", and "All Hail Bush", busts out his classic speech from Rocky IV - "If I can change, then you can change, and we can change..."

Elvis busts out a gun and shoots the television monitor in front of him before assassinating Jesus and Allah. He ends the film with one line, "There's only one King, uh huh huh!"

Power is not innately evil

Modern political discourse is degenerate. The feints and fades of a self-assertive politics distract people from acknowledging the actual crisis humanity faces in the twenty-first century. “We’re in power and you’re not,” is what, at times, passes for a coherent political assertion. On the other hand, “you’re fascists and we’re not” is what passes for a coherent rebuttal. ‘We’ is a thin disguise under which ‘me’ can find fulfillment. There are no we. Fellowship does not exist for those who seek personal triumph, those who strive for dominance over their Oedipus. An initial question demands an answer: when has name-calling become the central means of political communication?

“Liberal!” is rebutted with “Conservative!” Exclamation points express outrage, in an attempt to enhance the condemnation of wrong values. One word says it all apparently. The idea of reciprocity is extinct. Calumnies and mistruth are seductive paths to power. The assumption is that reciprocity leads only to greater discord, for treachery is naturally ingrained in men. Those who seek power for personal gain, pursue it as a redeemer wielding a sword. Power is not evil; to demonize power is to demonstrate a profound ignorance about politics. It is, as Buber implies, ‘power hysteria’ that is problematic. “Power”, he writes, “is the precondition for the actions of man.” Political communication, via reciprocal discourse, cannot be conducted as mere functions of a mechanic process or of the political party. The mechanism is preoccupied solely with the end, namely power as triumph, power as cudgel. Power is not an end in of itself. To conceive power abstractly is a temptation far too alluring, but in the end leaves one utterly empty.

Power is the ability to act in fellowship with others. Power is not a right to impose “community” on them. Fellowship is not defined by rules valid once and for all. Free actions cannot be judged and constrained merely by such rules. Morality makes stupid precisely because morality absolves humanity of thoughtful engagement, from acknowledging and affirming human limits within a complex and ambiguous world. The ostensible parsimony imposed by ‘political morality’ seeks to provide easy answers for a life full of paradox and contradiction.

Hunger

Hunger drives man. Hunger comes from the union of will and necessity. Necessity, however, poses no limitation to willed striving.

There is no clear divide between hunger and sloth, between necessity and vanity. For the one who has succumbed to megalomania, vanity is neccesity; limits are only for the weak, for the slave, for the dominated. But indulgence, taken to excess, leads to degeneration.

Excess exposes the human body to diesase. Decadence lead empires to decay. And arrogance chains the individual intellect to ignorance. The problem of will and necessity is infinitely problematic once the individual exercises rationality to justify a pursuit of excess as an integral satiation of necessity.

The individual rationality legitimates sloth and greed, because, at heart, it is the grandest art of dissimulation - the lie that deceives even the deceiver.

Sage paradox

“A man who follows an ‘intellectual profession’ must pause time after time in the midst of his activity as he becomes aware of the paradox he is pursuing.”

Martin Buber, “Healing through Meeting”

Know thyself

Know thyself. Live true to oneself. What does this mean? Is the genuine self ever-absent, waiting for a moment of 'truth' in order to come into being? How must life feel for the tormented soul? He cannot know himself, for that understanding is filled with hatred and nothing else. He lives out the lives set out for him. He follows the path crafted out for him. And somewhere at the end of that path supposedly lies redemption, a salvation promised at the start of his journey. Fulfilment, acclaim, and true being is achieved. For him, know thyself is appropriately extraneous to a predestined path to actualization.

Proximity absent immediacy

Two duelists start with their backs touching; a position that represents, if only in the realm of form, the just grounds of the contest. It is assumed that each will take ten paces before a victor will be decided. All things external to the duel are disregarded, as an ostensibly equal starting point acts as the definitive originary occasion, initiating a course that will end in triumph or defeat. Both march ten paces. Their faces do not meet until the fatal blow – proximity absent immediacy. At ten, each turns to face his adversary - stepping onto an indeterminate plane between life and death. When they do meet, only the bullet has immediacy. Taken to its rational limit, conflict is resolved by the fatal blow. If the ecstasy of struggle provides life its vigor, the duel is the heightened state of Being. For the one who triumphs, he knows “the judgment of God” is, as it always has been, rendered in his favor. Although victory transgresses the ethical norms of society, the terms of the duel were agreed upon under divine purview – hence, any “sin” is absolved by the exception made by the judgment of God, expressed in result. And an act normally considered murder is but a simple ephemeral event, confirming the victor’s convictions and principles to be favoured by God – for now, until the next duel.

So why does Schmitt extrapolate the duel situation into the realm of political conflict? It is the most direct way to create the grounds for the heroic figure, the prophet-messiah, to emerge and redeem the political. The political for Schmitt, as we are reminded again and again, is defined by the sovereign decision regarding the exception. The otherworldly ability to decide can only inspire when taken to its rational limit and beyond: the decision over life and death. For this is a decision once ascribed to God, before his untimely death, now brought to bear by the great hero - a man apparently worthy of divinity. For a man who wrote a tract on the hazards of romanticism in politics, Schmitt's account of leadership is abysmally romantic.

He exploits Kierkegaard's (Constantin Constantius') comments in Repitition on norms and exception to substantiate a politics of conviction alone.

"Eventually one grows weary of the incessant chatter about the universal and the universal repeated to the point of the most boring insipidity. There are exceptions. If they cannot be explained, then the universal cannot be explained, either. Generally, the difficulty is not noticed because one thinks the universal not with passion but with a comfortable superficality. The exception, however, thinks the universal with intense passion." (Fear and Trembling/Repetition, p. 227)

But to think about the exception is much different from a sovereign decision over the exception. Thinking about exceptions is part of the task of dealing with the paradoxical nature of life. These paradoxes cannot be coated over with the veneer of existing normality, and discarded. To do so would align oneself to Cephalus - attending to the normal rituals of life, i.e. sacrifices, while leaving Socrates and the others to tackle more indeterminate matters. But Schmitt decides that such a confrontation of "real" situations requires the unified will of the people to be expressed in the will of the sovereign, insofar that it is this character who can address the situation politically. The romantic notion of a homogenous people is central to this. How can one bring to bear a homogenous people or Volk? Possibly a purge of all elements repugnant to homogeneity. The destruction of internal and external enemies alike? Does Schmitt take the individual modern subject to its extreme, providing it with the illusion of divine power? Is it better to worship an ass rather than no god at all? Oddly, there may be striking similarities between Schmitt's existentialism and Sartre's, which escape me at this moment - and may be entirely erroneous.

Carl Schmitt – Political Theology

Carl Schmitt – Political Theology

(5)

“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

“Only this definition can do justice to a borderline concept. Contrary to the imprecise terminology found in popular literature, a borderline concept is not a vague concept is not a vague concept, but one pertaining to the outermost sphere.”

“This definition of sovereignty must therefore be associated with a borderline case and not with routine.”

“It will soon become clear that the exception is to be understood to refer to a general concept in the theory of the state, and not merely to a construct applied to any emergency decree or state of siege.”

(6)

“The decision on the exception is a decision in the true sense of the word. Because a general norm, as repressed by an ordinary legal prescription, can never encompass a total exception, the decision that a real exception exists cannot therefore be entirely derived from this norm.”

“The exception, which is not codified in the existing legal order, can at best be characterized as a case of extreme peril, a danger to the existence of the state, or the like. But it cannot be circumscribed factually and made to conform to a preformed law.”

“It is precisely the exception that makes relevant the subject of sovereignty, that is, the whole question of sovereignty.”

(7)

“The most guidance the constitution can provide is to indicate who can act in such a case.”

(8)

“This is what is truly impressive in his definition of sovereignty; by considering sovereignty to be indivisible, he finally settled the question of power in the state” – referring to Jean Bodin

(9)

“Sometimes the people and sometimes the prince would rule, and that would be contrary to all reason and all law. Because the authority to suspend valid law – be it in general or in a specific case – is so much the actual mark of sovereignty

“But sovereignty (and thus the state itself) resides in deciding this controversy, that is, in determining definitively what constitutes public order and security, in determining when they are disturbed…”

(10)

“Whether God alone is sovereign, that is, the one who acts as his acknowledged representative on earth, or the emperor, or the prince, or the people, meaning those who identify themselves directly with the people, the question is always aimed at the subject of sovereignty, at the application of the concept to a concrete condition.”

(12)

“What characterizes an exception is principally unlimited authority, which means the suspension of the entire existing order. In such a situation it is clear that the state remains, whereas law recedes.”

“The existence of the state is undoubted proof of its superiority over the validity of the legal norm. The decision frees itself from all normative ties and becomes in the true sense absolute.”

(13)

“All law is “situational law”. The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision. Therein resides the essence of the state’s sovereignty, which must be juristically defined correctly, not as the monopoly to coerce or to rule, but as the monopoly to decide. The exception reveals most clearly the essence of the state’s authority. The decision parts here from the legal norm, and (to formulate it paradoxically) authority proves that to produce law it need not be based on law.”

(14)

“It would be consequent rationalism to say that the exception proves nothing and that only the normal can be the object of scientific interest.”

(15)

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: it confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception.”

“In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.”

(32)

“A point of ascription first determines what a norm is and what normative rightness is. A point of ascription cannot be derived from a norm, only a quality of content.”

(34)

“Mathematical relativism and nominalism also operate concurrently.”

“What matters for the reality of legal life is who decides.”

(35)

“In contrast between the subject and the content of a decision and in the proper meaning of the subject lies the problem of the juristic form. It does not have the a priori emptiness of the transcendental form because it arises precisely from the juristically concrete. The juristic form is also not the form of technical precision because the latter has a goal-oriented interest that is essentially material and impersonal. Finally, it is also not the from of aesthetic production, because the latter knows no decision.”

(42)

“When Kelsen gives the reasons for opting for democracy, he openly reveals the mathematical and natural-scientific character of his thinking. Democracy is the expression of political relativism and a scientific orientation that are liberated from miracles and dogmas and based on human understanding and critical doubt.”

(47)

“The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were dominated by the idea of the sole sovereign, which is one of the reasons why, in addition to the decisionist cast of his thinking, Hobbes remained personalistic and postulated an ultimate concrete deciding instance, and why he also heightened the state, the Leviathan, into an immense person and thus point-blank straight into mythology.”

(48)

“The image of the architect and master builder of the world reflects a confusion that is characteristic of the concept of causality. The world architect is simultaneously the creator and legislator, which means the legitimizing authority.”

“Since then the consistency of exclusively scientific thinking has also permeated political ideas, repressing the essentially juristic-ethical thinking that had predominated in the age of Enlightenment. The general validity of a legal prescription has become identified with the lawfulness of nature, which applies without exception. The sovereign, who in the deistic view of the world, even if conceived as residing outside of the world, had remained the engineer of the great machine, has been radically pushed aside. The machine now runs itself.”

(49)

“To the conception of God in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries belongs the idea of his transcendence vis-à-vis the world, just as to the period’s philosophy of state belongs the notion of the transcendence of the sovereign vis-à-vis the state. Everything in the nineteenth century was increasingly governed by conceptions of immanence.”

(49-50)

“All identities that recur in the political ideas and in the state doctrines rest on such conceptions of immanence…”

(50)

“The battle against God was taken up by Proudhon under the clear influence of Auguste Comte…”

“The main line of development will undoubtedly unfold as follows: conceptions of transcendence will no longer be credible to most educated people, who will settle for either a more or less clear immanence – pantheism or a positivist indifference toward any metaphysics.”

“It is the solution that Hobbes also reached by the same kind of decisionist thinking, though mixed with mathematical relativism. Autoritas, non veritas facit legem. (Authority, not the truth establishes the law)”

The crisis point

Action is done in reaction to crisis, or the anticipation of crisis. Crisis has three sources: natural occurrence such as a natural disaster (and at times compounded by human incompetence, as was the case in the Bayou), a culmination of human inactivity such as procrastination in the case of most university students, and interhuman miscommunication, the broad catch words of "alienation" and "antagonism" apply to this.

The first type of crisis is created by means beyond man's control, although prudent and reasoned measures can be employed in anticipation. Such measures are left to decision makers, who are assumed to govern with virtú (political virtue). Hence, decision-makers are entrusted with the lofty task of making such decisions.

The central premise of modern sovereignty, as Carl Schmitt presents it, is the potentiality of crisis. The need for the sovereign decision is justified against the possibility of crisis, of a situation in which a decision regarding exceptional measures must be made to address abnormal conditions. Schmitt was a prominent jurist in Weimar Germany, but his formulation, "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception", is indeed an extralegal notion; a notion that is not specific only to matters of legality. But a question must be asked, why must the decision be defined by what are crisis points? Or to pose the question another way, why do people leave the decision to the sovereign?

Crisis, Schmitt argues in Political Theology, is an inescapable limit condition of humanity. The norm cannot be without exception. The exception, at once, proves and transgresses the norm. The norm explains nothing, the exception everything. As is beautifully explored in Sören Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, Abraham, commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, embodies a crisis of faith. Schmitt cites Kierkegaard's Repetition in Political Theology, relating how the sovereign decision on the exception breaks from the "crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition". But from what I can recall from Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard concludes that there is a "teleological suspension of the ethical".

God, in asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, is demanding an act of faith that crosses the borders of the ethical, into the realm of the absurd. Abraham's act of faith is, hence, a transgression of the ethical norms set down by God himself. But his transgression is also one demanded by God. In short, the paradoxical delimitation of limits present in Schmitt's exception elaborates upon a theological problem long present in Christian theology. This revelation isn't groundbreaking or necessarily all that interesting - he basically implies it in Political Theology, but it helped make a clearer connection between Schmitt and Kierkegaard. What Schmitt envisions in modern sovereignty is a return to a potent decision: of life and death. But what then is the crisis. Why must crisis come to be before this decision is to be made?

It is of course that such a decision cannot come about inside or outside; it is a product of the limits. The sovereign decision is analogous to the miracle in theology, he writes. The miracle is, of course, a paradox of presence and absence. The source of a miracle is assumed to be transcendent, although it happens in the immanent world. The miracle is at the limit between the absent, unknown, and inexplicable mystery and the known rational world of experience. The mystery of the source of the sovereign decision does not translate in the analogy; the sovereign makes the decision. But the manner in which the decision is made is not necessarily rational or adherent to existing norms. The civic humanist ideal of the magistrate who comports himself with virtue, while also beholden to the same codes as other citizens, does not apply here.

The sovereign cannot be sovereign without being able to act extralegally. He who cannot transgress the norm is not sovereign. When Schmitt writes about the Counter-Revolutionary thought of Donso Cortés, he focuses on Cortés' disdain of base humanity. Donso Cortés, according to Schmitt, thought that "the victory of evil is self-evident and natural, and only a miracle by God can avert it" (Political Theology, 58) Cortés despised the bourgeoisie as a "discussing class", a class wanting to evade the decision (59). The vital and virile quality of the decision is apparent when compared to liberal norms. Schmitt, although a highly problemmatic thinker, poses an integral question, what are norms without the exception? The norms are illusions if the exception is ignored. The limit-conditions define the inside and the outside.

If one looks to Alberti's simple illustration of perspective, he constructs it from a point and lines. The representation of depth, shadow, and perspective is not possible without first defining -
definition being the domain of the artist - the centric point and the rays (lines) that provide the painting with a form that content fills. To approach content prior to form would be empty and meaningless. Freedom is not possible without limits, as Kant would contend. The question still remains: why must matters come to crisis before a decision can address it? The decision, according to Schmitt, addresses a concrete situation; it is formulated against a pressing situation. In other words, the decision is at its most sharpest and effectual when addressing the conditions of crisis. The assumption is that the state must possess this "monopoly to decide" because only the sovereign, possessing intimate knowledge of the definitions of the state (lines, points, planes - laws) and a monopoly over information regarding changing conditions can best recognize the presence of crisis.

The particular individual, mired in private matters, most pressing of all, subsistence, cannot possibly recognize much less confront such crises. Hence, the monopoly to decide, for Schmitt, underlies even Weber's notion of the "monopoly over violence". The former justifies the latter; without the possibility of dangers, threats, and crisis, a "monopoly over violence" could not be held by the state. Overawed the possibility of danger, i.e. violent death, and unable to address crisis, individual citizens consent amongst themselves to the power of the state. The possibility of crisis, of violent and uncurbed strife, is in Schmitt's estimation ever-present. Decisions come to between people are, by definition, ones that only can deal with norms, and cannot address 'emergency situations'. That is left to the sovereign, who is at once within and above the law.

Regression

Regression is happenstance. It happens so subtly that one does not recognize its grip until its far too late. Improvement or progress requires constant work. It demands commitment and determination. Regardless of the clichés, it is true that progress cannot be made under the thumb of complacency. The television steals away time and helps the laggard to indulge in what makes him happy and content. Happiness is not a sin. But if you stay muted by complacency, you will never contribute to the world. The slacker lifestyle is romanticized. The slacker thinks of himself as a genius-in-waiting, a hipster who is not going to conform. “I could do it…if I wanted to” is not a valid excuse. The platitudes are not entirely wrong. Is work a matter of duty, a matter of moral rectitude? It certainly is not. Work is intimately related to existence. Work is not an accumulation of merit for a place beyond, in anticipation of divine judgment. Work involves understanding the world, communicating with others to work towards community. It demands that we do not allow others to lead us aimlessly through the catacombs of modernity.

Repetition-Repetition

Some time went by.

- He begins part two with a temporal expression of movement. He does not ascribe to time an absolute objectivity. Some time went by. Not All time went by. Some time went by, expired; bringing his world back to order after his servant rectified the topsy-turvy state of his residence.

A monotonous and unvarying order was established in my whole economy. Everything unable to move stood in its appointed place, and everything that moved went its calculated course: my clock, my servant, and I, myself, who with measured pace walked up and down the floor.

- Note the parallel between his pacing back and forth to the story of Diogenes at the very beginning of part one (p. 131). What is the significance does this hold? Possibly none at all or it is of considerable importance; but nothing in between. The point may be – in reference to his reflections regarding movement later on in the Supplement sections – that movement need not be contrary to the idea of repetition. He walks with measured place; an act that is deliberate on his part, because, as he notes, everything went its calculated course. If such a course is the product of conscious effort, how does he move from repetition as a purely immanent category to a category of the transcendental? Calculated course – each thing has its assigned and proper place. Calculated, but by whom? Hence, who calculates this course? Does he? Does rationality? Is he rational in the pursuing the calculated course? Or is the calculated course rational in allowing him to exist in its invariable stream towards its ordained end? Is his existence dependent upon the calculated course? It is, if he does not believe in repetition as he contends. Or does the calculated course dependent on his decision not to act contrary to it?

Although I had convinced myself that there is no repetition, it nevertheless is always certain and true that by being inflexible and also by dulling one’s powers of observation a person can achieve a sameness that has a far more anesthetic power than the most whimsical amusements and that, like a magical formulary, in the course of time also becomes more and more powerful.

- The key part is dulling one’s powers of observation. He is making fun of his own disbelief of repetition – or at least on the surface, this appears to be the case. A disbelief in repetition, as is broached here, leads to a belief in progress towards sameness – the unified telos – or end of time, perhaps? This promise of eternal sameness and calculated course towards is anesthetic; but in what way is this so? Is it because it is without whimsy, it presents itself as science, a determinism that frees man from his problematic relation to freedom (or free will) – something that ostensibly lead to temptation and angst? Without freedom, man lives without the sibboleth of possible error. Any occurrence of error is impossible, for the process – determined or pre-determined, according to perspective - is assumed to be infallible, parallel to the course of the divine. Hence, Constantius’ preoccupation with established and enduring order illuminates this disjunction between human freedom and eternal order; one must be suppressed for the sake of the other. So, can progress be with repetition, or must progress be without repetition? He paces back and forth, as Diogenes did to refute the Eleatics’ denial of motion. Progress has no back and forth, or so it is assumed. Progress is rarely anything but a linear movement – or at least on the surface movements. But what does the back and forth movement represent? Is it important or merely fulfilling the calculated course of events? Does the content of the movement – back and forth, up and down, left and right – matter if the path itself is drawn before the movement? Is it calculation, as form, that dictates the path of progress? If the calculated course was to spin on one’s head, would that change its own progression towards sameness – reaching the apex of parvenu motion, achieving eternal sameness? Sameness is expressed in form, never in the particular. Form can be uniform. Particular motions are, by definition of its unique individual place, incongruent. Hence, one can spin on his head at a rapid pace, moderate pace, or at a speed that barely completes a single rotation. The sameness is in the form – the act of spinning on one’s head – rather than the particular act itself, where there are invariably differences. But this is rather uninteresting. Let’s move on to Constantius’ revelations.

To maintain this established and enduring order, I made use of every possible expedient. At certain times, like Emperor Domitian, I even walked around the room armed with a flyswatter, pursuing every revolutionary fly. Three flies, however, were perserved to fly buzzing through the room at specified times. Thus, I did live, forgetting the world and, as I thought, forgotten, when one day a letter arrived from my young friend.

- Deformation for order. Let’s really do move on. He swats flies. Time goes by. The world is forgotten, as – at least, he assumes – it has forgotten him. He is sovereign of the room and the flies that occupy it. He swats the revolutionary ones, but allows three to fly around. He is sovereign. He decides on the right to die and sentencing of life. Once again, this is a surface reading, a pedantic one at that. The sovereign individual does not merely swat flies; his game is far more intriguing, the most dangerous of beasts – man. In the universe of the most minute, even the lowliest man can be god. This returns to the young man, slightly ill from his brush with romantic love, helpless in the face of an unpredictable fate.

From his letter, I see what I knew before, that like any melancholiac he is quite irritable and, despite this irritability as well as because of it, is in a state of continual self-contradiction.

- The young man, he concludes, wants to confide in Constantius, but wants only silence from his confidant. The young man secretly believes him to be mad. Once again, what is madness – or to be more precise, what is madness in relation to repetition? Is madness the refutation of repetition? Madness is the refutation of repetition – choosing one linear set of occurrences as the reality of progression, denying the validity of all other possible trajectories. The uniform path has movement, but at the same time it doesn’t. It solidifies into a uniform event – in this case, a man sitting in his home swatting some flies with everything in its right and proper place. So who is truly mad? The self-contradicting young man, conflicted and unsure; or is it the man who swats flies in his kingdom, while forgetting the world…out there?

My position as confidant is even more critical, for he is even more chaste with his mysteries; he becomes ever so angry when I do what he most urgently requests – when I keep silent.

- If nothing else, the young man, Constantius notes, continues along the calculated course of irritability – continual self-contradiction. This course makes his role of confidant more defined early on, eventually sliding into a more indeterminate place? It is the young man’s reflections on Job that motivates him to imply the young man is a poet, in conflict with life. It is in Job that he discovers the double, getting everything doubled. It is the young man who claims to discover repetition, while the first part - as Constantius reveals in his response to Heiberg - is a jest, pure and simple jest, by revealing "his own" futile search for repetition; in his Berlin flat and in theatrical farce.

How comforting, then, that the one from whom one seeks advice and explanation is – mad! Then there is no need to be ashamed. Talking with a person like that, after all, is like talking to a tree, “something one does merely out of curiosity” – if anyone should ask about it. An observer knows how to appear easygoing; otherwise no one opens up. Above all, he guards against being ethically rigorous or portraying himself as the morally upright man. There is a degenerate man, one says, he has taken part, has had some wild experiences, ergo, I can certainly confide in him, I who am far superior to him! Well, so be it. I ask nothing of men but the substance of their consciousness. I scale it, and if it is weighty, no price is too high for me.

- This is all bullshit. He is speaking of the psychological dynamic playing out between him and the young man. The young man sees him as a marginal figure, hence, a figure that cannot judge him, which explains his request for silence. The young man fears judgment most of all. That is what dissuades him in pursuing the romance with the girl. Or is it? Maybe what I am writing is bullshit. No shit.

The issue that brings him to a halt is nothing more not less than repetition. He is right not to seek clarification in philosophy, either Greek or modern, for the Greeks make the opposite movement, and here a Greek would choose to recollect without tormenting his conscience. Modern philosophy makes no movement; as a rule it makes only a commotion, and if it makes any philosophy at all, it is always within immanence, whereas repetition is and remains a transcendence. (186)

Anger

I can’t help it. Anger courses through my veins. A lot of things make me angry. But I suspect that anger is part of this limited being that I am.

So many things are going wrong. People often blather on about sanctimonious agendas without knowing what is truly at stake. They judge rather than listen. And as much as I want to point my finger, I know I can’t. If I turned to accusatory judgment, I would only fall into those pitfalls.

The mystery of communication requires that the parties enter in a spirit of openness. Spirit is a word that has taken such a brutal beating. From St. Paul to Hegel, spirit has come to connote something far different from its basic meaning – namely, harmony. Hegel ossifies harmony into a static and ultimate unity, an end to history. The notion of harmony is lost on a modern, and largely commodity based, society. For liberal society, harmony can only be attained in the private realm, for it is in private where the individual has control.

Harmony, as Taoist and Confucian philosophy has taught us, is far from stasis, far from an atemporal utopia. Harmony requires the continual cultivation of relationships between people. Without the right action of people, Confucius said, heaven would fall. People don’t speak about ancestors, lest they appear non-progressive or archaic in their thought. Some people – this is not a generalization at all – cannot think about anything outside of their wardrobes, cars, women/men, and various objects of enjoyment. Others cannot conceive of politics apart from left and right; democrat and republican; my rights versus your repression; righteousness and evil. Most do not want to think at all. Thinking causes wrinkles, didn’t you know?

I cannot claim dominion over truth, because, in all honesty, truth cannot be the exclusive domain of me, you, any individual, any groups of individuals, any confederation of groups, or any planet of confederations. The Truth – the one spelt with the big T – is the most lethal weapon known to man. The Truth alienates. The Truth divides. The Truth needs conquest to reify It, and violence to proliferate. The Truth does not set you free. It enslaves absolutely. Science is held to be Truth, and that is false. Morality is held to be Truth, and it is corrupt. The Man who holds himself to be Truth; it is he who is most false and corrupt. The diminution of human thought is aligned to this constant need for facts, for evidence, for indisputable proof to squelch the opposition, to destroy difference, and to control the ‘discourse’.

Oh, so many will say, “I cannot feed my children with mere talk. I need a man of action, of decisiveness to lead.” But there is the problem. We look to the heroic figure to lead, but fail to realize that heroes are sheep too.

Here I stand; I got TV to watch, movies to rent, parties to crash, people to fuck. Alas, it is a crisis of meaning. Is there meaning to be found amidst the constant clamour of the rat race, with the cacophony of car horns, ring tones, subwoofers, and the tumultuous pretence, suffused with catch-phrases and clichés, that masquerades as conversation? Modern man can’t get over himself to give a shit. But this is not new. Many people have been shouting about this till blue in the face, impoverished, marginalized, and ultimately ridiculed for being so unruly and miserably "unsuccessful" and "unaccomplished".

We are not talking about the Ghandis, the Martin Luther Kings, the Rosa Parks, or the Nelson Mandelas of the world. They have holidays named after them; movies, miniseries, a whole litany of third-rate heliographies and hallmark cards with their faces plastered on them. These figures are part of a for-profit lexicon. Much money can be made off the hero, only so much off of the criminal. Just ask OJ. Anger courses through my veins, and I still don’t know why.

Lets Raise a Glass...

Lets raise a glass in honor of Bret "The Hitman" Hart. Sure he was inducted into a Hall of Fame that includes as its members Pete Rose and William "The Fridge" Perry, but there was never a harder working pro wrestler than the Hitman. Congratulations Hitman! You were a true hero for a young adolescent long ago. And that will never be forgotten.

Modernity and masculinity

Modern masculinity - is it the product of modernity or its arche? The saying "be a man" doesn't mean be a man, but appear to be a man. Appearance demands the performance of the ritualistic pantomimes of masculinity - chest pounding, womanizing, and above all else loud self-promotion. But is the metrosexual a better alternative? No, the appearance, even if "liberated" from the content of traditional masculinity, takes on the same vain and insecure form. The aesthetic judgment of the metrosexual may be far worse than the thoughtless brute expressions of the faux-man.

Being is not in appearance but in action. The ethos of masculinity has long been lost amidst the vanity of the modern subject. The question is: although resistance against patriarchy destablizes forms of domination, is the problem really one of domination? Isn't the problem precisely a perversed notion of masculinity? Are feminist studies not incomplete if they do not examine the decline of manhood within the modern context? The presumption that structures of domination are patriarchal is flawed.

The structures of domination foster adolescents who pose as men. Does this not follow from Hobbes? In the shadow of modernity, aren't the mass of men shaped into obedient beings; spoiled by privilege (freedoms guaranteed), but disempowered otherwise. Is it not more prudent to capitulate rather than act? To toady rather than lead? To live in the illusory norm rather than journey to the edge? The courageous conviction and bold creative impluse of the worldly man is indeed rare. What remains is the particularized, instrumental, obedient tool of rational progress; man alienated from his origins, in perpetual fear of Fortuna, submitting to a cause supposedly beyond himself.

Criticism contra cynicism

Can criticism be recovered from the complacent grasp of cynicism? Can wit be recovered from the dimwit? Sarcasm is the cynical reply of the dimwit; absent of response and of intelligence.

Yao!

Yao! Yao! YAO!

Agamben on Presentness

"The goal is inaccessible not because it is too far in the future but because it is present here in front of us: but its presence is constitutive of man's historicity, of his prennial longing for a nonexistent path, and of his inability to appropraite his own historical situation."