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."

The freedom of love

For this is guilt, if it is anything:
to fail to increase the freedom of a love
by all the freedom we can raise within ourselves.
When we love, we have, at most, this:
to let each other go; for holding on
comes easily, we don't have to learn it.


- Rainer Maria Rilke
From Requiem for a Friend

Eclipse of God

Martin Buber - Eclipse of God

“Religion and Ethics” pp. 95-111

The whole meaning of reciprocity, indeed, lies in just this, that it does not wish to impose itself but to be freely apprehended. It gives us something to apprehend but it does not give use the apprehension. (98-99)

The presupposition for this connection between the ethical and the religious, however, is the basic view that man, while created by God, was established by Him in an independence which has since remained undiminished. In this independence he stands over and against God. So man takes part with full freedom and spontaneity in the dialogue between the two which forms the essence of existence. That this is so despite God’s unlimited power and knowledge is just that which constitutes the mystery of man’s creation. In this is founded the lasting reality of the distinction and decision which man consummates in his soul. (105)

In the teachings of the correspondence between heaven and earth, found in the great Asiatic cultures, the normative principle is not yet differentiated at all from the theological (theology being understood as religion’s reflection on itself). There only exists a normative side of truth turned toward man. […] In Christianity, which gives the character of exclusiveness to the Israelite belief in the indispensable grace of God, the norm, even if it steps forth as the “new law,” can no longer occupy a central place. It is thus made easy for the secular norm to gain ever more ground at its expense. In its political form, to be sure, the secular norm seeks to secure an absolute religious basis through the concept of the divine right of kings and other means. The true binding of the ethical to the Absolute, however, is her ever less present.” (107)

This decline will end in nihilism, which he himself professes. This means that “the highest values lose their value” so that now a goal for existence is wanting. Nihilism shall now, however, be overcome through creating a goal “which will remain poised above mankind and above the individual.” This means that a new goal, a new meaning of existence and a new value, are set by Nietzsche’s teaching of the Superman. He has not noticed, to be sure, that all this is already basically abrogated through his other teaching, that of the eternal return of the same, which he himself calls “the extremest form of nihilism” and the eternalization of the meaningless. (110)

And again Nietzsche does not notice that all the ambiguity that has ever attached itself to the values good-evil is fatally surpassed by the intrinsic ambiguity of the values strong-weak. “The Sophists,” says Nietzsche, “have the courage common to all strong spirits of knowing their immorality. The Sophists were Greek; when Socrates and Plato took the part of virtue and righteousness, they were Jews or I know not what.” Nietzsche himself wanted to conquer the nihilism which he himself had consummated; as a result he came to grief. This is not meant in the sense in which one could say of Plato that he came to grief because he had no success in the historical course of events. What is meant, rather, is that in contradistinction to the doctrine of Ideas, the “teaching of the Superman” is no teaching at all and that in contradistinction to the value-scale defined by the idea of the Good, the value-scale strong-weak is no value-scale at all. (110-11)

The situation in which we find ourselves is partially conditioned by this abortive undertaking of nihilism both to fulfill and to overcome itself at the same time. But there is one thing that we may learn from nihilism. A purely moral structure of authority will not lead us out of this situation into a different one. (111)

“On the Suspension of the Ethical” pp. 115-120

False absolutes rule over the soul, which is no longer able to put them to flight through the image of the true. Everywhere, over the whole surface of the human world - in the East and in the West, from the left and from the right, they pierce the unhindered through the level of the ethical and demand of you “the sacrifice.” Time and again, when I ask well-conditioned young souls, “Why do you give up your dearest possession, your personal integrity?” they answer me, “Even this, this most difficult sacrifice, is the thing that is needed in order that…” It makes no difference, “in order that equality may come” or “in order that freedom may come,” it makes no difference! And they bring the sacrifice faithfully. In the realm of Moloch honest men lie and compassionate men torture. And they really and truly believe that brother-murder will prepare the way for brotherhood! There appears to be no escape from the most evil of all idolatry. (119-20)

The written word verges on the absurd

The written word verges on the absurd. It attempts to express the inexpressible; the imperfect murmurs of the soul. Through the pen, a fiend ennobles himself; the coward pilfers accolades reserved for the brave. Words deceive. Words enrapture. They tempt and seduce - beautifying lies and falsehood for the solipsist's ear. "I'll tell you what you want," the sycophant says. Don't you sense it? Can you not sense the venom bubbling below spineless toadying? This reflects the duplicitous nature of the word. Much like anything else in a "modern" world, appearances seduce and intoxicate. But without the word, there is no communication. Without the word, there is no encounter. Without the word, relationship is impossible. By stepping out of the cocoon of the individual soul, I invariably encounter duplicity masked as "authenticity". That is the risk of turning to the other. But without trust, we are deprived of our humanity. Without trust, we remain objects, employed in the pursuit of abstract Ends or fodder exhausted for parochial machinations. In order to hold back the growth of techno-bureaucratic mechanisms over the actual life between human beings, we ought to recover our mutual subjectivity; subjectivity made present in turning to and encountering others. Hence, the word - for it to be genuine - remains invariably exposed to the risk of falsehood. The word makes claim to purity, however, remains most hazardous to humanity. And when we approach others with persistent cynicism, falsehood reigns. But in turning to others in a spirit of trust, we understand and work towards the genuine word - spoken between I and Thou.

Writing to Becoming

The days are crossed off the calendar one by one. Time is passing by without abation. I don't know what happened. But here I am, removed from everything, isolated, alone, and afraid of what I may become.

Becoming requires courage. Courage is changing one's ways - to mend strife, to heal from past transgressions and move on. I have a passion for writing. It is catharsis meeting creation; confession encountering repression. I can write what I dare not say. At times, the notebook is indeed the thinker's only sanctuary. A clean crisp page does not prejudge. The blank page is receptive to all things. Hence, the neurotic fear of what others may say; the prying gaze of the skeptic - who sees through to uncover 'intentions' and 'motives' - is absent at the origin of any work. But it returns.

When Franz Kafka left Max Brod instructions to destroy all his unpublished writings, did he anticipate the misinterpretations and appropriations that would come stem from the word "Kafkaesque"? The dilemma for the writer, who enjoys the act of writing itself, is that he has no control over what an audience will do with his creation. This is, at the same time, the greatness and tragedy of the writer. In letting it become what it may, the writer is transformed in the process, for better and for worse.

Kafka and Orwell are not known for their day jobs. Their personas are, in most instances, derivations of their literary style. Kafkaesque? Orwellian? These words initiate neophytes into worlds which exist in words and the imaginary. Catchwords, however, are often taken as the "end all and be all", indicative of a Cliff's notes approach to literature so prevalent in modernity.

But what happens to the human person behind the words? He is attached to generalization. He becomes the generalization. He can be described in a single word, a definition in a dictionary or citation in an encyclopedia, or, worse, the inspiration for a psuedo-ideology subscribed to by stauchly loyal, yet utterly oblivious and misguided, admirers. The violence of interpretation cannot be solved by simply abstaining from it. The violence of interpretation is necessary for the act of writing. Interpretations are often, if not explicitly so, present in the work itself. But the valuation of a particular interpretation over and above all others is thoughtless, perverse, and necessarily fundamentalist.

The universe created by a writer, like our own, is imperfect - as Joyce's fascination with meticulous detail in Ulysses exposes. Interpretation provides an aperture of a complex and flawed universe. The skilled writer - or more appropriately, novelist - recreates time and space, distinct, whether minutely or considerably, from the lived "reality". It is not the task of the reader to displace one illusion with another. The interpretative act involves a sense of play, aiming to dissolve the seriousness of dogmatism. Of course, playfulness taken to an extreme, i.e. leaving one with no foundations, establishes relativism as a new seriousness; creating a strict adherence to the the idyl of play. The Dioynesian without the Apollonian is decadent. The Apollonian without the Dioynesian remains sterile. Despite this, criticism plays an integral part in how we read.

Criticism can be lowest form of expression. Conversely, it may also be a most honest and courageous act. Only the honest critic can reveal insight. Those driven by interest, by feelings, or by passions, be it good or bad, are doing a disservice to the work.

Ignorance mars the creature of curiousity. Passion clouds rationality as much as rationality blunts passion. Virile masculinity is empty without silent sureness and poised conviction. To act for the sake of action, without regard to paradox or the consideration of another's claim, is simply bullheaded ignorance and nothing more. But to remain an educated fool, a mute who stands idly by - indulging in safe knowledge rather than stepping forward - is the most cowardly of inactions.

On this page, in this notebook, I can write this with unparalleled conviction. However, when confronted with the situation, would I stand and state this with a similar conviction? Or would I shrink away from confrontation, content only to write in my journal? I don't know. It bothers me to no end. For nothing puzzles me more than this question. Of course, the moment may not have come for me to make that stand. Courage is common for those on the sideline. It, however, is an uncommon quality for those truly confronted with a situation, a dilemma, that demands thoughtful action; when mere capitulation is dangerously inadequate.

Saner - (incomplete)

Hans Saner - Kant’s Political Thought: Its Origins and Development, translated by E.B. Ashton

In Idea for a Universal History, published in 1784, Kant attributes to society a structure very similar to that of matter. He endow man – the social monad, so to speak – with an “unsociable sociality”, a seemingly paradoxical disposition in which two drives collide: one toward association, and the other toward individualization. (8)

The interplay of forces, their antagonism, has a useful effect: the individual wants to be associated, but so not to give up the individuality of which he will first assure himself by crude means; and he wants to be himself, but so as to hold himself available for association at the same time. (8)

The basic substance, its character, and the first state of the world are thus directly related to God without the necessity of feigning a tangible knowledge about the source of creation. (11)

Any direct intervention of God in the law of those forces is unthinkable. It would be a divine act against the divine intellect – a monstrosity. While matter and its basic forces of attraction and repulsion may thus be presupposed, everything else in cosmogony must be explicable by mechanical laws. The process of creation is turned over to the working of the dynamic principles inherent in matter. But since the existence of matter is the result of the existence of God, it must be considered imperishable. This is why creation is “never finished”. The antagonistic energies of matter are ceaselessly at work, building worlds out of the “boundless space of chaos” and letting world fall back into their central suns. (11-12)

Struggle as such is therefore viewed as no tragedy. For all its cruelty, it is the means of renewal, the creative process. The downfall of a world does not inflict an irreplaceable loss on nature; it is by this sort of waster, rather, that nature demonstrates its surplus of creative vigor. (13)

From a cosmological point of view, his destruction is nothing but “a necessary shading in the diversity of its suns” by which nature “adorns” its eternity. This is true of an individual’s death as of the extinction of a species. (13)

The warfare we see in nature is the consequence of the antagonism outlined in the dynamic concept of matter. Its proper end is not to destroy but infinitely expand creation. If we take it for an end itself, that warfare is destructive; but its function as a means to the ultimate end of creation always involves the destruction of destruction – a creative process. This is its justification. The teleological view of nature projects an element of theodicy into the struggles in nature. (13)

Insofar as they are cultural endowments, gifts for civilization and morality, their development is tantamount, so to speak to the creation of humanity. This creation, unlike the mythical one of man, is conceived not as a singular divine act but as a continuing process in human history. It is the self-creation of mankind, understood as an infinite challenge. The real motivating force to meet the challenge is antagonism, that twofold disposition of unsociable sociality. (13-14)

The first effect of the employment of this means is the war of all against all, with relations between men apparently governed by their passions alone. Then, after necessity has forced individuals to coalesce in civil societies, there will be war between those societies. […] Reason forbids their acceptance as ends in themselves, but both of them are rationally understandable as means of nature: the first type as the instinctual spur to action, the stimulus without which progress would not even be a possibility, and the second type as impelling mankind to create itself where the free will to do so is lacking. Thus struggle and war are sublimated in the creative process of intelligible mankind. (14)

Antagonism in general expands the natural creative process and advances the human one. The idea of political struggle is thus subject to the same determination by laws as the idea of cosmological struggle in natural philosophy. From the viewpoint of philosophical history this may mean that, to Kant, the great lines of natural history became road signs to the history of freedom. Philosophically, it means that the two distinct realms, united in the same determination by laws, spring from one unknown ground that is more encompassing than either one of them. The analogies point to this ground, but they give us neither its name nor a closer definition. (15)

Kant depicts struggle in nature as a chain of giant upheavals in whose constancy evolution is caught up. Revolution and evolution are not things apart; they are interrelated in such a way that revolution is an evolutionary link and evolution is the permanence of revolution. (15)

Only in the politics of law is the analogy breached. In the state the development of legal relations must not be advanced by revolutions, for these always break the law, and the law cannot be improved by being broken. The legal evolution of the state must do without revolution even if revolution would serve its ends. […] From the point of view of the law, Kant sees but one way of thinking: absolute rejection of future revolution as a means of political progress, and absolute protection of the revolutions that has succeeded. (15-16)

The paradoxical stand on revolution results from an insolubly paradoxical basic datum on philosophy: that something which is above time (the idea of law) comes alive from man only in time (in positive law). (17)

The absolute ban on revolution compels the individual to bow to whichever power happens to rule at the time – yet freedom is morality’s reason for being. What is asked here, in the name of law and morality, jeopardizes the very root of morality. (17-18)

What man seems in this course to be doing arbitrarily is subject to natural mechanisms; what he freely creates is a free fulfillment of natural laws. Man thinks of himself as planning one way or another, but nature has always included him in its design already; it steers him systematically and, if need be, by force. (19)

What guides Kant in this way of thinking is no longer a regulative analogy of nature and politics. In a sense, it is a new breach laid into the analogy, in the direction of materially including all things in the natural realm. Here the unifying element is not a lasting likeness of conditions, but a passing sameness of the ways of looking at different things. […] It calls human freedom into question and seems to simulate a knowledge it cannot provide. In interpreting politics we shall have to ask, in principle, how to understand that breach. (19)

Political concepts as well as all discussions of them are thus moved into a realm of many layers, a realm in which the definitions of the concepts come to be, and in which relative statements about them must remain in flux. (19)

In mathematics, an object is conceived as it is a priori represented in visuality. It is the only case in which concept and representation are congruent, because the concept is originally given by the representation. […] Philosophical definitions are mere expositions of given concepts, expositions that can be explicated in analyses without ever being apodictically certain of completeness. As a matter of principle, they leave a margin for error. Mathematical definitions are constructions of concepts accomplished by a volitive synthesis. Their completeness is apodictically certain. They leave no margin for error. (24)

Mathematics begins with a complete definition, which is also the genesis of the concept; in philosophy, the concept always precedes the definition. […] This is why in philosophy the definition must conclude the work rather than open it. Philosophy is a road to definition, not a road that starts out from definition. […] Philosophy requires us to keep an open mind for the marginal conceptualities, and yet this openness must be balanced by critical delimitation. It takes a kind of “conceptual musicality”. Without this, a supposedly scientific rigor will keep us in a state of permanent outrage at philosophers’ inconsistencies. (24)

Our judgment, which always conceives the particular as covered by the universal, has two ways to proceed in regard to natural data. If the universal, the concept, is given, definition and knowledge will enable us to put the single thing in its place. But if only the single thing is given, if the universal is what we are looking for, our judgment has yet to design the universal and will subsume the particular under it later, as under a regulative principle which allows man to create an effective unity without defining the particular. (24-25)

The second chapter entitled “The Road to Unity” explicates the relationship between sovereignty and order. Saner succinctly explains that Kant posits that coexistence (coexistenia) must be established by a divine intellect, the common primal ground of their existence (27). This appears to lead into the larger discussion regarding the primacy of the form of law over its substantive content later on in the chapter. The substantive content of law, I would think, falls under the principle of succession, as Saner calls it (27). Although, as Saner explains, “a change is substances can occur only insofar as they are linked with others”, irregular interaction, i.e. interaction without the divine intellect, “could do no more than bring forth a dynamic chaos” (27). Chaos is contrary to unity.

“If the principle of interaction is to engender an orderly community, not mere coexistence or accumulation, it must be established by the divine intellect, the common primal ground of the existence of substances. This is the establishing and preserving force of dynamic community.” (27) This short exegesis of part of Kant’s metaphysics helps lead the reader into a discussion of the Hobbesian problem: the establishment of human society over and against the natural chaotic state of man.

“Man, the substance of mankind, does not live in isolation. His mere existence always relates him to other men. But in a state of nature this relation is chaotic. The community has yet to be founded. It is founded by nature and man at the same time – by nature insofar as it invests man with the antagonism that is his spur to unity; by man insofar as he establishes the law, without which no general external freedom would be possible.” (28) But, in elaborating on Hobbes, not every man is given this right to legislation. If every man were allowed to promulgate laws, these laws would have no efficacy or coherence, since others would not be compelled to follow. Rather, this capability for intentional establishment is the “exclusive province of the omnipotens, the sovereign” (28).

“We can therefore extend our equation: the will of God as the world’s creator is to the community of substances what the sovereign’s will is to the community of citizens, and what the will of God as a moral person is to the community of rational men.” (28) Note the qualifier “rational” that is applied to men; this becomes problematic later on in this section. Once again, Saner points out, there is an exception or, as he puts it, a breach in the analogy Kant employs. This breach occurs when one deals with International law. Saner explains that for Kant states “interact simply by coexisting” (29). The contradiction becomes clearer when Saner explains that Kant’s “league of nations” has no coercive power, and hence, “always rests on the free will of moral persons” (29). Note once again the qualifier “moral” that is applied to persons. Saner tries to explain this very simply: “in the first case (domestically), the law goes before freedom; in the second (International), freedom goes before the law” (30). If freedom were placed above law, the state would, in such a case, renounce its coercive power, possibly leading to anarchy and hence, in principle, voids itself. “It is not possible to place freedom above the law of a state,” Saner explains (30). But the situation within the International is slightly more complex.

“International law is another matter. There it is not a physical person but a moral person, a state, which is claiming freedom. With other states it lives in conditions of nature, but internally it remains a system of law. Its freedom poses no threat to the law’s existence, but the law might pose one to the existence of freedom. Kant’s seemingly contradictory combination allows him to safeguard the law while granting freedom, as much as remains possible, on a cosmopolitical level.” (30) But how again is the state a moral person?

The question of equality is broached in the next section; a question of high importance in relation to that of sovereign law. “The state can place no citizen under an obligation that is not equally and mutually obligatory for all. No one has the right to compel others and at the same time to evade compulsion.” (30) And returning to an earlier point, Saner contends that it is the form and not the material content that is most important for unity in Kant’s estimation. “In those, mutuality lies not in assuring all citizens of an equal share of goods but in guaranteeing that all are free to own property. Kant is aware that in fact the inequality of possessions results in unequal power to command and rule. He does not mind this, for the form of reciprocity, and thus of equality has been preserved.” (31)

Thus, equality is a formal possibility of order and not a universal assurance. “Laws are reciprocal when the same possibilities are open to the freedom of all subjects of the state.” But, as Saner points out at the end of this section, these possibilities are not given in a truly universal way. The exploration of Kant’s views on retributive law serves to debunk the view that he is a “philanthropist whose cozy humanitarianism always makes him think promptly of the individual’s welfare in the world” (33). It also proves the point that Kant believed law must be applied equally in order for it to sustain order. But, once again, there are exceptions to the analogy, namely the two Saner lists: “upward in the citizen’s relation to the chief of state, and downward in their relation to the dependent” (33).

“In a word, the sovereign is above the law as God is above duty.” (34) The obvious parallel to Hobbes’ Leviathan is not the most interesting part of this. The sovereign, by definition, must not be equal to others; he must be inviolate and unassailable (34). Or as Saner puts it, “One man is in possession of all power, then, and all the people are at his mercy, for good or ill, not matter what he may do” (34). But Saner is careful to indicate the contradictions this brings about in Kant’s thought. The clearest contradiction is that Kant’s conception of sovereign exposes people to the potential of tyranny as a means of maximizing freedom.

“The consequences are clear. Kant does not wish to deliver subject to tyranny; he would really like to hand them a tool for their protection; but he does it in a manner that invites abuse. Expecting better times to come, he accepts the abuse along with violence and despotism. The permanent aim is freedom, but passing violence must be suffered. Kant’s formal legal thought shows no ways out of this dilemma.” (35)

Saner then examines the breach that occurs “downward”, the relations between citizens. As he points out, not every member of the stat is a citizen in a legal sense. This part gets a little archaic, as it deals with voting requirements, i.e., age, property, sound judgment, and independence. “What makes one a colegislator is the capacity to vote.” (35) The difference between the individual in nature, human equality, and the individual in society, civil equality, is made quite evident. A passive member of the state, one not independent, may “always lay claim to human equality, he can no longer claim civil equality” (35). The radical inequality this produces is cited by Saner: “There remains the offensive fact that in one respect the disadvantaged, the unpropertied, are disenfranchised to boot – and this in the name of law” (36). Hence, the permanent aim indeed is freedom guaranteed within the political forms and passing violence must be inflicted upon those who are not “independent’.

The next two sections deal with resistance and oppositions inherent in Kant’s precritical and critical periods. The thought forms of the metaphysical philosopher, as Saner reminds us, still do apply to the political thinker (42).

The Prizefighter

There is a tragic quality about a prizefighter. He can be champion one day and dead in the streets the next. It is what makes him a compelling figure. The prizefighter is a piece of meat, but he embodies the strength and frailty of our humanity.

The rise and fall of a fighter has been played and replayed over the hundred or more years of organized boxing. As a fighter rises, we wait for his demise. That is why Mike Tyson is still a compelling figure in boxing. We want to see him succeed again, because we know that his fall will be all the more spectacular. It would be naïve to present the prizefighter as a glorious figure of success. Many are decrepit and pathetic human beings. However, it would be inaccurate to merely portray them as victims of an exploitive culture of violence and entertainment.

A PBS documentary on the first recognized "black" World Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson demonstrated how he was a skillfully self-promoting and financially successful champion. Of course Jack Johnson, in spite of his savvy in and outside of the ring, eventually fell victim to his own proclivity for women, with a little help from trumped up charges of prostitution (violating the Mann Act). But what brought Jack Johnson down is precisely what makes him a compelling figure. The arrogant braggadocio, the confident and supremely talented showman who appears utterly invulnerable, attracts audiences and animates the spectacle. But people do not want heroes who are invulnerable, even Superman had to die.

Jack Johnson was never a hero and never claimed to be. He told the world to fuck off when they questioned his relations with white women, because who would make him do otherwise? Jack Johnson was an intimidating human specimen, and when he told the world off, no one was going to change his mind.

But of course there is a Hobbesian quality to the downfall of a hulking champion. In the state of nature, Hobbes contends, even the most strongest and capable individual will succumb to the subversive activity of the weakest. Those who loathed the sight of a black champion schemed to depose Johnson. A man’s downfall is never exclusively the product of conspiratorial action; he himself plants the seeds of his demise. He relished the role of a promiscuous, virile, and dominant pugilist. In the end, he was not invulnerable. Jack Johnson, to paraphrase a modern wrestling promoter, screwed Jack Johnson; and that is why is he a legend.

To fall is to be human. To plummet from great heights makes a man legendary through infamy. The one who falls and falls hard, we eulogize. Johnson, Liston, La Motta, Foreman, Tyson, and the list goes on and on. Whether it was Foreman in Zaire 1974, Liston in Miami 1964, or Tyson in Tokyo 1990, they were all unstoppable beasts that were stopped. They all reinforce what Hobbes intimated, “nobody is naturally invulnerable”. Indeed, we find comfort in that and find even greater comfort in the spectacle that tears down the most intimidating figure. Modernity has a taste for scandal and failure-as-spectacle. It is bemusing in profoundly superficial ways.

Where have you gone Winona?

So I’m staring at a Rolling Stone cover hanging on the wall. It has the following plastered over it: Hot 1991 – Winona Ryder / Who’s Hip, What’s Funny, And How To Stay Cool / The Famous Hot List. So what has changed since 1991? Well, Winona Ryder is a clichéd punch line for celebrity kleptomania. Who’s Hip? That tagline is no longer sexy enough for Rolling Stone. Circa 2005, Hip is Lame. This cover, a decade and a half later, would be more hardcore. How about Christina Aguilara nude with a guitar covering her naughty bits? Or Britney Spears doing a faux-Lolita spread? The Winona Ryder cover may have been scandalous in 1991 – her in a nightie flashing her bedroom eyes. But now, “sexiness” is to let the deep down hardcore slut bust out. The justification is that “Daddy don’t preach”, that personal freedom and expression means getting right in your fucking face. Sure, the body is the property of the self. But please don’t think that a magazine cover spread or constant commodification of one’s self-image somehow furthers the cause of women around the world. I'm not that naive.

The engine of colonialism is not fueled by military aggression. What drives colonialism is cultural propaganda. At the heart of any society is its cultural customs.

The west, from the time of Rome to that of Great Britain’s colonial empire, has understood the importance of exporting customs, in addition to hawking products and methods of governance. Culture is an integral part to the governance of a territory. To build or “construct” a system of meaning or a means to contentment, it assuages rebellious inclinations any indigenous peoples harbour in opposition to an external sovereign power. Power, hence, cannot be exercised merely upon the body politic, but in shaping the collective consciousness and, more importantly, particular wills of a people. Culture builds and sustains the illusion. That is not to say that the illusion is fearsomely evil. That is no always the case. But precisely because cultural propaganda, if executed shrewdly, can appear neither fearsome nor evil is how it has effectiveness at all.