As I write this I am watching several videos on the Al Jazeera English network and I am overcome with feelings of solidarity for this political movement. I could write a wonderful text on proletarian struggle and the power of the multitude within this Egyptian revolution but that might just be self-serving to my agenda so I will refrain from that, even though I believe it to be true.
The multitude of the Egyptian protestors is made up of mostly young peoples who share one common idea: they are disillusioned with autocratic power and are ready for a realized democracy in both name and deed. The time has come for this multitude to realize their role in history. The outcome is not for sure at this point but the intent is: radical democratic change. The old regime and its authoritarian control are preparing their own death knell. And as Slavoj Zizek states: ‘Mubarak and his party elites are like a Tom and Jerry cartoon, in that when one of the characters runs of a cliff they are suspended in air and it is not until they realize they have no solid foundation that they drop off the cliff’. Mubarak has yet to look down and see that he has no foundation to stand upon and when he does he too will drop off the cliff.
Real ‘democracy’ is being won in the streets against the ruling ‘National Democratic Party’, in which Hosni Mubarak is the leader. ‘National democracy’ is the chicken that has finally come home to roost; the irony is beautiful.
It is amazing how this movement has spread so quickly and with serious intent for radical change. Egypt is proving all the Western sceptics wrong in terms of the Muslim understanding of modern democracy. Egypt is a contagion of democratic hope in this day and age. The Egyptian protestors are proving that their collective belief in the power of democratic change is much more actual and potent than any of the major proponents who claim to be the ideological bearers of democracy, i.e. Israel, Europe, and the US.
It was quite shocking seeing the approach that US political power has taken in regard to an actual home-grown Egyptian democratic revolution. Fear was the first response rather than support. Israel and its outright support for Mubarak accompanied by taunts of those that support the protestors, has been deplorable. Israel holds Mubarak as an ally and the leadership of Israel are tremendously frightened to witness what true Egyptian democracy will foster in the years to come; they are completely in fear of true democracy. Fear is the ruling ideology among those ‘true bearers’ of democracy and this demonstrates their contempt for the actualization of democracy.
This revolution is based upon the very simple ideological thought of ’freedom’. Is this not the realization of true democracy?
Here is a great video of the protests and the responses from power. It is called “Egypt Burning” and it is beautifully shot and it tells a wonderful story with its images.
http://www.youtube.com/v/w3FQXYdyHCg
I have been keeping up on this story as well, I am really quite surprised Mobaruk has not stepped down in light of the protests that want his complete removal. He’s trying to brush it off as something small, it’s pretty clear the people have officially spoken.
I like the fact Egypt society is arising and starting to move towards democracy – without any of the strings from the Democratic powers in the West. I am very interested to see how this plays out and what the end result politically will be and how this will re-shape the country.
I heard an Egyptian person speak on this on Maher’s show and it was quite interesting what they thought about Mubarak’s 30 year reign and how unjust it is. They also mentioned he may have made between 40 and 70 billion from this 30 year reign – which is a tonne of money for a country struggling economically. Makes me wonder if his idea of Western Capitalism is being rejected as well?
Which brings me home to the West and the problems we have economically and how they can be compared with Egypt and this uprising. There are estimates that 98% of the wealth in the West are in 2% of hands – meaning the middle class is squeezed for every dime to pay for the functions of society. At some point this inequity will also drive people to the streets, since it is becoming clear companies are robbing us blind and give us the crumbs to keep us ‘satisfied’.
I am beginning to feel those with the billions need to re-invest this all back into the economy and make sure the working middle class can live affordably. Lately I am starting to notice this is not case and the really rich need to give the money back or move out.
Democracy reveals its weakness when two wolves and a sheep sit down to decide what to have for dinner.
What kind of democracy will we have with attitudes like these?
It’s not ‘democracy’ that is the goal: it is the constitutional establishment of secular enlightenment values of equality, rights, freedoms, and the dignity of the individual that is. And the power that authorizes government must come from the consent of the governed and not from some sky fairy or benevolent dictator. This is Egypt’s central barrier to establishing such a state: the beliefs of its people. Democracy alone will result in the rise of another dictator, another strong man, another islamic theocracy. Democracy alone will not bring anything better than another Mubarak.
yes your analysis may prove true in many scenarios and even in Egypt in the future (who is to know). But at this basic starting point, all the Egyptian multitude is desiring is a very simple concept and it is the one that has burned in every secular revolution, i.e. freedom. Take that notion as you will and interpret it in your own filter but for the Egyptians freedom starts with the ousting of Mubarak. In this idea I feel solidarity and a deep communication.
Simple? Oh, I don’t think so. It’s always easy to agree to a common enemy, so convenient to be united against something; it’s much harder, much more difficult and complex, to be for something, to support something that is less than perfect.
Freedom from is quite a bit different than freedom of or freedom to. My point is that as long as Egyptians in such overwhelming numbers continue to believe that their ‘freedom’ comes from god, that this ‘freedom’ allows them to justify killing apostates, that this ‘freedom’ means relegating women to second class status, then this ‘freedom’ is not worth supporting. It’s merely a replacement of an old enemy with a newer one, and one most likely wearing the robes of an imam.
The common enemy for all of us everywhere is faith-based belief.
But the protestors are participating in the secular realm (the material, i.e. the political) and are actually acting outside of their faith in this revolution. The protests have no actual religious stance in any particular manner. The protestors may have faith in Allah but that is not the point of the revolution. Because the revolution is not taking place in the subjective faith-based idealist world. It is taking place in the material world and specifically based upon economics.
The point is that this multitude is not representing ‘faith’ as the ideal that they are supporting. they are not part and parcel to Islamic fascism. These peoples are only speaking of basic ‘freedom’ and not a faith-based freedom. This idea is very secular at its root.
I agree that religion is playing no part in these uprisings (well, it’s a central part of the sunni/shia power imbalance in Oman and Bahrain) and I want to assure that I feel sympathy for their plight to get out from under oppressive regimes. But my point is that only repressive regimes work when the populace are illiterate faithists. Faith-based beliefs have got them to this kind of slavery and shall continue to hold them back from becoming global citizens with full and equal rights and dignity no matter who takes the reigns of political power after they are done demonstrating. And they will remain poverty stricken in their political freedoms because of their adherence to faith-based beliefs in islam. These beliefs are anti-human, conquest oriented, intellectually debilitating beliefs that guarantee closed minds and justification for a continuation of gross injustices and human rights abuses on an institutional level. Freedom from these beliefs will not happen by throwing out this strong man or that because it remains these beliefs that create the oppressive leaderships.
Yes, but I stated “freedom as a concept” and not a material reality, just yet. You have misread the statement. ‘Freedom’ is a simple concept, ideally, but it is very hard to realize materially. Western democracy is far from ‘freedom’ as a material reality. As for today, the concept of ‘freedom’ is the only driving force in all of the Middle East protests. The conceptual is the basis where the material reality will begin. If they fail and fall back then so be it but at least they are trying and are earnest about their freedom.
I never suggested that freedom is a material reality. It is concept that requires clarification. Right now, the ‘freedom’ being called for in the Middle East is the kind I call freedom from a particular person in authority. So what? is my question. When the faith-based beliefs remain unchanged that have brought about such widespread enslavement to authority, then no amount of freedom from will change any materially and , I suspect, make things quite a bit worse. In other words, they have failed before they have even begun because they don’t understand the importance of the concept for which they are demonstrating: freedom of.
A good rule of thumb for revolutionaries everywhere should be: What would Thomas Jefferson/JS Mill say?” and then follow it.
“A good rule of thumb for revolutionaries everywhere should be: What would Thomas Jefferson/JS Mill say?” and then follow it.” Tildeb.
I would never suggest this and it represents your subjective idealism and your deterministic belief in liberal politics and in the supposed liberal equality that is inherent in capital. But of course liberal democracy is just as dirty with its politics and its history as any political system. If not more so, considering that liberal democracy and capital are hegemonic in the world today. And liberalism has in no way eradicated any of the social ills that it pretends to be eradicating. In truth it has escalated them in many scenarios, especially politically economically.
You write that affection for and interest in Jefferson and Mills represents subjective idealism and your deterministic belief in liberal politics and in the supposed liberal equality that is inherent in capital.
I sincerely doubt you can appreciate what a word salad this sentence is, only to be expanded in your mind to equate with today’s liberal democracies and the use of money. Liberalism – based on what Jefferson and Mills describe it to be – is the foundation of your life, the very pillars upon which you breathe these words. To denigrate such great minds as easily as you do shows very clearly that you have little if any understanding of the political philosophies they have brought into our fundamental discourses about social ills.
I have read many of the selected writings of Marx and can appreciate the concerns he brought to the table about the power and influence of economics. But. His ideas are fixed in an industrial past and his framework – like the framework of the mind by Freud – have been supplanted by better models that more accurately reflect what is. That is not meant to dismiss his contribution in any way – I think he was an important thinker (along with Hegel from whom he borrowed and inverted into his ‘materialistic’ model which is erroneous metaphysics) – but to put it into perspective along side Jefferson and Mills, whose philosophical frameworks continue to be as applicable today as they were during the times in which they lived.
“I sincerely doubt you can appreciate what a word salad this sentence is” Tildeb
First off, you do not know anything about my theoretical and philosophical understandings of Subjectivity, Idealism, Determinism, Essentialism, Liberalism, and Capital. So when you do know my knowledge, education, and understanding then you can look down upon me from your nice epistemological tower; over the internet of all things, this is laughable.
I do not share your political views but I will give you space to air them, which is fair. But you presuppose that I do not know of what I speak! That kind of arrogance is plain ridiculous and it only demonstrates your narcissistic approach to knowledge and not my supposed ignorance about Jefferson and Mill; who in your mind represent the ‘end of history’ because beyond them there is nothing else that truly matters. Your ‘faith’ in Jefferson and Mill represents the living embodiment of Francis Fukuyama’s thoughts on the ‘end of history’. You are Fukuyamaean in your subjectivity. Your knowledge has apparently achieved its own ‘end of history’ and there is no other alternative.
“his (Marx)framework have been supplanted by better models that more accurately reflect what is” Tildeb.
Better? In what sense of the word?
What is? Yes, what is “what is”?
A truly great critique. “Better” and “what is”. A truly excellent rebuttal. Marx and Hegel bow to you sir and they could have done no better.
Just one more thought about “better” and “what is”. The arrogance is splendid and the liberal ideology is beautiful.
Marx took over 20 years writing and researching for Capital and then he had several versions of the final copy. But “better” and “what is” have trumped his knowledge, his methodology, his dialetic, his philosophy, and his overall critique of capital. I love it.
A bit touchy, are we?
When someone puts together a sentence like the one from you I pointed out – as if it is explanatory rather simply confusing – then it deserves an honest response of “What the hell are you talking about?” Each term needs to be re-described not for the meanings they have in common usage – terms like idealism (without explaining how and why you think this matters in my comment and how it has been misplaced) complicated by some covert subjectivity (without explaining how the idealism I have apparently misused is further damaged by a particular kind of subjectivity from which you, yourself, have overcome. But rather than deal with these terms (after all, YOU are the one who has piled them up together as if as a whole they were somehow meaningful), you decide the fault lies with me for pointing out that the compendium of undefined and undirected terminology is meaningless. They are meaningless because you haven’t bothered to inform them with meaning that can be successfully and relevantly communicated in a clear fashion.
My point referred to revolutionary ideas that remain the most potent and lasting in the world, ideas that came fully described with practical and lasting results. Surely when describing the effects of the upheavals in the Middle East, it is appropriate to suggest that certain goals – goals that effect lasting and practical changes for the betterment of the population – are important considerations. That’s why I introduced Jefferson and Mills as relevant examples. That you then dismissed them as cavalierly as you did tells me that you haven’t really thought much about them, or if you have you have failed utterly to explain why their ideas in this case are not as good as some other ideas. Historical Marxist ideas have not favourably compared, although I granted you that the ideas put forth by Marx have been an important part of describing what has been… just not as good as political models we use to today to describe what is. But that’s a topic you have already dismissed as worthwhile.
You claim my opinion is “narcissistic” and my admiration of Jefferson and Mills equivalent to a faith in an “end of history” approach. It’s tough to argue that an opinion is not narcissistic in the sense that is personally favoured and it also presumes that in contrast yours is not. All I can say is that I hold the opinion I do because I have yet to come across an argument that successfully proves otherwise but I always open to revising my opinions if I have cause to do so. This you have spectacularly failed to do.
I will argue that Hagel’s metaphysics are deeply flawed by failing to accurately take into account ‘what is’ and, instead has built a philosophy on reasoned logic in principle exempt from verifiability in practice. And this criticism is just as valid to Marx’s, who classes people economically without taking into account how that classification changes by natural selection with no set class boundaries rather than guided policy… again, verifiability remains a problem in his model, although I will grant you that such an opinion is just as narcissistic as any other I (or you) hold. Because conditions have changed radically from when these gentlemen wrote, their models are no longer as interesting and relevant as those of Jefferson and Mills that have taken root and continue to be as relevant today as they were when written.
If you wish address any of these issues then we can talk. If you want to bury me in meaningless terminology then obviously we cannot.
tilbed,
I’m in love with your pseudo-scientific talk. You do not realize, but you are more metaphysical than Hegel: “[B]etter models that more accurately reflect what is.” Reflect what it is? Please, if you are going to attack metaphysics at least be a bit deconstructivist…
The problem with your logic (besides been simply wrong), is that you will remain always there. In your “rational” position waiting for an argument to connivence you about it’s truth. Sorry, that won’t happen. The truth of an event is only visible for the ones engaged on it, and there is no warranty that your engagement is justified. Your position is fake precisely as it pretends to be open: “I have yet to come across an argument that successfully proves otherwise but I always open to revising my opinions if I have cause to do so.” Of course you will never find a cause to do so, the very enunciation of it makes impossible any change.
What you fail to grasp is the deeply Hegelian motto of how universality appears from the particular. Of course Marx and Freud (and so does your beloved Darwin) belong to a certain historical context. However, the truth of their discoveries remains universal.
Nevertheless, you accomplish one of the best critics of capitalist ideology I ever read: “These beliefs are anti-human, conquest oriented, intellectually debilitating beliefs that guarantee closed minds and justification for a continuation of gross injustices and human rights abuses on an institutional level.” This is precisely what free-market, liberal ideology has been doing the last 30 years (with the no minor consequence of putting us in the verge of the ecological collapse). More and more injustices all over the world, state-supported torture, CIA-trained dictators who impose the “free” market in “developing” countries. All this by the hand of “progress and science”, that by themselves will solve all the problems of the world. The fact, tho, is that a few get rich, while the world as a whole pays for them (and I am been metaphorical here, there is no pun about the bailouts).
At the end, there are only two options: or you support the injustice of the world, or you fight against it.
Metaphysics is a failed notion – a failed ontology, if you will – in the sense that it tries to go beyond physics, go beyond what is real, to reveal the nature of things as if those natures beyond the real, beyond the here and now, beyond mass and the forces of physics and interaction of chemicals were indeed true. This is bunk.
For example, in metaphysical terms the nature of the eye is to see. You see. I see. Critters see. All of us use eyes to do so. Therefore the nature of eyes is to see. Blind the eye, blind the ability to see. The study of ‘seeing’ therefore is a study beyond the eyes themselves and reveals this notion of natures of things.
Now we know differently because we have better models. Things don’t have natures. What we once called ‘natures’ are a complex series of causes and effects by mechanisms. In my previous example, we now know that it is the brain that sees and not the eyes, that the eyes are simply things subject to cause and effect of light that is then encoded and sent off to the brain. In fact, we can use different sensory inputs to see because the brain doesn’t care how it receives the necessary input. People can be taught to see with their skin, to see by sound.
Metaphysics relies on a broken epistemology, one that simply assumes that there IS something real and true BEYOND. Its conclusion, it’s ontology, is likewise broken because they are not verifiable. And that’s why any faith-based system or perspective of thought that first assumes metaphysics is true, that there really exists something BEYOND is doomed. If anything does, in fact, exist BEYOND, then we have no means available to gain knowledge about it because we have no trustworthy epistemology upon which we can do so. We just don;t come built that way.
And, BTW, I have indeed changed my opinions many times because I really do want to have good reasons for informing my understanding.
“Nevertheless, you accomplish one of the best critics of capitalist ideology I ever read: “’These beliefs are anti-human, conquest oriented, intellectually debilitating beliefs that guarantee closed minds and justification for a continuation of gross injustices and human rights abuses on an institutional level.’” Sebastian.
This was my thought exactly when I read the critique. Tildeb has accurately described and critiqued a system of power that he does not even believe exists, in the material sense. He stated that there is ‘no such thing as capital’ which would logically result in there being no actual material system as capital-ism.
Yet, he has accurately described the very symptoms of that system and has provided a beautiful critique of something he believes to be totally non-existent. He has a great perception and his critiques of suffering and struggle are thoroughly based in economic realities but he misses the point to be made about the power of global capital (which for him does not exist). He thinks that religious faith is the cause of all this suffering and that the economic realities of these societies have nothing to do with those self-same social injustices. Because, how could capital-ism be a cause of ‘gross injustices and human rights abuses’ when economic capital does not actually exist in the material world (his ideal, not mine). Yet faith in God, which is totally immaterial and subjectively constructed in the mind of the individual that believes, is the initial cause of ALL material suffering. Interesting critique but it is ideologically based and has a very vulgar agenda behind it. It is purely reactionary and not revolutionary in any dialectic. It is also totally immaterial in its scope, in that he is fighting against religious faith as the cause of all global injustice.
If you are going to quote me, JB, at least do it correctly. What I wrote was “capital is one of those nebulous terms that can be used to represent just about anything.”
That you can then draw all kinds of conclusions based on first failing to comprehend the meaning of the sentence I wrote is a pretty good indication that you do so no matter who you read. For example, ‘Capital’ in terms that Marx used it is about value, which is then translated into various economic terms. When you use the term ‘capital’ you are using a very ill-defined term, one that I describe as a ‘metaphysical’ term. You use a single word but it can have multiple meanings depending on context. It is up to you to explain in what sense – what specific contextual sense – you mean. That is why I wrote that capital is a nebulous term that can be used to represent just about anything if one does not include its specific context, assuming you would understand it to mean it in the sense Marx did: value translated into economic terms.
Now that you understand (presumably) why the term ‘capital’ requires specific context, look how easily you use the same word to represent different meanings! That you do so effortlessly and draw so many erroneous conclusions shows me that you are used to doing this and have never had your intellectual feet held to the fire to justify the specifics you assume they show; instead you draw a multitude of such terms to defend your position when in fact all they do is obfuscate your opinion with a wall of meaningless terminology that makes you sound intelligent but are in fact nothing more than ideas dressed in the Emperor’s finery.
I never actually gave a direct quotation of your words, I was paraphrasing your intention for how you were attempting to utilize ‘capital’ as an immaterial idea – “nebulous” as you call it. Am I not correct in saying that you utilize and define ‘capital’ as an immaterial thing? If this is not so then YOU need to clarify what ‘capital’ means, not me. I have all along taken the Marxian route to defining ‘capital’, which is based on “surplus-value”, not mere “value”; but even this surplus-value definiton is the most basic understanding. Marx’s idea of Capital is based entirely on material relations in the marketplace, market processes, fluid movements and flows, and of course ‘accumulation for the sake of accumulation’ – which is “Moses and the Prophets”, as Marx states.
I cannot break down 800+ pages of Marx’s ideas in one sentence. Don’t ask me to. I think that you are in error of your reading of Marx and you are in error of the term ‘capital’. I do not see capital as immaterial and existing ‘out there’ in the ‘nebula’. For me, capital and capital-ism are materially based and are objective.
Thus if capital is immaterial to you, as I can only imagine you believe it to be, i.e. a nebulous thing, then capital-ism would also logically be an immaterial thing and non-existent. Thus your critique of capital is based on a immaterial surface.
Am I wrong in this reading of your idea of capital? Or have I simply read everything out of actual definintion and am I just a naked boy with no real intelligence and who has never been intellectually challenged by a person of your stature, as you state I am?
Oh come on, JB: at least be honest! You wrote “He stated that there is ‘no such thing as capital’”
Did I state that?
Thanks for your informing and accurate account of metaphysics tildeb, but again you are wrong. What you impose to metaphysics is a naive and schoolbook interpretation of, let’s say, Hegel. If you are willing to spend a bit of time, I recommend you tarring with the negative, Zizek’s book.
Concerning vision (and here I have to give a full disclosure: I’m a physist who also worked with the last student of Francisco Varela, so my epistemological position is that of a militant enactist, in the sense that we are sistems with operational closure) it is neither the brain the one that sees, nor there is an input to be procesed by it. The process is so complex that we have no clue about it. Scientist don’t even know how the simplest living organism works, let alone brain and humans.
Your, let’s call it, positivist position, resembles the one of Poper and Russell, two guys I bet you admire. However, in the same gesture of pretending that the metaphysical discourse is wrong, you fail prey of the very logic you want to disprove, that is you put yourself in an impossible out of world position from where you can judge what is true.
The problem is that we are thrown into language, and as such, there is no outside text, as Derrida says (il n’y a pas hors de texte). Of course I’m not pushing a simple deconstructivist approach, or saying that the world does not exist; I am a scientist, and as such I think we can understand. The point is that a simple positivism a la Poper won’t take us anywhere except to total destruction.
And please, stop saying that john’s ideas are bluff; itis not his fault that you havent read enough to distinguish by yourself the meaning of the words he uses. Language is always multivalent, just recall burbaki’s failed attempt to define math.
P.s: sorry any typos, I’m writing from my mobile
Thank you for telling me I’m wrong with my “informing and accurate account of metaphysics.” Yet for some strange reason I don’t feel enriched.
Language is symbolic. By ‘liberally’ sprinkling me with labels you find comforting, you are failing to communicate your reasoning for your statements that consider my points and find them wanting.
If by positivism you mean I appreciate methodological naturalism to inform knowledge, then guilty as charged. After all, we are typing our responses to each other not by incantations of some imaginary realm but by the practical products based on knowledge that works consistently well, and that works with reliability not just for me and you but for others. We have some means to verify that the knowledge we have about digital information and its transmission is not simply subjective or created just by me and created just by you and/or created just by our interaction (even if our understanding is limited)… and let me say right now that I will not be drawn into a never-ending argument about whether we are brains-in-a-vat. If we are, then so be it. I remain delusional enough to think that I am a part of the universe subject to its laws in exactly the same way you are… unless someone can prove to me differently. There just too much evidence and experience with pointy corners to back this up for me to pay any consideration at all that I or some agency elsewhere is just imagining it.
That being said, I am wondering how one can be a militant enactist. Do you blow things up in its name or resort to violence to further its acceptance?
As for your consideration, all I can say is that there is every indication (in this plane of existence) that the human mind is what the human brain does.
February 23, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Since we are now talking metaphysics. I will not give my ideas, since I have none that truly matter. I will give Marx’s dialectical vision.
“My dialectical method is, in its foundations, not only different from the Hegelian, but exactly opposite to it. For Hegel the process of thinking, which he even transforms into an independent subject, under the name of ‘the Idea’ is the creator of the real world, and the real world is only the external appearance of the idea. With me the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and translated into forms of thought” (102)
“The mystification which the dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell” (103)
Quotes are from: Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital, Volume 1, trans. by Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin Classics.
Did I not write about Marx that I think he was an important thinker (along with Hegel from whom he borrowed and inverted into his ‘materialistic’ model which is erroneous metaphysics)?
Consider, for example this single part: the mystification. What on earth does this actually mean? Here are two men arguing the order of truth by both invoking some mystical component. The argument should not be about this order: the argument should be about this component that is meaningless. It is meaningless because it is undefinable in the sense of being something that exists but does so beyond the kind of existence that can be shown by verification and testability!
“Consider, for example this single part: the mystification. What on earth does this actually mean?” Tildeb
Well first of all, Marx is specifically referencing his original critique of Hegel which took place in 1843. Marx was an Hegelian but he was ruthlessly critical of Hegel’s dialectic. Marx’s writing “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” is the text that Marx is referencing in the passage I quoted. So you see, there is a specific history that Marx is referencing and without reading “The Contribution to the Critique” the passage can seem empty. The passage I quoted was from a postscript to ‘Capital’ and Marx was merely reminding his readership of the initial critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right” which he wrote 30 years before the publication of “Capital”.
Marx is utilizing Hegel’s ideas and ‘mystification’ was one of those ideas that Marx was attempting to clarify and critique. Marx clarified this in his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”.
Basically Marx is saying this: go back and re-read my critique of Hegel’s method and you will understand how my method is radically different from his. Marx does this in order to clarify the reading of “Capital Volume I” as being dialecticallly different from Hegel’s.
I also forgot to add Marx’s writings: “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 1844″, especially the chapter entitled “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole”. Marx was probaly more referencing this manuscript when he was speaking about his critique of Hegel.
“Oh come on, JB: at least be honest! You wrote “He stated that there is ‘no such thing as capital’” Tildeb
Did I state that?
Then allow me to re-phrase the sentiment, since you are correct on my typo. He (Tildeb) meant to state that there is ‘no such thing as capital’.
There that business is finished. I apologize for my error.
As for the brain… Of course there is no us without the activity of the brain; the point is that is not just the brain. Confer Cosmelli And Thomson. It is a bit more complex than how you put it.
By positivist I mean that you share the spirit (in the sense of a law’s spirit) of, let’s say, seed magazine. Or Obama. I dunno who you try to convience of the practical advances, thats off topic, as I told you I’m a physicist, I think I have a pretty good idea how practical things work.
By a militant enactist I mean someone who thinks that, as Varela said, only life can know life. That reality is an engaged construction of the living being; an historical and physically sounded construction of course.
When you talk, your very position of enunciation is flawed. Let’s take again metaphysics. You say that metaphysic is wrong cause assumes that there is something beyond that it’s true. And physics is right cause only say that what is true is what is here, mass and forces (despite the fact that in my course of quantum electro dynamics we only saw fields and lagrangians…). The only difference between your description of science and metaphysics is the place where truth lies: here or there. Both are worse, as Lenin would say.
Of course practical application is off topic to someone who infuses metaphysics as revealing rather than empty constructs, which allows such a person to avoid having to explain why it doesn’t produce anything practical.
When you use phrases like “your very position of enunciation is flawed,” you reveal a willingness to utilize language for entirely selfish reasons rather than as tool intended for communication between people. What can you mean by my position of enunciation? How am I to understand this meaning you apply with such an ill-defined phrase? Furthermore, how am I to understand your point that it – whatever this position of enunciation actually is – is flawed? Of course I can do none of these things, which is exactly why you used the phrase: to keep this conversation one-sided so that you can make your pronouncements without offering them up for a fair critique.
I don’t give a rat’s ass if you are a Nobel winning physicist or a outhouse cleaner: do your ideas have merit as they stand? Your ideas of metaphysics are not valuable to me because they are empty of practical use. I can not use them because I cannot understand what you mean by them. How you mean the terms you choose to use does not inform me of something useful, something revealing, something understandable about the ontology of metaphysics that makes it valuable. When you introduce ‘right cause’ and ‘wrong cause’ you are presenting a framework of thought that is Aristotelian that assumes things themselves have natures, which have causes. The ironic aspect of accepting this assumption to be true, to be valuable, to be of practical use to inform our understanding about the world, is that it runs counter to the enactist philosophy you claim to be militant about! And the example I can offer to show why my point has merit is that enactist philosophy supposed rejects the very notion of dualism (yeah!) whereas you assure me in your first sentence of the comment above that our mind is more than what the brain does as if this is a given and, again, offer absolutely nothing whatsoever to back your position up. If you don’t mean this in a dualistic sense, then you have some explaining to do to make your assertion compatible with the philosophy you supposedly represent in a militant way. But of course, the last you actually want to do if our short history together is any indication is have to explain in practical and understandable terminology (without insisting I go forth and read a library full of authors you think will me to understand) what the hell you’re talking about.
I will try to put it as simple as I can.
Sadly, we definitely cannot talk if you don’t want to read the authors I mention. Why? Because that’s the way it works everywhere. One can talk about physics, forces and matter, but as long as one doesn’t do the math there is no understanding proper, even if one reads Feynman. I think even you agree on that, don’t you? Otherwise one behaves as Aristotle, who was invariably wrong on everything he said about nature. One must learn, learn, learn.
The first text to read is this one, maybe you understand what I mean by “a bit more complex” than the brain receiving inputs. http://individual.utoronto.ca/evant/EnactionChapter.pdf
Second, by position of enunciation (as in position = place, enunciation = saying, i.e., the place from where you talk, the subject who is saying something as opposed to the what the subject is saying; flawed as in containing a mistake, weakness or fault) I mean something very concrete, I can even give you the page of zizek’s book I am thinking of (182-183 from on woman and causality), but I think a simple example is better. A priest talking in TV about god and jesus, and against science and the “perverted” way of modern life. The content of his discourse (“God is salvation” or even better, “the earth is flat” http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=45427) is contradicted by the material means by which discourse is communicated – internet and TV – which bear witness of the fact that the world behaves in a way that is contradictory with the content of his discourse (I mean talk, ideas).
In a similar way, when you say “what is real [...] mass and the forces of physics and interaction of chemicals” or “models that more accurately reflect what is” you fall in the same trap. First, you fail to note that there is always an arbitrary division where to cut the real: where does the real start? In the fields? in mass? in particles? in waves? There is no clear answer, and you pretend that there is one. This is your first mistake.
Second, you say that “there is” something that the models “reflect”. This is metaphysics of presence at its purest. Sorry for the slang. This is exactly what people used, and still think, that there is something outside – call it particles and forces, or fire water air and earth as the old greeks – and that our mind (or brain) makes a “model”, a “picture” of it. A picture that can be ameliorated with progress. This is exactly what the enactive approach (together with Hegel if you read it well) rejects. The world and the subject are ontologically related.
The same goes for your definition of practical. When you say that metaphysics have no practical implications, you unknowingly define what is practical as that which is not metaphysics. One has to acknowledge the position from where one is talking, otherwise our discourse becomes formally (formally as in the form of) the same that the religious fundamentalist; pretending to talk from a position where one can see what is real and what is not: matter and forces against concepts and ideas.
Your claim of my talk been one-sided knocks into an open door, that is exactly what I said: “At the end, there are only two options: or you support the injustice of the world, or you fight against it.” I do not pretend, as you do, that there is something over there that “is” independent of us. This is what I mean by militant enactist also. This is also what Marxist and Psychoanalysis do, they are discourses engaged on the subject they attempt to understand.
Is that practical and understandable enough? If not, please let me know so I can try to articulate better and add more bibliography.
P.S.: the definition of entropy is always relative: you can add or subtract a constant. You cannot blame only me for you not understanding of what I say (I mean can in the sense that it is not rational if you do so, not that you actually can or cannot), it is also your responsibility.
“…to explain in practical and understandable terminology(without insisting I go forth and read a library full of authors you think will me to understand) what the hell you’re talking about.” Tildeb
Practical? I think this is a deeply troubling way to view other people’s knowledge and even academia as a whole. If you are not willing to read and do your own independent research on a topic at hand then this is not the fault of the person to whom you are listening; and it certainly does not destroy the validity of their knowledge or claims in any practical way. We cannot be experts on every single topic posed and of course as academics we acknowledge this as being true. Thus we do our own research on topics we find relative and then we speak about our analysis, but you already know this. So then why would you demand that Sebastian, or anyone, explain in the simplest (practical?) terms their entire wealth of knowledge whenever they speak? This is a near impossible task to accomplish. It also assumes that an individual does not have practical knowledge because the application of their terminoloigy is not in plain-speak.
Now, if you do not have time and/or passion to read the authors that are posed to you by other academics then that is perfectly fine; no one can do this for every single topic posed. I have read dozens of philosophical books where the language is unclear and I have to struggle through the ideas but this does not mean that the knowledge posed is not sound and entirely practical.
Hell, I may never fully comprehend Einstein’s theory of relativity. But, I would never pose that this immense finding is impractical because I (as an individual) cannot fully adjust to time relativity in my everyday existence. Time is relative and I love the reality of this but I have a hard time reconciling it. I would never say it is impractical even if it may not fully envelop how human societies are organized, i.e. on an impratical schedule of time that is non-existent.
Hey John,
I’d like to send you a text I’m working on, and get your comments on it if you have the time.
Can you e-mail me? tsuresuregusa [at] gmail dot com
“That being said, I am wondering how one can be a militant enactist. Do you blow things up in its name or resort to violence to further its acceptance?” (tildeb)
I see this same critique from many American circles about the fighters in various Middle East countries that ‘oppose’ American rulership invading their countries…these same groups are either labelled terrorist or linked to them in many media circles.
Tildeb also likes to blame the Middle East, and practically all of the ills in the known countries, on religion and its influence. Militant in Egypt, must be a Muslim. Blowing up a clinic in Tennessee, must be an Evangelical or a Catholic.
However, his quote revealed something about his understanding of global politics, and his thoughts on capitalism and some of it’s affluent thinkers in this sentence “A good rule of thumb for revolutionaries everywhere should be: What would Thomas Jefferson/JS Mill say?” and then follow it.’ and ‘Liberalism – based on what Jefferson and Mills describe it to be – is the foundation of your life, the very pillars upon which you breathe these words’.
Tildeb do you think people in the Middle East can think differently then you and arrive at conclusions which actually might be a better fit for their culture? How about people of First Nations descent in your country that hold to varying political, economic, and spiritual systems?
Do you think some of what you are saying can have a perceived ethnocentricism in it?
Now to answer the first quote about ‘killing in the name of…’…is it okay for America and Britain to bomb and kill in 2 countries they have no right being in? These are secular nations killing in the name of Capitalism and conquest as far as I can tell. Are you not their supporter of their troops that give their lives for the sake of the American or British system? How is this any different than the position Sebastian is promoting?