A text is traditionally understood to be a piece of written language - a whole 'work' such as poem or a novel, or a relatively discrete part of a work such as chapter. A rather broader conception has become common within discourse analysis, where a text may be either written or spoken discourse, so that, for example, the words used in a conversation (or their written transcription) constitute a text...
In cultural analysis, by contrast, texts do not need to be linguistic at all; any cultural artefact - a picture, a building... A strong argument for doing so is that texts in contemporary society are increasingly combine language with other semiotic forms. Television is the most obvious example, combining language with visual images, music, and sound effects (p. 4).
Texts are social spaces in which two fundamental social processes simultaneously occur: cognition and representation of the world, and social interaction. A multifunctional view of text is therefore essential (p. 6)
Textual analysis demands diversity of focus not only with respect to functions but also with respect to levels of analysis. Let me stress that discourse analysis itself is not here taken to be a particular level of analysis. For some linguists, it is: 'discourse analysis is analysis of text structure above the sentence' (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975). My view is that 'discourse' is use of language seen as a form of social practice, and discourse analysis of how texts work within sociocultural practice (p. 7).
In the three-dimensional framework for CDA I referred to earlier (text, discourse practice, sociocultural practice), the analysis of discourse analysis involves attention to processes of text production, distribution, and consumption...This principle would mean for instnace that in analyzing the text of a TV program one should also have regard to the routines and processes of program production, and the circumstances and practices of audience reception (p. 9)
[T]he two major centripetal forces in any discursive event are the language and the order of discourse. Discursive events are, on the one hand, dependent upon and shaped by them, but on the other hand cumulatively restructure them. Intertextual analysis links the text and discourse practice dimensions of the framework, and shows where a text is located with respect to the social network of orders of discourse - how a text actualizes and extends the potential within orders of discourse (p. 10).
[D]iscourse practice ensures attention to the historicity of discursive events by showing both their continuity with the past (their dependence upon given orders of discourse) and their involvement in making history (their remaking of orders of discourse) (p. 11).
I have adapted the concept of order of discourse from Foucault (1981) to refer to the ordered set of discursive practices associated with a particular social domain or institution (e.g. the lecture, the seminar, counselling, and informal conversation, in an academic institution), and boundaries and relationship between them (p. 12).
I regard a genre as a socially ratified way of using language in connection with a particular type of social activity (e.g. interview, narrative, exposition)... Rather than using 'field' we can use 'discourse'; a discourse is a way of signifying a particular domain of social practice from a particular perspective, and a genre may predictably draw upon a particular range of discourses, though a given discourse may be drawn upon in various genres (p. 14).
In tying ideology to social relations of power, I am alluding to asymmetrical relations of power, to domination. Foucault's work in particular has popularized a different understanding of power as a ubiquitous property of the technologies which structure modern institutions, not possessed by or attached to any particular social class, stratum, or group (Foucault 1979) (P. 17).
Of course, discourse analysis cannot per se judge the truth or well-groundedness of a proposition, but then critical discourse analysis is just one method to be used within wider critical projects. Judgements of truth and well-groundedness are not just a prerogative arrogantly claimed by intellectuals, they are a constant and necessary part of social life for everyone, including Foucaultians (Dews 1988)...Intellectuals should not be embarrassed about making judgements of truth; on the contrary, like other social groups, they have a responsibility to bring the particular perspective they can contribute into the public domain in debates over the great social and political issues (Norris 1992) (pp. 18-19).
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Norman Fairclough's Research Interest
Since the early 1980s, my research has focused on critical discourse analysis - including the place of language in social relations of power and ideology, and how language figures in processes of social change. My main current interest is in language (discourse) as an element in contemporary social changes which are referred to as 'globalisation', 'neo-liberalism', 'new capitalism', the 'knowledge economy' and so forth. Over the past three years I have been working specifically on aspects of 'transition' in Central and Eastern Europe , especially Romania , from a discourse analytical perspective.
This research is based upon the theoretical claim that discourse is an element of social life which is dialectically interconnected with other elements, and may have constructive and transformative effects on other elements. It also makes the claim that discourse has in many ways become a more salient and potent element of social life in the contemporary world, and that more general processes of current social change often seem to be initiated and driven by changes in discourse. Discourse analysis, including linguistic analysis, therefore has a great deal more to contribute to social research than has generally been recognised, especially when integrated into interdisciplinary research projects.
My own recent contribution to this research has included three main elements:
* Theoretical development of critical discourse analysis to enhance its capacity to contribute to this area of social research (eg Fairclough 1992, Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999, Fairclough 2001, Fairclough, Jessop & Sayer 2004);
* Developing approaches to linguistic analysis of texts and interactions which are adapted to social research (eg Fairclough 2003a, 2004a)
* Application of this theory and method in researching aspects of contemporary social change (eg Fairclough 1995a/b, Fairclough 2000, Chiapello & Fairclough 2002, Fairclough 2006a)
I have maintained research contacts with Lancaster since my retirement through collaborative projects in the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Linguistics department on the 'knowledge-based economy', the Bologna reforms of higher education in Europe , and 'moral economy'.
from his self-introduction on the webpage of the department he works for
Whom its results will be relevant and useful - van Dijk
There is a good deal of so called critical analysis going on which removes texts (usually portable and written) from their conditions of production and reception in particular sites and on the basis of rather superficial linguistic and content analysis makes too large a leap to the macro (p. ix).
There was no doubt, then, that the opportunity to publish a collection of Norman Fairclough's key papers from the period of 1983 to 1993, some published and some written for this collection, would offers readers of the Language in Social Life Series a means themselves of engaging with these concerns. Four themes structure the collection:
* the relationship between language, ideology, and power
* the relationship between discourse and sociocultural change
* the centrality of textual analysis to social research
* the principles and practice of critical awareness
Crossing these governing themes of Fairclough's research we can identify three central constructs of critical discourse analysis:
* text and the study of 'texture'
* discoursal practices and the concept 'orders of discourse'
* sociocultural practices and the concept of 'culture'
from General Editor's Preface written by Professor Christopher N. Candlin, Macquarie University, Sydney
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.
There was no doubt, then, that the opportunity to publish a collection of Norman Fairclough's key papers from the period of 1983 to 1993, some published and some written for this collection, would offers readers of the Language in Social Life Series a means themselves of engaging with these concerns. Four themes structure the collection:
* the relationship between language, ideology, and power
* the relationship between discourse and sociocultural change
* the centrality of textual analysis to social research
* the principles and practice of critical awareness
Crossing these governing themes of Fairclough's research we can identify three central constructs of critical discourse analysis:
* text and the study of 'texture'
* discoursal practices and the concept 'orders of discourse'
* sociocultural practices and the concept of 'culture'
from General Editor's Preface written by Professor Christopher N. Candlin, Macquarie University, Sydney
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Classes based Chosun Dynasty and external delimitation
Social structure
class based
women domesticated
occupations categorized and interconnected with classes respectively
communication centralized
the presence of formidable force from outside
reliance on China and Chinese culture
Foucaultian theory of 'control of discourse,' or biopower
rules of exclusion
internal systems of control and delimitations of discourse
conditions under which discourse can be employed
philosophical themes conforming to & reinforcing the activity of limitation and exclusion...
This might be a plausible research project that will investigate the historical, social conditions of the Dynasty and further shed light on understanding the immanent social hiatuses of the South Korean society.
class based
women domesticated
occupations categorized and interconnected with classes respectively
communication centralized
the presence of formidable force from outside
reliance on China and Chinese culture
Foucaultian theory of 'control of discourse,' or biopower
rules of exclusion
internal systems of control and delimitations of discourse
conditions under which discourse can be employed
philosophical themes conforming to & reinforcing the activity of limitation and exclusion...
This might be a plausible research project that will investigate the historical, social conditions of the Dynasty and further shed light on understanding the immanent social hiatuses of the South Korean society.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Discourse
A specific assembly of categorizations, concepts, and ideas that is produced, reproduced, performed, and transformed in a particular set of practices. Discourses must be embedded within institutions and subjects, regulated with reference to a particular ‘regime of truth’, and situated within particular assemblages of knowledge and power, yet be open to dispute. They are concerned with meaning and context as well as content and the practices of many authors, using many, and varied types of, sources. They help us to understand how people interpret and create reality, and to be aware of ‘how what is said fits into a network that has its own history and conditions of existence’ (M. Barrett 1992 The Politics of Truth).
Archaeology Dictionary: discourse
The context, environment, and conditions within which a defined knowledge is produced and made accessible to others. Discourse is not simply the content of what is said or shown (a printed text, lecture, museum display, TV programme, and so on), it also includes the conceptual, social, and historical conditions behind the statements made. Discourse brings in people, buildings, institutions, rules, values, desires, concepts, machines, instruments, and anything else that could have played a part in the construction of knowledge. The idea of discourse also carries with it the notion of inclusion and exclusion; statements are arranged according to systems whereby some people are admitted, others excluded, and contributions from some people are endorsed as legitimate candidates for assessment, while others are judged as not worthy of comment.
Philosophy Dictionary: discourse
(Latin, discursus, a running from one place to another) A continuous stretch of language containing more than one sentence: conversations, narratives, arguments, speeches. Discourse analysis is the social and linguistic description of norms governing such productions, and may include (in critical linguistics) focus upon the social and political determinants of the form discourse takes; for instance, the hidden presuppositions that the persons addressed are of a certain class, race, or gender.
The Social Conception of Discourse
In the social sciences, a discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic, or, as Judith Butler puts it, "the limits of acceptable speech"—or possible truth. Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things; it is not possible to escape discourse. For example, two notably distinct discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements describing them either as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions and perhaps also the style needed to communicate. Discourse is closely linked to different theories of power and state, at least as long as defining discourses is seen to mean defining reality itself.
http://www.answers.com/topic/discourse
Archaeology Dictionary: discourse
The context, environment, and conditions within which a defined knowledge is produced and made accessible to others. Discourse is not simply the content of what is said or shown (a printed text, lecture, museum display, TV programme, and so on), it also includes the conceptual, social, and historical conditions behind the statements made. Discourse brings in people, buildings, institutions, rules, values, desires, concepts, machines, instruments, and anything else that could have played a part in the construction of knowledge. The idea of discourse also carries with it the notion of inclusion and exclusion; statements are arranged according to systems whereby some people are admitted, others excluded, and contributions from some people are endorsed as legitimate candidates for assessment, while others are judged as not worthy of comment.
Philosophy Dictionary: discourse
(Latin, discursus, a running from one place to another) A continuous stretch of language containing more than one sentence: conversations, narratives, arguments, speeches. Discourse analysis is the social and linguistic description of norms governing such productions, and may include (in critical linguistics) focus upon the social and political determinants of the form discourse takes; for instance, the hidden presuppositions that the persons addressed are of a certain class, race, or gender.
The Social Conception of Discourse
In the social sciences, a discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic, or, as Judith Butler puts it, "the limits of acceptable speech"—or possible truth. Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things; it is not possible to escape discourse. For example, two notably distinct discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements describing them either as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions and perhaps also the style needed to communicate. Discourse is closely linked to different theories of power and state, at least as long as defining discourses is seen to mean defining reality itself.
http://www.answers.com/topic/discourse
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Discourse on Language
I am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is "to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality. In a society such as our own we all know the rules of exclusion. The most obvious and familiar of these concerns what is prohibited....We have three types of prohibition, covering objects, rule with its surrounding circumstances, the privileged or exclusive right to speak of a particular subjects; these prohibitions interrelate, reinforce and complement each other, forming a complex web, continually subject to modification.I will note simply that the areas where this web is most tightly woven today, where the danger spots are most numerous, are those dealing with politics and sexuality (p. 216).
Speech is not merely the medium which manifests - or dissembles - desire; it is also the object of desire (p. 216).
But our society possesses yet another principle of exclusion; not another prohibition, but a division and a rejection. I have in mind the opposition: reason and folly (p. 216).
No doctor before the end of the eighteenth century had ever thought of listening to the content - how it was said and why - of these words; and yet it was these which signalled the difference between reason and madness.... Even when the role of the doctor consists of lending an ear to this finally liberated speech, this procedure still takes place in the context of a hiatus between listener and speaker (p. 217).
It is perhaps a little risky to speak of the opposition between true and false as a third system of exclusion, along with those I have mentioned already. How could one reasonably compare the constraints of truth with those other division, arbitrary in origin if not developing out of historical contingency - not merely modifiable but in a state of continual flux, supported by a system of institutions imposing and manipulating them, acting not without constraint, nor without an element, at least, of violence (pp. 217-218)?
I believe that this will to knowledge, thus reliant upon institutional support and distribution, tends to exercise a sort of pressure, a power of constraint upon other forms of discourse - I am speaking of our own society...I am thinking, too, of the way economic practices, codified into precepts and recipes - as morality, too - have sought, since the eighteenth century, to found themselves, to rationalize and justify their currency, in a theory of wealth and production; I am thinking, again of the manner in which such prescriptive ensembles as the Penal Code started out their bases of justification (p. 219).
Also, refer to a summary from the English Department in Block University, Canada.
Speech is not merely the medium which manifests - or dissembles - desire; it is also the object of desire (p. 216).
But our society possesses yet another principle of exclusion; not another prohibition, but a division and a rejection. I have in mind the opposition: reason and folly (p. 216).
No doctor before the end of the eighteenth century had ever thought of listening to the content - how it was said and why - of these words; and yet it was these which signalled the difference between reason and madness.... Even when the role of the doctor consists of lending an ear to this finally liberated speech, this procedure still takes place in the context of a hiatus between listener and speaker (p. 217).
It is perhaps a little risky to speak of the opposition between true and false as a third system of exclusion, along with those I have mentioned already. How could one reasonably compare the constraints of truth with those other division, arbitrary in origin if not developing out of historical contingency - not merely modifiable but in a state of continual flux, supported by a system of institutions imposing and manipulating them, acting not without constraint, nor without an element, at least, of violence (pp. 217-218)?
I believe that this will to knowledge, thus reliant upon institutional support and distribution, tends to exercise a sort of pressure, a power of constraint upon other forms of discourse - I am speaking of our own society...I am thinking, too, of the way economic practices, codified into precepts and recipes - as morality, too - have sought, since the eighteenth century, to found themselves, to rationalize and justify their currency, in a theory of wealth and production; I am thinking, again of the manner in which such prescriptive ensembles as the Penal Code started out their bases of justification (p. 219).
Also, refer to a summary from the English Department in Block University, Canada.
from Foucault Dictionary
Archaeology
"[The] archaeological level -- the level of what made [an event or a situation] possible" (The Order of Things, p.31). Strict analysis of discourse (Dreyfus & Rabinow, p.104). Archaeology and genealogy alternate and support each other (Dreyfus & Rabinow, p.105). Archaeology is structuralist. It tries to take an objective neutral position and it avoids causal theories of change.
Discourse formation
This concept is the subject of chapter 2 of Archaeology of Knowledge.
He begins with a criticism of the concept that everything with the same label is not the same thing and that the difference between differently labeled things may be a habit of thought.
Suppose a society called everything slightly red "red" and grouped purple along along with red in the process. And compare this to a society that called everything slightly orange "orange," included red (but not purple) under the category, but also yellow. How would these two societies be able to talk about the color of things? They would be using different language maps to organize colors and a simple translation from one to the other appears simply impossible.
The problem is that within our own language community we fail to notice the way in which we are constituting what we talk about by such arbitrary language practices that have become second nature to us. Studying these discourse formations (or discursive formations) is "archaeology." We will try to grasp the implicit rules we use that work together to form this map of the world around us.
Without knowing it, we group distinguishable objects into unities and thus constitute our objects. An object is constituted like this by a "unity of discourse". In Wittgensteinian terms, this might mean by a language game.) The unity of discourse on a particular topic (or object) "would be the interplay of rules that define the transformation of these objects, their non-identity through time, the break produced in them, the internal discontinuity that suspends their permanence (Archaeology of Knowledge, p.33). For example, we constitute the object of "marriage" by a set of rules that allows us to say that we are "married" together with the interplay of rules that defines the marriage as dissolved (annulled, divorced, non-valid). Foucault suggests that an archaeology should examine the way this works, how we control our mental taxonomy through language practices.
Foucault Dictionary by Lois Shawver
"[The] archaeological level -- the level of what made [an event or a situation] possible" (The Order of Things, p.31). Strict analysis of discourse (Dreyfus & Rabinow, p.104). Archaeology and genealogy alternate and support each other (Dreyfus & Rabinow, p.105). Archaeology is structuralist. It tries to take an objective neutral position and it avoids causal theories of change.
Discourse formation
This concept is the subject of chapter 2 of Archaeology of Knowledge.
He begins with a criticism of the concept that everything with the same label is not the same thing and that the difference between differently labeled things may be a habit of thought.
Suppose a society called everything slightly red "red" and grouped purple along along with red in the process. And compare this to a society that called everything slightly orange "orange," included red (but not purple) under the category, but also yellow. How would these two societies be able to talk about the color of things? They would be using different language maps to organize colors and a simple translation from one to the other appears simply impossible.
The problem is that within our own language community we fail to notice the way in which we are constituting what we talk about by such arbitrary language practices that have become second nature to us. Studying these discourse formations (or discursive formations) is "archaeology." We will try to grasp the implicit rules we use that work together to form this map of the world around us.
Without knowing it, we group distinguishable objects into unities and thus constitute our objects. An object is constituted like this by a "unity of discourse". In Wittgensteinian terms, this might mean by a language game.) The unity of discourse on a particular topic (or object) "would be the interplay of rules that define the transformation of these objects, their non-identity through time, the break produced in them, the internal discontinuity that suspends their permanence (Archaeology of Knowledge, p.33). For example, we constitute the object of "marriage" by a set of rules that allows us to say that we are "married" together with the interplay of rules that defines the marriage as dissolved (annulled, divorced, non-valid). Foucault suggests that an archaeology should examine the way this works, how we control our mental taxonomy through language practices.
Foucault Dictionary by Lois Shawver
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Archaeology of Knowledge
The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this 'not-said' is a hollow that undermines from within all that is said (p. 25).
Whenever one can describe. between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functions, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation - thus avoiding words that are already overladen with conditions and consequences, and in any case inadequate to the task of designating such a dispersion, such as 'science,' 'ideology,' 'theory,' or 'domain of objectivity' (p. 38).
Let us generalize: in the nineteenth century, psychiatric discourse is characterized not by privileged objects, but by the way in which it forms objects that are in fact highly dispersed. This formation is made possible by a group of relations established between authorities of emergence, delimitation, and specification. One might say, then, that a discursive formation is defined (as far as its objects are concerned, at least) if one can establish such a group; if one can show how any particular object of discourse finds in it its place and law of emergence; if one can show that it may give birth simultaneously or successively to mutually exclusive objects, without having to modify itself (p. 44).
'Words and things' is the entirely serious title of a problem; it is the ironic title of a work that modifies its own form, displaces its own data and reveals, at the end of the day, a quite different task. A task that consists of not - of no longer - treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. It is this 'more' that we must reveal and describe (p. 49).
Discourse
Practices obeying certain rules: "Archaeology tries to define not the thoughts, representations, images, themes, preoccupations that are concealed or revealed in discourses; but those discourses themselves, those discourses as practices obeying certain rules". It does not treat discourse as document, as a sign of something else, as an element often to be pierced if one is to reach at last the depth of the essential in the place in which it is held in reserve; it is concerned with discourse in its own volume, as a monument. It is not an interpretive discipline: it does not seek another, better-hidden discourse. It refuses to be 'allegorical' (pp. 138-139).
Foucault, M. (1969) The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.
Whenever one can describe. between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functions, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation - thus avoiding words that are already overladen with conditions and consequences, and in any case inadequate to the task of designating such a dispersion, such as 'science,' 'ideology,' 'theory,' or 'domain of objectivity' (p. 38).
Let us generalize: in the nineteenth century, psychiatric discourse is characterized not by privileged objects, but by the way in which it forms objects that are in fact highly dispersed. This formation is made possible by a group of relations established between authorities of emergence, delimitation, and specification. One might say, then, that a discursive formation is defined (as far as its objects are concerned, at least) if one can establish such a group; if one can show how any particular object of discourse finds in it its place and law of emergence; if one can show that it may give birth simultaneously or successively to mutually exclusive objects, without having to modify itself (p. 44).
'Words and things' is the entirely serious title of a problem; it is the ironic title of a work that modifies its own form, displaces its own data and reveals, at the end of the day, a quite different task. A task that consists of not - of no longer - treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. It is this 'more' that we must reveal and describe (p. 49).
Discourse
Practices obeying certain rules: "Archaeology tries to define not the thoughts, representations, images, themes, preoccupations that are concealed or revealed in discourses; but those discourses themselves, those discourses as practices obeying certain rules". It does not treat discourse as document, as a sign of something else, as an element often to be pierced if one is to reach at last the depth of the essential in the place in which it is held in reserve; it is concerned with discourse in its own volume, as a monument. It is not an interpretive discipline: it does not seek another, better-hidden discourse. It refuses to be 'allegorical' (pp. 138-139).
Foucault, M. (1969) The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Capitalizing Alternatives
'We are the leader in online news because in the last ten years, we have focused only on being the best online,' maintained Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC.com, in the lead-up to the site's tenth anniversary in July 2006... One such award was conferred by OMMA Magazine, which credited MSNBC.com with being the best news and information site in the US; 'Online founrlaims doesn't get much better or more real-time than here,' it declarred in its February 2006 issue. Im sharp contrast with its commerical rivals, OMMA's Stever Smith (2006) observes, MSNBC.com 'grew up online,' and therefore appears to possess a firmer understanding of how the web acutally works.
This example of how a major commercial news site capitalizes - in every sense of the word - in the active participation of 'amature newshounds' underscores yet again how certain 'old media' institutions are looking to the alteranative, openly expreimental forms of journalism developed by sites such as IndyMedia, OhmyNews, and Wikinews for ways to enhance their connectivity with users (pp. 140-141).
Allen, S. (2006). Online News. New York: Open University Press.
This example of how a major commercial news site capitalizes - in every sense of the word - in the active participation of 'amature newshounds' underscores yet again how certain 'old media' institutions are looking to the alteranative, openly expreimental forms of journalism developed by sites such as IndyMedia, OhmyNews, and Wikinews for ways to enhance their connectivity with users (pp. 140-141).
Allen, S. (2006). Online News. New York: Open University Press.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
An Olympic Cyclist’s Levelheaded Advice
Sourece: NYTimes
FIRST, SPEND WISELY
“If you want to race, you will have to spring for a $1,500 to $2,000” road racing bicycle, said Jonathan Vaughters, the manager for Mr. Vande Velde’s cycling team, which added a sponsor this week and is now called Team Garmin/Chipotle with H3O.
But don’t feel pressured to overbuy, Mr. Vaughters said. “The difference between a $500 bike and a $1,500 bike is huge,” he said. “The difference between a $1,500 bike and an $8,000 bike is very small.” Invest the saving in good-quality bike shorts with a firm, thick pad and a price tag north of $75. “That may be the best thing you can buy, in terms of comfort,” Mr. Vaughters said.
POWER OUTPUT
Until the last five years or so, Mr. Vande Velde said, serious cyclists typically used the heart rate or a cadence — the number of times the pedal cranks rotate per minute — to gauge effort. But now, cycling professionals and a growing number of serious amateur riders rely on watts, or power readings.
Watts are a measurement of energy output, the amount of energy that a rider applies to the pedal. On a bike, that figure is determined by a meter integrated into the rear hub.
The meter also records a rider’s speed and the time and distance of the ride (as well as heart rate and calories burned per hour), using this data to determine the rider’s watts at any given moment. That number, which changes constantly, is visible on a small screen on the handlebars, and the files can be uploaded to a computer. “Watts is the most reliable way to gauge effort on a bike,” Mr. Vaughters said. “It’s the best way to track your progress from day to day, and also to set training parameters.”
HOW TO HEAD DOWNHILL FAST
Descending a steep road at 40 to 50 miles an hour, especially in a pack of riders, “never stops being terrifying,” Mr. Vande Velde said. But few rides and even fewer races have no descents, so a rider should know how to make a safe descent.
“Relax, shift your weight back,” Mr. Vaughters said. “Most riders put too much weight on the handlebars.”
Mr. Vande Velde said, “Do not look at the wheel of the rider in front of you,” or stare down at the road. “Scan far ahead for any obstacles,” he said, because they’ll arrive very rapidly, and then quickly glance at the road just ahead. “Your eyes should always be moving.”
When negotiating curves, he said, position your feet so that the pedal on the inside of the curve is up, with the outside pedal down (which keeps your weight balanced). “Don’t throw your bike from one corner to another,” he said. “Brake before the turn, and turn gradually, aiming for the apex.”
Acclimate yourself to the feeling of other bicycles pressing close, Mr. Vande Velde said. He added that the team has set up stationary bicycles with the wheels practically touching each other. “It’s a good, safe way to get used to being right on someone’s wheel,” he said.
"An Olympic Cyclist’s Levelheaded Advice," Published: June 19, 2008
GRETCHEN REYNOLDS, NYTimes
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Labor
One of the obvious danger signs that we may be on our way to bring into existence the ideal of the animal laborans is the extent to which our whole economy has become a waste economy, in which things must be almost as quickly devoured and discarded as they have appreared in the world, if the process itself is not to become to a sudden catastrophic end. But if the ideal were alreday in existence and we were truly nothing but members of a consumers' society, we would no longer live in a world at all but simply be driven by a process in whose ever-recurring cycles things appear and disappear, manifest themselves and vanish, never to last long enough to surround the life process in their midst...
The easier that life has become in a consumers' or laborers' society, the more difficult it will be to remain aware of the urges of necessity by which it is driven, even when pain and effort, the outward manifestations of necessity, are hardly noticeable at all. The danger is that such a society, dazzled by the abundance of its growing fertility and caught in the smooth functioning of a never ending process, would no longer be able to recognize itself in any permanent subject which endures after [its] labor is past (pp. 134-135).
Arendt, H. (1958). Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
The easier that life has become in a consumers' or laborers' society, the more difficult it will be to remain aware of the urges of necessity by which it is driven, even when pain and effort, the outward manifestations of necessity, are hardly noticeable at all. The danger is that such a society, dazzled by the abundance of its growing fertility and caught in the smooth functioning of a never ending process, would no longer be able to recognize itself in any permanent subject which endures after [its] labor is past (pp. 134-135).
Arendt, H. (1958). Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
I think THEREFORE I tickle
Article written by JOSE KLEIN and published in Salon.com
Zizek's hatchet man is the Cartesian subject, the embodiment of Rene Descartes' notion that rational thought defines human existence. Zizek's championing of Mr. Cogito Ergo Sum seems peculiar, given how many currently fashionable philosophical schools have declared him already dead. Multiculturalism, for instance, argues that no one seminal criterion can explain what it is to be alive, but that the condition of being human depends on the culture from which the person comes. Consequently, the logic of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" may reflect only a narrow, Occidental mode of being.
In his introduction, Zizek acknowledges a laundry list of other schools "united in the rejection of the Cartesian subject": the New Age obscurantist, the postmodern deconstructionist, the Habermasian, the Heideggerian, the cognitive scientist, the Deep Ecologist, the critical (post-)Marxist, and the feminist. Zizek concludes that it's high time for someone to defend the view that so many scholars argue vehemently against. He sets out to do this by positing a universal selfhood, seen through the scrim of leftist political theory. What he drafts, however, is not the typical cold-blooded, rational Cartesian subject; rather he formulates an original reading of the self, one that with all its contingency still possesses a paradoxical freedom to move us "from subjection to subjective destitution." That is to say, from enslavement by our circumstance to self-determination, albeit limited.
Right, sure, but just what does Zizek's search to define the universal self have to do with you? Everything. If you have ever wondered to what extent your life lies within your own power, or to what extent your experience is determined by influences -- culture, class, sex, class, history -- hopelessly beyond your control, you are none other than the ticklish subject.
What's amazing about Zizek is that he paints such a broad canvas. He divides the book into three parts, gradually building a dialectical portrait of the individual dwelling within a politicized world. The first presents us with the solitary individual -- rather akin to the atomized psychological self -- whose imagination naturally breaks apart totalities into a horrific multitude of shattered images. He quotes from Hegel: "Here shoots a bloody head -- there another white ghastly apparition, suddenly here before it, and just so disappears." In the second part, he places the individual back in a sociopolitical context. In the third part, we return to the reflective consciousness of the single individual, who must think and act in the complexity of the world. Through this journey from self to other and then on to a new self, Zizek sets out to measure the scope of our personal and political agency, and the hopes, fears and limitations that define that scope.
What springs from this and so many other moments in "The Ticklish Subject" is a passionate search for what Zizek aptly calls a "miracle" -- the political act that undermines the structures of global capitalism. For Zizek, miracles occur at the moment when multitudes of individual Cartesian wills come together to achieve what had seemed like a political impossibility. For example, in Italy in the 1970s, a referendum on divorce was held. Members of the left, who supported the freedom to choose divorce, thought that people weren't "mature enough, that they would be frightened by the intense Catholic propaganda." And yet, inexplicably, when the moment came, over 60 percent of the country voted for the right to divorce.
Zizek concludes his book with the story of Mary Kay Letourneau, the 36-year-old schoolteacher who had an affair with one of her sixth-grade pupils. In the public debate over the incident, two ideological camps formed. The first condemned her as evil. The other, which included Mary Kay's own defense team, diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. They claimed that the manic states, which the illness induces, suspended her ability to use proper judgment. Rather than be punished, they argued, she should be treated medically. This leads Zizek to ask, "Is not such a suspension [of good judgment], however, one of the constituents of the notion of the authentic act of being in love?" The mania they describe, then, is love itself. And so, confronted by a society that sees love as a mental illness which medication can cure, Zizek offers his own prescription. Like a sublime, intellectual self-help guru, he "exhorts you to dare," to discover the freedom that can only come from obeying your deepest desires.
Zizek's hatchet man is the Cartesian subject, the embodiment of Rene Descartes' notion that rational thought defines human existence. Zizek's championing of Mr. Cogito Ergo Sum seems peculiar, given how many currently fashionable philosophical schools have declared him already dead. Multiculturalism, for instance, argues that no one seminal criterion can explain what it is to be alive, but that the condition of being human depends on the culture from which the person comes. Consequently, the logic of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" may reflect only a narrow, Occidental mode of being.
In his introduction, Zizek acknowledges a laundry list of other schools "united in the rejection of the Cartesian subject": the New Age obscurantist, the postmodern deconstructionist, the Habermasian, the Heideggerian, the cognitive scientist, the Deep Ecologist, the critical (post-)Marxist, and the feminist. Zizek concludes that it's high time for someone to defend the view that so many scholars argue vehemently against. He sets out to do this by positing a universal selfhood, seen through the scrim of leftist political theory. What he drafts, however, is not the typical cold-blooded, rational Cartesian subject; rather he formulates an original reading of the self, one that with all its contingency still possesses a paradoxical freedom to move us "from subjection to subjective destitution." That is to say, from enslavement by our circumstance to self-determination, albeit limited.
Right, sure, but just what does Zizek's search to define the universal self have to do with you? Everything. If you have ever wondered to what extent your life lies within your own power, or to what extent your experience is determined by influences -- culture, class, sex, class, history -- hopelessly beyond your control, you are none other than the ticklish subject.
What's amazing about Zizek is that he paints such a broad canvas. He divides the book into three parts, gradually building a dialectical portrait of the individual dwelling within a politicized world. The first presents us with the solitary individual -- rather akin to the atomized psychological self -- whose imagination naturally breaks apart totalities into a horrific multitude of shattered images. He quotes from Hegel: "Here shoots a bloody head -- there another white ghastly apparition, suddenly here before it, and just so disappears." In the second part, he places the individual back in a sociopolitical context. In the third part, we return to the reflective consciousness of the single individual, who must think and act in the complexity of the world. Through this journey from self to other and then on to a new self, Zizek sets out to measure the scope of our personal and political agency, and the hopes, fears and limitations that define that scope.
What springs from this and so many other moments in "The Ticklish Subject" is a passionate search for what Zizek aptly calls a "miracle" -- the political act that undermines the structures of global capitalism. For Zizek, miracles occur at the moment when multitudes of individual Cartesian wills come together to achieve what had seemed like a political impossibility. For example, in Italy in the 1970s, a referendum on divorce was held. Members of the left, who supported the freedom to choose divorce, thought that people weren't "mature enough, that they would be frightened by the intense Catholic propaganda." And yet, inexplicably, when the moment came, over 60 percent of the country voted for the right to divorce.
Zizek concludes his book with the story of Mary Kay Letourneau, the 36-year-old schoolteacher who had an affair with one of her sixth-grade pupils. In the public debate over the incident, two ideological camps formed. The first condemned her as evil. The other, which included Mary Kay's own defense team, diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. They claimed that the manic states, which the illness induces, suspended her ability to use proper judgment. Rather than be punished, they argued, she should be treated medically. This leads Zizek to ask, "Is not such a suspension [of good judgment], however, one of the constituents of the notion of the authentic act of being in love?" The mania they describe, then, is love itself. And so, confronted by a society that sees love as a mental illness which medication can cure, Zizek offers his own prescription. Like a sublime, intellectual self-help guru, he "exhorts you to dare," to discover the freedom that can only come from obeying your deepest desires.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmauel Levinas
http://theology.co.kr/article/levinas.html
http://web.skku.edu/~philos//webzine/2/levinas.htm
http://theology.co.kr/article/levinas.html
http://web.skku.edu/~philos//webzine/2/levinas.htm
"Being Martin Heidegger" from Salon.com
"Why is there something instead of nothing," asked philosopher Martin Heidegger, and he asked it again and again throughout his life. But, considering his at times nearly incomprehensible response to his own question and his affiliation with the Nazis during the 1930s, there are more than a few who have since plaintively wished, "Why couldn't there be nothing instead of Heidegger?"...
Polt and Fried are representative of a new generation of Heidegger scholars, a group that has unflinchingly looked at the evidence of Heidegger's affiliations with German fascism, fully investigated the ways in which his thought might have led to such a disastrous political regime and yet still found reasons to value the meditations of this provincial German. For them, Heidegger's work offers possibilities for constructively transforming one's life and for positively challenging the current direction of our technological world....
I realize this is a bit unfair, but can you offer, to the novice reader, a summary of the essence of Heidegger's thought?
Heidegger's basic problem is the question of "Being": How is it that we're able to understand what it means for anything to be? So when a philosopher like Descartes declares, "I think, therefore I am," Heidegger wants to ask, What is this "am-ness"? Or when any of us say that something "is" -- whether it's a molecule, a man or the planet Mars -- what do we mean by "is," and how does it come to pass that "is" means anything to us at all? Heidegger's answer is that we understand Being because we live in time -- we belong to a past and we anticipate a future. So without time and history, things couldn't be present or revealed to us at all. Their Being would have no meaning.
What first drew you to Heidegger?
I didn't read Heidegger until my senior year, but when I did I thought he was very refreshing because he seemed to articulate problems that I had dimly perceived in previous philosophers that I had read, none of whom had really satisfied me. They all seemed to be missing something. And Heidegger put words on that.
What was that?
That truth can't be grasped in an abstract, universal way without taking into account that we are concrete human beings living in a particular time and place. Heidegger tried to show that our particularity is not an obstacle to truth but in fact it's what makes truth possible. There's no truth apart from that. It seems to me that he does that without just falling into relativism. So I found that very appealing.
There are some American philosophers and researchers out there who suggest that there's a direct line between Heidegger's philosophy and the embrace of Nazi ideology or others like it. How would you distinguish your thought about the connection between Heidegger's philosophy and Nazism from others who see a more direct link?
One can make a reasonable case that his philosophy led him straight to National Socialism. The case would be something like this: In "Being and Time," his main work, he characterizes everyday existence and everyday language and thinking as inauthentic, in other words superficial and not fundamentally disclosive about the human condition.
So it would seem to follow that he would have no reason to support democracy or free speech or any parliamentary system, because it would all just be inauthentic, idle talk. At the same time, also in "Being and Time," he suggests that a deeper and authentic truth can be found in going back to one's roots, one's heritage, and appropriating them for some future project, perhaps under the leadership of some hero. It's not much of a stretch to see how he could be very excited by this very charismatic figure Hitler, who claimed he was returning to the German roots in a historic way. As it turned out, what he really wanted was something much more revolutionary than Nazism. The Nazis were not radical enough because they weren't provoking the German people to a confrontation with Being. As the '30s wear on, he becomes more and more disillusioned with the Nazis and comes to see them as just another product of modern metaphysics. I think he genuinely supported the movement, though probably from the very beginning he was not a standard Nazi. He was a card-carrying Nazi, but not just another average party member.
Now when I say he left the door open without forcing anybody who's Heideggerian to become a fascist, what I mean is that you could accept his view that everyday existence is inauthentic and yet still reject authoritarian tyranny.
When you say he saw everyday life as not disclosive, how should we understand disclosive?
Everyday life for Heidegger is absorbed with particular things, in particular projects, without standing back, as it were, to explicitly choose those projects. He says we do not choose to choose in everyday life. Authenticity would involve choosing to choose -- in other words, being really self-aware and free in what one is pursuing. In that sense authenticity would be more disclosive and more illuminating about the human condition.
I'm told that Heidegger isn't taken seriously anymore in Germany, that his involvement with the Nazis has caused him to be no longer viewed as a legitimate part of the debate in philosophy or about Germany.
I wouldn't state it as absolutely as that. But certainly Heidegger is not the main concern of most German philosophers. In the immediate postwar time Heidegger did have a sort of comeback in the '50s, a wave of popularity. But at the same time philosophers like Habermas emerged who have a completely non-Heideggerian approach, a much more rationalist approach. Contemporary German philosophy is much like American philosophy in that there are analytic philosophers there, and there's quite a bit of interest in American pragmatism in Germany. Of course there are pockets of Heideggerians. Still, it's in France and America and a few other countries like Japan and Italy where Heidegger is really appreciated.
Do you think it is more rationalistic and pragmatic cultures like America and France, then, that in some ways are desperate for an injection of some mystical element -- which opens them up to Heidegger?
I think that's true. The Germans had their fill of mystical irrationalism. And Americans need some of it. Of course, irrationalism is a pejorative term. But I do think we need some Heidegger. That would be one way of putting it.
What element of Heidegger do you think America needs?
Science and technology have a leading role in our culture. They're often seen as the arbiters of truth. One of Heidegger's main points is that science and technology are built upon something that cannot be understood in scientific or technological terms. Poetry and art, for instance, might be ways of reaching that deeper truth, that experience of the world that is pre-scientific. Often we in America don't know what to do with poetry and art. For us they're just entertainment or relaxation. What if there were a deeper truth? Maybe there's a strain of American culture that longs for that.
There's a substantial body of work that compares Heidegger to Eastern thought and particularly to Buddhism, to the attempt to awaken oneself from the jail cell of ego and the aging, sickness and ultimate death of the body. Do you think such comparisons are valid or useful? Was Heidegger, in effect, a Western Buddha?
He was definitely interested in Buddhism and Taoism. It's also true that his thought found resonance in Japan. He gets a lot of attention in Japan. What a lot of Japanese say is that there is connection between Buddhism's notion of emptiness and some Heideggerian notions of nothingness or unconcealment. We do need to be a bit skeptical about this, though. There is one passage in the "Contributions to Philosophy," which were written by Heidegger between 1936 and 1938, in which he simply makes the remark, "Not Buddhism. The very opposite." What he means by that I don't know, except that I think he probably had in mind that Buddhism seems to try to release us altogether from existence, from the body, whereas Heidegger wants a more engaged dwelling or involvement in existence. Now it might be that that's a misinterpretation of Buddhism, and of course there are many different strands of Buddhism. But that's why I think that he might have been reluctant to say that he was a Western Buddha.
Heidegger is seen as the fount, along with Nietzsche, of much of the postmodern thought that has developed over the past three decades. Yet much of postmodern thought seems to have hit a dead end as a result of its own deconstructive strategies. The most renowned example of this is the infamous Sokal affair, in which a physicist submitted a parody concerning the supposed "hermeneutics of quantum gravity" to a leftist postmodern journal, and the editors accepted it as legitimate. Do you believe postmodernists have misused Heidegger? Or are we witnessing the logical outcome of the circularity that's inherent in Heidegger's method?
I think it is a misuse. As we were saying earlier, Heidegger points to the particularization of truth, its historicity. But I think he does not thereby become a relativist who dismisses scientific findings altogether. He is just saying that scientific statements do in fact reveal things to us, but let's not forget that they're possible only in an interpretive context. That scientific theories are open to revision, and it's possible that better interpretations may come along. Which is different from taking any scientific statement and trying to deconstruct it and reduce it to its background in intellectual history, its cultural resonances, which ultimately, I think, ends up in a sort of Nietzschean interpretation, reducing all truth to power...
But even in your description, doesn't this point up the problem with Heidegger and science? Most scientists would say DNA is not an interpretation, for example. DNA is DNA. It's a fact and it has definite predictable results in our lives.
Well, I'll try to speak for Heidegger on this question. His statements about science are sometimes sloppy and sometimes more careful. I think at his best he would say, "You're right. DNA is real. The facts we've discovered about it are real. Now, what do those facts mean in a larger sense? What are we going to do with them?" That is certainly still in question. By discovering the human genome, have we unlocked the human essence, as the Cincinnati Enquirer said in a headline a few months ago? Or have we discovered something that, although true, does not really reveal what it means to be human? By discovering the human genome, have we gained a tool that we can or should use to exploit ourselves? Or would that be a misunderstanding of ourselves as a resource or an object? These are questions of interpretation. And here is where debate and discussion and deeper interpretation are always possible. I don't think that relativizes the facts of what scientists have discovered.
One of the other areas where Heidegger's influence has been acknowledged explicitly is in the environmental movement, where some claim that Heidegger's understanding of the world and of technology informs their approach to saving the planet. What was Heidegger's notion of technology? Are these environmentalists right in their reading of him?
I don't know the details of how he has been appropriated. But I think it would be legitimate to try to use him in ecological thinking. Especially his views on technology, which are that technology is one mode in which things as a whole are revealed to us. They're revealed to us as useful and manipulable resources. And he wants to alert us to the fact that that is not the only possible interpretation of things -- that beneath that interpretation there is what he calls "earth," which is a dimension of things that can never be fully interpreted or fully used up or fully understood by the human being. It's a mysterious dimension. So the kind of ecological thinking that tries to get us to respect the mystery of wilderness is something that is very close to the spirit of Heidegger. The kind of ecological thinking that goes about trying to manage resources wisely so that we don't destroy potential cures for cancer -- that's still thinking technologically, in other words, still seeing natural resources as objects.
In the famous Der Spiegel interview, which Heidegger gave in 1966 but wasn't published until his death 10 years later, he ended by saying that given the technological developments going on in the world, "only a god can save us now," a god with a small "g." Do you think he has in mind the same kind of thing that Joe Lieberman and George Bush do when they pronounce their belief in God? How do you understand Heidegger's statement?
Heidegger did not want to go back to the Judeo-Christian God. He thought that that God had been appropriated by metaphysics, and that metaphysics and that God had died together. But there is the possibility of the coming of a new god or gods -- what he calls, in the "Contributions to Philosophy," "the passing by of the last god." It's a very mysterious notion. Quite a bit of ink has been spilled on it, but nobody really knows what it means. Heidegger was inspired largely by the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who tried to invite the gods to return to us. There are ways of interpreting this that try to bring it down to earth. Hubert Dreyfus, for example, sees it as a turning point in our culture. He says that Woodstock might have been an example of a Heideggerian god. But that sounds too human to me, all too intelligible. It's clear that he wants some kind of radical turning, some cataclysmic event that this god would have the power to bring about. More than that is hard to say...
In the end, if someone asked you, "Why take the trouble with Heidegger and his mess of a vocabulary and his involvement with the Nazis," what would you say? How would you advise him to look at a philosopher's philosophy in the light of that same philosopher's personal life? How would Heidegger urge us to approach that issue?
Heidegger himself says in "Being and Time" that philosophical insights are always based on or grow out of personal experiences. And I think he's right about that. Philosophers are human beings. It's always illuminating to think about the person behind the words. But it's also easy to slip into a dismissive mode and say, "This person made mistakes and so his philosophy must be a bunch of mistakes." That's the kind of ad hominem argument that isn't legitimate. Heidegger is somebody who, like all great philosophers, struggled with how to live, with the meaning of existence, and left behind a record of that struggle. And anybody who wants to struggle with similar issues can turn to some of these texts, including Heidegger's, and find food for thought there. Not the last word, but food for thought. Why do we struggle with the meaning of existence? Because existence doesn't mean as much unless you struggle with it.
Salon.com article
Polt and Fried are representative of a new generation of Heidegger scholars, a group that has unflinchingly looked at the evidence of Heidegger's affiliations with German fascism, fully investigated the ways in which his thought might have led to such a disastrous political regime and yet still found reasons to value the meditations of this provincial German. For them, Heidegger's work offers possibilities for constructively transforming one's life and for positively challenging the current direction of our technological world....
I realize this is a bit unfair, but can you offer, to the novice reader, a summary of the essence of Heidegger's thought?
Heidegger's basic problem is the question of "Being": How is it that we're able to understand what it means for anything to be? So when a philosopher like Descartes declares, "I think, therefore I am," Heidegger wants to ask, What is this "am-ness"? Or when any of us say that something "is" -- whether it's a molecule, a man or the planet Mars -- what do we mean by "is," and how does it come to pass that "is" means anything to us at all? Heidegger's answer is that we understand Being because we live in time -- we belong to a past and we anticipate a future. So without time and history, things couldn't be present or revealed to us at all. Their Being would have no meaning.
What first drew you to Heidegger?
I didn't read Heidegger until my senior year, but when I did I thought he was very refreshing because he seemed to articulate problems that I had dimly perceived in previous philosophers that I had read, none of whom had really satisfied me. They all seemed to be missing something. And Heidegger put words on that.
What was that?
That truth can't be grasped in an abstract, universal way without taking into account that we are concrete human beings living in a particular time and place. Heidegger tried to show that our particularity is not an obstacle to truth but in fact it's what makes truth possible. There's no truth apart from that. It seems to me that he does that without just falling into relativism. So I found that very appealing.
There are some American philosophers and researchers out there who suggest that there's a direct line between Heidegger's philosophy and the embrace of Nazi ideology or others like it. How would you distinguish your thought about the connection between Heidegger's philosophy and Nazism from others who see a more direct link?
One can make a reasonable case that his philosophy led him straight to National Socialism. The case would be something like this: In "Being and Time," his main work, he characterizes everyday existence and everyday language and thinking as inauthentic, in other words superficial and not fundamentally disclosive about the human condition.
So it would seem to follow that he would have no reason to support democracy or free speech or any parliamentary system, because it would all just be inauthentic, idle talk. At the same time, also in "Being and Time," he suggests that a deeper and authentic truth can be found in going back to one's roots, one's heritage, and appropriating them for some future project, perhaps under the leadership of some hero. It's not much of a stretch to see how he could be very excited by this very charismatic figure Hitler, who claimed he was returning to the German roots in a historic way. As it turned out, what he really wanted was something much more revolutionary than Nazism. The Nazis were not radical enough because they weren't provoking the German people to a confrontation with Being. As the '30s wear on, he becomes more and more disillusioned with the Nazis and comes to see them as just another product of modern metaphysics. I think he genuinely supported the movement, though probably from the very beginning he was not a standard Nazi. He was a card-carrying Nazi, but not just another average party member.
Now when I say he left the door open without forcing anybody who's Heideggerian to become a fascist, what I mean is that you could accept his view that everyday existence is inauthentic and yet still reject authoritarian tyranny.
When you say he saw everyday life as not disclosive, how should we understand disclosive?
Everyday life for Heidegger is absorbed with particular things, in particular projects, without standing back, as it were, to explicitly choose those projects. He says we do not choose to choose in everyday life. Authenticity would involve choosing to choose -- in other words, being really self-aware and free in what one is pursuing. In that sense authenticity would be more disclosive and more illuminating about the human condition.
I'm told that Heidegger isn't taken seriously anymore in Germany, that his involvement with the Nazis has caused him to be no longer viewed as a legitimate part of the debate in philosophy or about Germany.
I wouldn't state it as absolutely as that. But certainly Heidegger is not the main concern of most German philosophers. In the immediate postwar time Heidegger did have a sort of comeback in the '50s, a wave of popularity. But at the same time philosophers like Habermas emerged who have a completely non-Heideggerian approach, a much more rationalist approach. Contemporary German philosophy is much like American philosophy in that there are analytic philosophers there, and there's quite a bit of interest in American pragmatism in Germany. Of course there are pockets of Heideggerians. Still, it's in France and America and a few other countries like Japan and Italy where Heidegger is really appreciated.
Do you think it is more rationalistic and pragmatic cultures like America and France, then, that in some ways are desperate for an injection of some mystical element -- which opens them up to Heidegger?
I think that's true. The Germans had their fill of mystical irrationalism. And Americans need some of it. Of course, irrationalism is a pejorative term. But I do think we need some Heidegger. That would be one way of putting it.
What element of Heidegger do you think America needs?
Science and technology have a leading role in our culture. They're often seen as the arbiters of truth. One of Heidegger's main points is that science and technology are built upon something that cannot be understood in scientific or technological terms. Poetry and art, for instance, might be ways of reaching that deeper truth, that experience of the world that is pre-scientific. Often we in America don't know what to do with poetry and art. For us they're just entertainment or relaxation. What if there were a deeper truth? Maybe there's a strain of American culture that longs for that.
There's a substantial body of work that compares Heidegger to Eastern thought and particularly to Buddhism, to the attempt to awaken oneself from the jail cell of ego and the aging, sickness and ultimate death of the body. Do you think such comparisons are valid or useful? Was Heidegger, in effect, a Western Buddha?
He was definitely interested in Buddhism and Taoism. It's also true that his thought found resonance in Japan. He gets a lot of attention in Japan. What a lot of Japanese say is that there is connection between Buddhism's notion of emptiness and some Heideggerian notions of nothingness or unconcealment. We do need to be a bit skeptical about this, though. There is one passage in the "Contributions to Philosophy," which were written by Heidegger between 1936 and 1938, in which he simply makes the remark, "Not Buddhism. The very opposite." What he means by that I don't know, except that I think he probably had in mind that Buddhism seems to try to release us altogether from existence, from the body, whereas Heidegger wants a more engaged dwelling or involvement in existence. Now it might be that that's a misinterpretation of Buddhism, and of course there are many different strands of Buddhism. But that's why I think that he might have been reluctant to say that he was a Western Buddha.
Heidegger is seen as the fount, along with Nietzsche, of much of the postmodern thought that has developed over the past three decades. Yet much of postmodern thought seems to have hit a dead end as a result of its own deconstructive strategies. The most renowned example of this is the infamous Sokal affair, in which a physicist submitted a parody concerning the supposed "hermeneutics of quantum gravity" to a leftist postmodern journal, and the editors accepted it as legitimate. Do you believe postmodernists have misused Heidegger? Or are we witnessing the logical outcome of the circularity that's inherent in Heidegger's method?
I think it is a misuse. As we were saying earlier, Heidegger points to the particularization of truth, its historicity. But I think he does not thereby become a relativist who dismisses scientific findings altogether. He is just saying that scientific statements do in fact reveal things to us, but let's not forget that they're possible only in an interpretive context. That scientific theories are open to revision, and it's possible that better interpretations may come along. Which is different from taking any scientific statement and trying to deconstruct it and reduce it to its background in intellectual history, its cultural resonances, which ultimately, I think, ends up in a sort of Nietzschean interpretation, reducing all truth to power...
But even in your description, doesn't this point up the problem with Heidegger and science? Most scientists would say DNA is not an interpretation, for example. DNA is DNA. It's a fact and it has definite predictable results in our lives.
Well, I'll try to speak for Heidegger on this question. His statements about science are sometimes sloppy and sometimes more careful. I think at his best he would say, "You're right. DNA is real. The facts we've discovered about it are real. Now, what do those facts mean in a larger sense? What are we going to do with them?" That is certainly still in question. By discovering the human genome, have we unlocked the human essence, as the Cincinnati Enquirer said in a headline a few months ago? Or have we discovered something that, although true, does not really reveal what it means to be human? By discovering the human genome, have we gained a tool that we can or should use to exploit ourselves? Or would that be a misunderstanding of ourselves as a resource or an object? These are questions of interpretation. And here is where debate and discussion and deeper interpretation are always possible. I don't think that relativizes the facts of what scientists have discovered.
One of the other areas where Heidegger's influence has been acknowledged explicitly is in the environmental movement, where some claim that Heidegger's understanding of the world and of technology informs their approach to saving the planet. What was Heidegger's notion of technology? Are these environmentalists right in their reading of him?
I don't know the details of how he has been appropriated. But I think it would be legitimate to try to use him in ecological thinking. Especially his views on technology, which are that technology is one mode in which things as a whole are revealed to us. They're revealed to us as useful and manipulable resources. And he wants to alert us to the fact that that is not the only possible interpretation of things -- that beneath that interpretation there is what he calls "earth," which is a dimension of things that can never be fully interpreted or fully used up or fully understood by the human being. It's a mysterious dimension. So the kind of ecological thinking that tries to get us to respect the mystery of wilderness is something that is very close to the spirit of Heidegger. The kind of ecological thinking that goes about trying to manage resources wisely so that we don't destroy potential cures for cancer -- that's still thinking technologically, in other words, still seeing natural resources as objects.
In the famous Der Spiegel interview, which Heidegger gave in 1966 but wasn't published until his death 10 years later, he ended by saying that given the technological developments going on in the world, "only a god can save us now," a god with a small "g." Do you think he has in mind the same kind of thing that Joe Lieberman and George Bush do when they pronounce their belief in God? How do you understand Heidegger's statement?
Heidegger did not want to go back to the Judeo-Christian God. He thought that that God had been appropriated by metaphysics, and that metaphysics and that God had died together. But there is the possibility of the coming of a new god or gods -- what he calls, in the "Contributions to Philosophy," "the passing by of the last god." It's a very mysterious notion. Quite a bit of ink has been spilled on it, but nobody really knows what it means. Heidegger was inspired largely by the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who tried to invite the gods to return to us. There are ways of interpreting this that try to bring it down to earth. Hubert Dreyfus, for example, sees it as a turning point in our culture. He says that Woodstock might have been an example of a Heideggerian god. But that sounds too human to me, all too intelligible. It's clear that he wants some kind of radical turning, some cataclysmic event that this god would have the power to bring about. More than that is hard to say...
In the end, if someone asked you, "Why take the trouble with Heidegger and his mess of a vocabulary and his involvement with the Nazis," what would you say? How would you advise him to look at a philosopher's philosophy in the light of that same philosopher's personal life? How would Heidegger urge us to approach that issue?
Heidegger himself says in "Being and Time" that philosophical insights are always based on or grow out of personal experiences. And I think he's right about that. Philosophers are human beings. It's always illuminating to think about the person behind the words. But it's also easy to slip into a dismissive mode and say, "This person made mistakes and so his philosophy must be a bunch of mistakes." That's the kind of ad hominem argument that isn't legitimate. Heidegger is somebody who, like all great philosophers, struggled with how to live, with the meaning of existence, and left behind a record of that struggle. And anybody who wants to struggle with similar issues can turn to some of these texts, including Heidegger's, and find food for thought there. Not the last word, but food for thought. Why do we struggle with the meaning of existence? Because existence doesn't mean as much unless you struggle with it.
Salon.com article
Thinking is not inactivity, but in itself the action that has a dialogue with the world’s destiny.
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다음과 같이 요약할 수 있을 것 같다. 1933년에 좁은 의미에서는 비정치적인 인간으로서 당신은 소위 새시대의 여명임을 내세우는 정치운동에 빠져들었다.
하이데거
대학의 문제를 다루는 도중에...
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... 대학의 문제를 다루는 도중에 소위 새시대의 여명이라는 것에 빠져들었다. 약 일년 후에 당신은 거기서 주어진 역할을 포기했다. 그러나 1935년의 한 강의에서, 이 강의는 그 후 1953년에 <형이상학 입문>이라는 제목으로 출간되었는데, 당신은 다음과 같이 말하고 있다. "특히 오늘날 국가사회주의의 철학이라는 이름 아래 시장에 판매되고 있는 것들은 이 움직임의 내적 진리와 거대함(다시 말해서 지구전체를 지배하는 기술이라는 것과 근대적 인간의 상봉이라는 것)과는 아무런 상관도 없는 것이며, 그와 같은 것은 이 <가치>, 그리고 <전체성>이라는 흙탕물 속에서 그물질을 하고 있을 뿐인 것이다"(형이상학 입문, 박휘근 옮김, 서광사, 1994, 318쪽). 이 부분은 1953년에, 즉 책을 출간할 때에 추가한 것인가? 즉 1953년의 독자들에게 1935년에 그 운동, 즉 국가 사회주의의 내적 진리와 위대성을 당신이 어떻게 보았는가를 설명(변명)하기 위해서. 아니면 그 부분이 1935년에 이미 처음부터 들어있었는가?
하이데거
그 구절은 처음부터 나의 수고(手稿)에 들어 있었으며, 그 당시 기술(Technik)에 대한 나의 생각과도 정확히 일치한다. 물론 기술의 본질을 "Ge-Stell"(닦달, 몰아세움)로 파악하는 그 이후의 해석과 일치하지는 않는다. 그 구절을 소리내어 읽지 않은 것은 청강자들이 나를 잘 이해하고 있다고 확신했기 때문이다. 우둔한 자나, 스파이, 염탐꾼들만이 나를 다른 식으로 이해하려고 했고 그렇게 했다.
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공산주의 운동 역시 그런 식으로 분류될 수 있었을까?
하이데거
그렇다고 분명하게 말할 수 있다. 공산주의 운동 역시 전(全)지구적인 기술에 의해 규정되고 있다.
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아메리카니즘(Amerikanismus)도?
하이데거
역시 그렇다고 말했을 것이다. 지난 30년간 현대 기술의 전지구적인 운동은 그것의 역사 규정력을 아무리 강조해도 지나치지 않은 만큼 강력한 것임이 더욱 분명해 졌다. 내가 볼 때 오늘날 결정적인 물음은 정치적 체제가 어떻게 그러한 기술시대에 적응할 수 있는가? 어떤 정치 체제가 되어야만 하는가? 하는 것이다. 나는 그러한 물음들에 대한 해답을 갖고 있지 못하다. 나는 민주주의가 그 대안이라고 확신하지 않는다.
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"민주주의"는 여러 가지 다양한 생각들을 의미할 수 있는 포괄적인 개념이다. 문제는 민주주의라는 그러한 정치 구조의 변형이 여전히 가능하냐는 것이다. 1945년 이후 당신은 서구 세계의 정치적 지향에 대해 언급했는데 거기서 민주주의와 정치적으로 표출된 기독교적 세계관에 대해, 그리고 입헌국가에 대해서도 말했다. 그러한 모든 지향들을 당신은 <불완전한 것>이라고 불렀다.
하이데거
우선 내가 어디에서 민주주의와 당신이 언급한 것들에 대해 그렇게 말했었는지 알려달라. 그러한 지향들에서 기술적 세계와의 참된 대결을 발견할 수 없었기 때문에 불완전하다고 말했을 것이다. 나의 관점에서 볼 때, 그 것들은 기술이란 본질적으로 인간이 통제하는 어떤 것이라는 생각을 여전히 고수하고 있다. 그러나 그것은 불가능한 일이다. 기술은 본질적으로 인간이 혼자 힘으로는 지배할 수 없는 어떤 것이다.
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당신이 보기에 방금 묘사한 것들 중에서 어떤 것이 가장 시기 적절한가?
하이데거
모르겠다. 그러나 나는 여기서 결정적인 물음을 본다. 우선 당신이 <시기 적절한>이라는 말로 무엇을 의미하는지 밝혀져야 한다, 즉 <시간>이란 무엇인가가 해명되어야 한다. 거기에 더해서 시기 적절성이 인간 행위의 <내적 진리>를 평가하는 기준인지, 또는 모든 오해에도 불구하고 사유(思惟)와 시작(詩作)이 그러한 기준을 부여하는 행위가 아닌지 물어야 한다.
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인간이 영원히 자신의 도구를 제어할 수 없다는 것은 충격적이다. 괴테의 시(詩)에 등장하는 <마법사의 제자>를 연상시킨다. 그러나 현대 기술의 도구가 확실히 거대하긴 하지만 우리가 제어할 수 없을 것이라고 말하는 것은 좀 비관적인 것 아닌가?
하이데거
비관주의라고. 아니다. 비관주의(Pessimismus)와 낙관주의(Optimismus)는 지금 논의되는 영역에서는 매우 불충분한 입장이다. 그러고 무엇보다도 현대 기술은 <도구>가 아니다. 그것은 도구와는 더 이상 상관없는 것이다.
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왜 우리가 그처럼 철저하게 기술에 정복당해야 하는가?
하이데거
나는 정복에 대해 말하지 않았다. 기술의 본질에 응답할 수 있는 방법을 아직은 찾지 못했다고 말했을 뿐이다.
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그러나 모든 것이 이렇게 잘 기능 하는데 도대체 무엇이 극복되어야 하는가? 하는 매우 소박한 물음으로 당신에게 이의를 제기 할 수도 있다. 더 많은 발전소가 더 능숙하게 지어진다. 인간은 지구의 고도로 기술화된 지역에서 잘 부양되고 있다. 우리는 번영 속에 살고 있다. 여기서 정말로 결여되어 있는 것이 무엇이란 말인가?
하이데거
모든 것이 잘 기능하고 있다. 모든 것이 기능하고 있다는 그 것, 그리고 그러한 기능함이 점점 우리를 끊임없이 더 확장된 기능으로 몰아가고 있다는 것, 기술이 대지(大地, Erde)로부터 인간을 더욱 떼어놓고 뿌리 뽑는다는 바로 그 것이 섬뜩한 것이다. 달로부터 지구로 전송되어 온 사진을 보았을 때 당신은 어떠했는지 모르지만 나는 정말 충격을 받았다. 핵 폭탄도 필요하지 않다. 인간의 뿌리뽑힘은 이미 벌어지고 있는 것이다. 우리에게는 순수하게 기술적인 관계만 남아있다. 오늘날 인간이 살고 있는 곳은 더 이상 대지라고 할 수 없다. 이미 알려진 것처럼 최근에 나는 시인이며 저항 운동가인 르네 샤르(Rene Char)와 프로방스에서 긴 대화를 나누었다. 미사일 기지가 프로방스에 건설되자 그 지방은 믿을 수 없을 정도로 파괴되었다. 감상적인 과장이나 목가적인 찬미와는 거리가 먼 이 시인은 만약 시와 사유가 다시 한번 힘(폭력적이지 않은)을 얻지 못한다면 그곳에서 벌어진 인간의 뿌리뽑힘은 결국 종말이 되고 말 것이라고 말했다.
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우리는 여기 이 지구에 살아야 하고, 일생동안 거기에서 벗어나서는 안 된다고 말한다. 그러나 이 지구에 존재하는 것이 인간의 운명인지 아닌지 누가 알겠는가? 인간에게 정해진 운명이란 없다고 생각할 수도 있다. 인간이 지구로부터 다른 행성으로 옮겨 갈 가능성도 어쨌든 볼 수 있다. 그렇게 오래 걸리지 않을 수도 있다. 인간의 터전이 여기라고 어디에 쓰여져 있단 말인가?
하이데거
내가 아는 한 인간의 경험과 역사에 따르면 모든 본질적이고 위대한 것들은 인간이 고향을 갖고 있고 전통에 뿌리를 두고 있다는 데에서 기원한다. 예를 들어 현대 문학은 파괴적인 방향으로 나아가고 있다.
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당신의 철학으로 인해 <니힐리스틱(nihilistisch)>이라는 말이 매우 포괄적인 의미연관을 갖게되었기 때문에 우리에게 <파괴적(destruktiv)>이라는 말은 의외의 개념이다. 니힐리즘의 일부로 볼 수 있고 또 보아야만 하는 문학과 관련해서 당신이 <파괴적>이라는 말을 쓰는 것이 우리에게는 놀랍다.
하이데거
내가 말한 문학은 내가 니힐리즘을 생각하는 방식에서는 니힐리스틱하다고 할 수 없다.
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당신은 완벽하게 기술화된 상태로 이끌거나 이미 이끈 세계운동(Weltbewegung)을 분명하게 목격하였다. 이것은 앞에서 이미 말한 바이다.
하이데거
그렇다.
슈피겔
좋다. 그러면 자연스럽게 이런 질문이 떠오른다. 개별 인간이 어떤 식으로든 그러한 강제의 그물 망에 영향을 미칠 수 있는가, 혹은 철학이 영향을 미칠 수 있는가, 또는 철학이 개인이나 여러 개인들을 특정한 행동으로 이끌어 양자가 함께 영향을 미칠 수 있는가?
하이데거
짧게 그러나 오랜 숙고를 통해 다음과 같이 대답할 수 있다. 철학은 세계의 현재 상태에 직접적인 변화를 가져올 수 없다. 이 것은 철학뿐만 아니라 모든 인간적인 사고와 노력에 있어서도 마찬가지이다. 오직 신만이 우리를 구원할 수 있다. 유일하게 남은 가능성은 사유와 시작을 통해 신의 출현이나 몰락 속에서 신의 부재를 예비하는 것이다. 부재 하는 신 앞에서 우리는 몰락한다.
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당신의 사유와 그러한 신의 도래(到來) 사이에 어떤 하나의 연관이 존재하는가? 당신이 보기에 일종의 인과관계가 거기에 놓였는가? 당신은 우리가 신을 다시 불러내 사유할 수 있다고 생각하는가?
하이데거
우리가 신을 다시 불러내 사유할 수는 없다. 기껏해야 기다림의 예비를 일깨울 수 있을 뿐이다.
슈피겔
그러나 도울 수는 있지 않은가?
하이데거
기다림의 예비가 첫 번째 단계일 것이다. 인간에 의해, 지금 존재하는 바로 그러한 모습으로 세계가 존재할 수 있었던 것은 아니지만, 동시에 인간 없이도 불가능한 것이었다. 이것은 내가 오랜 동안 전승되어왔고, 다의적이며 이제는 낡은 단어인 "존재"라는 말로 부르는 바로 그것이 자신의 개방과 보존, 형성을 위해 인간을 필요로 한다는 사실과 연관되는 것이다. 종종 조롱거리가 되고 얼마간은 부적당한 표현인 "Ge-Stell"이라고 부르는 것에서 나는 기술의 본질을 본다. "Ge-Stell"의 지배는 이런 것이다. 인간은 기술의 본질 속에서 나타나는 인간 자신이 통제할 수 없는 힘에 의해 내몰리고, 호출되고, 도전 받는다. 이러한 이해에 도달하기 위해서는 더 이상 사유가 필요하지 않다. 철학은 종말에 도달했다.
슈피겔
일찍이, 그러나 옛날에만 국한하지 않고, 철학은 간접적으로, 드물게는 직접적으로 많은 영향을 미칠 수 있고, 새로운 흐름의 출현을 촉진할 수 있다고 생각되어 왔다. 독일의 경우 맑스를 제외한다하더라도 칸트, 헤겔에서 니체에 이르는 위대한 이름을 떠올려 본다면, 철학이 간접적인 방식이지만 엄청난 영향을 끼쳐왔음을 발견할 수 있다. 당신은 정말로 철학의 영향력이 종말에 도달했다고 생각하는가? 만약 전통적인 철학이 죽었고 더 이상 존재하지 않는다 하더라도, 그것이 철학의 영향력 - 그것이 항상 거기에 존재해 왔다고 한다면 - 이 오늘날 더 이상 남아있지 않다는 주장까지 포함하는 것은 아니지 않는가?
하이데거
"다른 사유"를 통해 간접적인 영향이 가능하다. 그러나 직접적인 것은 불가능하다. 사유가 세계의 현재 상황을 말하자면 인과적으로 변화시킬 수는 없다.
슈피겔
미안하지만 우리는 지금 철학을 하려는 것이 아니다. 그러나 우리는 이 지점에서 정치와 철학의 경계선에 이르렀다. 우리가 당신을 이런 대화로 이끈 것을 용서해 달라. 당신은 방금 철학과 개별적인 인간은 ... 이외에는 할 수 없다고...
하이데거
기다림의 예비, 신의 도래나 부재에 열리 채로 있음. 부재의 경험이 아무 것도 아닌 것은 아니다. 오히려 <존재와 시간>에서 "존재자들 사이에 빠져있음"이라고 부른 상태로부터 인간을 해방시키는 것이다. 오늘날 존재하는 것에 대한 숙고는 앞서 말한 기다림의 예비에 속한다.
슈피겔
그렇다면 사실상 저 중요한 충격은 밖으로부터, 즉 신이나 다른 어떤 것으로부터 와야만 한다. 따라서 사유는 오늘날 더 이상 스스로, 자율적으로 영향을 미칠 수 없는 것인가? 그러나 그것이 가능하다는 것이 앞선 시대를 살았던 사람들의 생각이며, 내가 볼 때는 우리들의 생각이기도 하다.
하이데거
그러나 직접적인 방식은 아니다.
슈피겔
앞에서 위대한 변혁가로 칸트와 헤겔, 맑스의 이름을 언급했다. 그러나 현대 물리학의 발전과 현대적 세계 일반의 성립과 관련해 라이프니쯔로부터 온 충격도 있다. 당신은 이제 더 이상 그러한 영향을 기대하지 않는다고 말하고 있는 것인가?
하이데거
철학에서는 더 이상 기대하지 않는다. 철학이 지금까지 해온 역할을 과학이 가져갔다. 사유의 <영향>을 적합하게 해명하기 위해서는 작용과 작용함이 무엇을 의미하는지가 더 철저하게 논의되어야만 한다. 충족 이유율(근거율)을 충분히 해명하기 위해서는 먼저 기연, 동인, 촉진, 보조, 방해, 협력 등의 근본적인 구분이 필요하다. 철학은 심리학, 논리학, 정치학 같은 개별 과학들로 해소된다.
슈피겔
그렇다면 어떤 것이 철학의 지위를 넘겨 받게되는가?
하이데거
인공두뇌학(Kybernetik).
슈피겔
또는 자신을 열어두는 경건한 자?
하이데거
그러나 더 이상 철학은 아니다.
슈피겔
그렇다면 무엇이란 말인가?
하이데거
나는 그것을 "다른 사유"라고 부른다.
슈피겔
당신이 다른 사유라고 부르는 것을 좀더 명확하게 정식화해줄 수 있는가?
하이데거
내 강연 <기술에 대한 물음>을 끝맺는 마지막 문장, "물음은 사유의 경건함이다"하는 말을 기억하고 있는가?
슈피겔
우리가 납득할 수 있는 한 문장을 당신의 니체 강연에서 발견했다. 당신은 "철학적 사유에는 가능한 최고의 구속이 지배하기 때문에 위대한 사상가들은 모두 동일한 것을 사유한다. 그럼에도 이 동일한 것은 너무도 본질적이고 풍부해서 결코 개별자가 그것을 모두 퍼낼 수 없다. 개별자는 단지 자신을 거기에 더 강하게 구속시킬 수 있을 뿐이다"하고 말했다. 그러나 당신의 의견에 따르면 이러한 철학적 노력들이 이제는 분명한 종말에 도달했다는 것이 된다.
하이데거
그것들은 종말에 이르렀다. 그러나 그것이 소멸되어 사라져 버린 것은 아니다. 바로 지금과 같은 대화 속에서 새롭게 현재화된다. 지난 30년간 강의와 연구를 통해 이루어진 나의 모든 작업은 핵심적으로는 서양 철학의 해석이었을 뿐이다. 사유의 역사적인 근원으로의 회귀나, 그리스 철학 이후 아직도 물어지지 않고 있는 물음의 숙고는 전통으로부터의 이탈이 아니다. 나는 다음과 같이 말할 뿐이다. 니체가 무너뜨린 전통적인 형이상학의 사유 방식은 이제 막 시작된 기술 시대의 근본 경향을 적절하게 사유하면서 경험할 수 있는 가능성을 더 이상 제공 할 수 없다.
SPIEGEL: It has, of course, always been a misunderstanding of philosophy to think that the philosopher should have some direct effect with his philosophy. Let us return to the beginning. Is it not conceivable that National Socialism can be seen on the one hand as a realization of that “planetary encounter” and on the other as the last, most horrible, strongest, and, at the same time, most helpless protest against this encounter of “planetarily determined technology” and modern human beings? Apparently, you are dealing with opposites in your own person that are such that many by-products of your activities can only really be explained in that you, with different parts of your being that do not touch the philosophical core, cling to many things about which you as a philosopher know that they have no continuity – for instance to concepts like “home” [Heimat], “rootedness,” and similar things. How do planetary technology and “home” fit together?
HEIDEGGER: I would not say that. It seems to me that you take technology too absolutely. I do not think the situation of human beings in the world of planetary technology is an inextricable and inescapable disastrous fate; rather I think that the task of thinking is precisely to help, within its bounds, human beings to attain an adequate relationship to the essence of technology at all. Although National Socialism went in that direction, those people were much too limited in their thinking to gain a really explicit relationship to what is happening today and what has been under way for three centuries.
SPIEGEL: This explicit relationship, do the Americans have it today?
HEIDEGGER: They do not have it either. They are still entangled in a thinking, pragmatism, that fosters technological operating and manipulating but simultaneously blocks the path toward a contemplation of what is characteristic of modern technology. In the meantime, attempts to break away from pragmatic-positivistic thinking are being made here and there in the USA. And which of us can say whether one day in Russia and in China age-old traditions of a “thinking” will not awaken that will assist human beings in making a free relationship to the technological world possible?
다음과 같이 요약할 수 있을 것 같다. 1933년에 좁은 의미에서는 비정치적인 인간으로서 당신은 소위 새시대의 여명임을 내세우는 정치운동에 빠져들었다.
하이데거
대학의 문제를 다루는 도중에...
슈피겔
... 대학의 문제를 다루는 도중에 소위 새시대의 여명이라는 것에 빠져들었다. 약 일년 후에 당신은 거기서 주어진 역할을 포기했다. 그러나 1935년의 한 강의에서, 이 강의는 그 후 1953년에 <형이상학 입문>이라는 제목으로 출간되었는데, 당신은 다음과 같이 말하고 있다. "특히 오늘날 국가사회주의의 철학이라는 이름 아래 시장에 판매되고 있는 것들은 이 움직임의 내적 진리와 거대함(다시 말해서 지구전체를 지배하는 기술이라는 것과 근대적 인간의 상봉이라는 것)과는 아무런 상관도 없는 것이며, 그와 같은 것은 이 <가치>, 그리고 <전체성>이라는 흙탕물 속에서 그물질을 하고 있을 뿐인 것이다"(형이상학 입문, 박휘근 옮김, 서광사, 1994, 318쪽). 이 부분은 1953년에, 즉 책을 출간할 때에 추가한 것인가? 즉 1953년의 독자들에게 1935년에 그 운동, 즉 국가 사회주의의 내적 진리와 위대성을 당신이 어떻게 보았는가를 설명(변명)하기 위해서. 아니면 그 부분이 1935년에 이미 처음부터 들어있었는가?
하이데거
그 구절은 처음부터 나의 수고(手稿)에 들어 있었으며, 그 당시 기술(Technik)에 대한 나의 생각과도 정확히 일치한다. 물론 기술의 본질을 "Ge-Stell"(닦달, 몰아세움)로 파악하는 그 이후의 해석과 일치하지는 않는다. 그 구절을 소리내어 읽지 않은 것은 청강자들이 나를 잘 이해하고 있다고 확신했기 때문이다. 우둔한 자나, 스파이, 염탐꾼들만이 나를 다른 식으로 이해하려고 했고 그렇게 했다.
슈피겔
공산주의 운동 역시 그런 식으로 분류될 수 있었을까?
하이데거
그렇다고 분명하게 말할 수 있다. 공산주의 운동 역시 전(全)지구적인 기술에 의해 규정되고 있다.
슈피겔
아메리카니즘(Amerikanismus)도?
하이데거
역시 그렇다고 말했을 것이다. 지난 30년간 현대 기술의 전지구적인 운동은 그것의 역사 규정력을 아무리 강조해도 지나치지 않은 만큼 강력한 것임이 더욱 분명해 졌다. 내가 볼 때 오늘날 결정적인 물음은 정치적 체제가 어떻게 그러한 기술시대에 적응할 수 있는가? 어떤 정치 체제가 되어야만 하는가? 하는 것이다. 나는 그러한 물음들에 대한 해답을 갖고 있지 못하다. 나는 민주주의가 그 대안이라고 확신하지 않는다.
슈피겔
"민주주의"는 여러 가지 다양한 생각들을 의미할 수 있는 포괄적인 개념이다. 문제는 민주주의라는 그러한 정치 구조의 변형이 여전히 가능하냐는 것이다. 1945년 이후 당신은 서구 세계의 정치적 지향에 대해 언급했는데 거기서 민주주의와 정치적으로 표출된 기독교적 세계관에 대해, 그리고 입헌국가에 대해서도 말했다. 그러한 모든 지향들을 당신은 <불완전한 것>이라고 불렀다.
하이데거
우선 내가 어디에서 민주주의와 당신이 언급한 것들에 대해 그렇게 말했었는지 알려달라. 그러한 지향들에서 기술적 세계와의 참된 대결을 발견할 수 없었기 때문에 불완전하다고 말했을 것이다. 나의 관점에서 볼 때, 그 것들은 기술이란 본질적으로 인간이 통제하는 어떤 것이라는 생각을 여전히 고수하고 있다. 그러나 그것은 불가능한 일이다. 기술은 본질적으로 인간이 혼자 힘으로는 지배할 수 없는 어떤 것이다.
슈피겔
당신이 보기에 방금 묘사한 것들 중에서 어떤 것이 가장 시기 적절한가?
하이데거
모르겠다. 그러나 나는 여기서 결정적인 물음을 본다. 우선 당신이 <시기 적절한>이라는 말로 무엇을 의미하는지 밝혀져야 한다, 즉 <시간>이란 무엇인가가 해명되어야 한다. 거기에 더해서 시기 적절성이 인간 행위의 <내적 진리>를 평가하는 기준인지, 또는 모든 오해에도 불구하고 사유(思惟)와 시작(詩作)이 그러한 기준을 부여하는 행위가 아닌지 물어야 한다.
슈피겔
인간이 영원히 자신의 도구를 제어할 수 없다는 것은 충격적이다. 괴테의 시(詩)에 등장하는 <마법사의 제자>를 연상시킨다. 그러나 현대 기술의 도구가 확실히 거대하긴 하지만 우리가 제어할 수 없을 것이라고 말하는 것은 좀 비관적인 것 아닌가?
하이데거
비관주의라고. 아니다. 비관주의(Pessimismus)와 낙관주의(Optimismus)는 지금 논의되는 영역에서는 매우 불충분한 입장이다. 그러고 무엇보다도 현대 기술은 <도구>가 아니다. 그것은 도구와는 더 이상 상관없는 것이다.
슈피겔
왜 우리가 그처럼 철저하게 기술에 정복당해야 하는가?
하이데거
나는 정복에 대해 말하지 않았다. 기술의 본질에 응답할 수 있는 방법을 아직은 찾지 못했다고 말했을 뿐이다.
슈피겔
그러나 모든 것이 이렇게 잘 기능 하는데 도대체 무엇이 극복되어야 하는가? 하는 매우 소박한 물음으로 당신에게 이의를 제기 할 수도 있다. 더 많은 발전소가 더 능숙하게 지어진다. 인간은 지구의 고도로 기술화된 지역에서 잘 부양되고 있다. 우리는 번영 속에 살고 있다. 여기서 정말로 결여되어 있는 것이 무엇이란 말인가?
하이데거
모든 것이 잘 기능하고 있다. 모든 것이 기능하고 있다는 그 것, 그리고 그러한 기능함이 점점 우리를 끊임없이 더 확장된 기능으로 몰아가고 있다는 것, 기술이 대지(大地, Erde)로부터 인간을 더욱 떼어놓고 뿌리 뽑는다는 바로 그 것이 섬뜩한 것이다. 달로부터 지구로 전송되어 온 사진을 보았을 때 당신은 어떠했는지 모르지만 나는 정말 충격을 받았다. 핵 폭탄도 필요하지 않다. 인간의 뿌리뽑힘은 이미 벌어지고 있는 것이다. 우리에게는 순수하게 기술적인 관계만 남아있다. 오늘날 인간이 살고 있는 곳은 더 이상 대지라고 할 수 없다. 이미 알려진 것처럼 최근에 나는 시인이며 저항 운동가인 르네 샤르(Rene Char)와 프로방스에서 긴 대화를 나누었다. 미사일 기지가 프로방스에 건설되자 그 지방은 믿을 수 없을 정도로 파괴되었다. 감상적인 과장이나 목가적인 찬미와는 거리가 먼 이 시인은 만약 시와 사유가 다시 한번 힘(폭력적이지 않은)을 얻지 못한다면 그곳에서 벌어진 인간의 뿌리뽑힘은 결국 종말이 되고 말 것이라고 말했다.
슈피겔
우리는 여기 이 지구에 살아야 하고, 일생동안 거기에서 벗어나서는 안 된다고 말한다. 그러나 이 지구에 존재하는 것이 인간의 운명인지 아닌지 누가 알겠는가? 인간에게 정해진 운명이란 없다고 생각할 수도 있다. 인간이 지구로부터 다른 행성으로 옮겨 갈 가능성도 어쨌든 볼 수 있다. 그렇게 오래 걸리지 않을 수도 있다. 인간의 터전이 여기라고 어디에 쓰여져 있단 말인가?
하이데거
내가 아는 한 인간의 경험과 역사에 따르면 모든 본질적이고 위대한 것들은 인간이 고향을 갖고 있고 전통에 뿌리를 두고 있다는 데에서 기원한다. 예를 들어 현대 문학은 파괴적인 방향으로 나아가고 있다.
슈피겔
당신의 철학으로 인해 <니힐리스틱(nihilistisch)>이라는 말이 매우 포괄적인 의미연관을 갖게되었기 때문에 우리에게 <파괴적(destruktiv)>이라는 말은 의외의 개념이다. 니힐리즘의 일부로 볼 수 있고 또 보아야만 하는 문학과 관련해서 당신이 <파괴적>이라는 말을 쓰는 것이 우리에게는 놀랍다.
하이데거
내가 말한 문학은 내가 니힐리즘을 생각하는 방식에서는 니힐리스틱하다고 할 수 없다.
슈피겔
당신은 완벽하게 기술화된 상태로 이끌거나 이미 이끈 세계운동(Weltbewegung)을 분명하게 목격하였다. 이것은 앞에서 이미 말한 바이다.
하이데거
그렇다.
슈피겔
좋다. 그러면 자연스럽게 이런 질문이 떠오른다. 개별 인간이 어떤 식으로든 그러한 강제의 그물 망에 영향을 미칠 수 있는가, 혹은 철학이 영향을 미칠 수 있는가, 또는 철학이 개인이나 여러 개인들을 특정한 행동으로 이끌어 양자가 함께 영향을 미칠 수 있는가?
하이데거
짧게 그러나 오랜 숙고를 통해 다음과 같이 대답할 수 있다. 철학은 세계의 현재 상태에 직접적인 변화를 가져올 수 없다. 이 것은 철학뿐만 아니라 모든 인간적인 사고와 노력에 있어서도 마찬가지이다. 오직 신만이 우리를 구원할 수 있다. 유일하게 남은 가능성은 사유와 시작을 통해 신의 출현이나 몰락 속에서 신의 부재를 예비하는 것이다. 부재 하는 신 앞에서 우리는 몰락한다.
슈피겔
당신의 사유와 그러한 신의 도래(到來) 사이에 어떤 하나의 연관이 존재하는가? 당신이 보기에 일종의 인과관계가 거기에 놓였는가? 당신은 우리가 신을 다시 불러내 사유할 수 있다고 생각하는가?
하이데거
우리가 신을 다시 불러내 사유할 수는 없다. 기껏해야 기다림의 예비를 일깨울 수 있을 뿐이다.
슈피겔
그러나 도울 수는 있지 않은가?
하이데거
기다림의 예비가 첫 번째 단계일 것이다. 인간에 의해, 지금 존재하는 바로 그러한 모습으로 세계가 존재할 수 있었던 것은 아니지만, 동시에 인간 없이도 불가능한 것이었다. 이것은 내가 오랜 동안 전승되어왔고, 다의적이며 이제는 낡은 단어인 "존재"라는 말로 부르는 바로 그것이 자신의 개방과 보존, 형성을 위해 인간을 필요로 한다는 사실과 연관되는 것이다. 종종 조롱거리가 되고 얼마간은 부적당한 표현인 "Ge-Stell"이라고 부르는 것에서 나는 기술의 본질을 본다. "Ge-Stell"의 지배는 이런 것이다. 인간은 기술의 본질 속에서 나타나는 인간 자신이 통제할 수 없는 힘에 의해 내몰리고, 호출되고, 도전 받는다. 이러한 이해에 도달하기 위해서는 더 이상 사유가 필요하지 않다. 철학은 종말에 도달했다.
슈피겔
일찍이, 그러나 옛날에만 국한하지 않고, 철학은 간접적으로, 드물게는 직접적으로 많은 영향을 미칠 수 있고, 새로운 흐름의 출현을 촉진할 수 있다고 생각되어 왔다. 독일의 경우 맑스를 제외한다하더라도 칸트, 헤겔에서 니체에 이르는 위대한 이름을 떠올려 본다면, 철학이 간접적인 방식이지만 엄청난 영향을 끼쳐왔음을 발견할 수 있다. 당신은 정말로 철학의 영향력이 종말에 도달했다고 생각하는가? 만약 전통적인 철학이 죽었고 더 이상 존재하지 않는다 하더라도, 그것이 철학의 영향력 - 그것이 항상 거기에 존재해 왔다고 한다면 - 이 오늘날 더 이상 남아있지 않다는 주장까지 포함하는 것은 아니지 않는가?
하이데거
"다른 사유"를 통해 간접적인 영향이 가능하다. 그러나 직접적인 것은 불가능하다. 사유가 세계의 현재 상황을 말하자면 인과적으로 변화시킬 수는 없다.
슈피겔
미안하지만 우리는 지금 철학을 하려는 것이 아니다. 그러나 우리는 이 지점에서 정치와 철학의 경계선에 이르렀다. 우리가 당신을 이런 대화로 이끈 것을 용서해 달라. 당신은 방금 철학과 개별적인 인간은 ... 이외에는 할 수 없다고...
하이데거
기다림의 예비, 신의 도래나 부재에 열리 채로 있음. 부재의 경험이 아무 것도 아닌 것은 아니다. 오히려 <존재와 시간>에서 "존재자들 사이에 빠져있음"이라고 부른 상태로부터 인간을 해방시키는 것이다. 오늘날 존재하는 것에 대한 숙고는 앞서 말한 기다림의 예비에 속한다.
슈피겔
그렇다면 사실상 저 중요한 충격은 밖으로부터, 즉 신이나 다른 어떤 것으로부터 와야만 한다. 따라서 사유는 오늘날 더 이상 스스로, 자율적으로 영향을 미칠 수 없는 것인가? 그러나 그것이 가능하다는 것이 앞선 시대를 살았던 사람들의 생각이며, 내가 볼 때는 우리들의 생각이기도 하다.
하이데거
그러나 직접적인 방식은 아니다.
슈피겔
앞에서 위대한 변혁가로 칸트와 헤겔, 맑스의 이름을 언급했다. 그러나 현대 물리학의 발전과 현대적 세계 일반의 성립과 관련해 라이프니쯔로부터 온 충격도 있다. 당신은 이제 더 이상 그러한 영향을 기대하지 않는다고 말하고 있는 것인가?
하이데거
철학에서는 더 이상 기대하지 않는다. 철학이 지금까지 해온 역할을 과학이 가져갔다. 사유의 <영향>을 적합하게 해명하기 위해서는 작용과 작용함이 무엇을 의미하는지가 더 철저하게 논의되어야만 한다. 충족 이유율(근거율)을 충분히 해명하기 위해서는 먼저 기연, 동인, 촉진, 보조, 방해, 협력 등의 근본적인 구분이 필요하다. 철학은 심리학, 논리학, 정치학 같은 개별 과학들로 해소된다.
슈피겔
그렇다면 어떤 것이 철학의 지위를 넘겨 받게되는가?
하이데거
인공두뇌학(Kybernetik).
슈피겔
또는 자신을 열어두는 경건한 자?
하이데거
그러나 더 이상 철학은 아니다.
슈피겔
그렇다면 무엇이란 말인가?
하이데거
나는 그것을 "다른 사유"라고 부른다.
슈피겔
당신이 다른 사유라고 부르는 것을 좀더 명확하게 정식화해줄 수 있는가?
하이데거
내 강연 <기술에 대한 물음>을 끝맺는 마지막 문장, "물음은 사유의 경건함이다"하는 말을 기억하고 있는가?
슈피겔
우리가 납득할 수 있는 한 문장을 당신의 니체 강연에서 발견했다. 당신은 "철학적 사유에는 가능한 최고의 구속이 지배하기 때문에 위대한 사상가들은 모두 동일한 것을 사유한다. 그럼에도 이 동일한 것은 너무도 본질적이고 풍부해서 결코 개별자가 그것을 모두 퍼낼 수 없다. 개별자는 단지 자신을 거기에 더 강하게 구속시킬 수 있을 뿐이다"하고 말했다. 그러나 당신의 의견에 따르면 이러한 철학적 노력들이 이제는 분명한 종말에 도달했다는 것이 된다.
하이데거
그것들은 종말에 이르렀다. 그러나 그것이 소멸되어 사라져 버린 것은 아니다. 바로 지금과 같은 대화 속에서 새롭게 현재화된다. 지난 30년간 강의와 연구를 통해 이루어진 나의 모든 작업은 핵심적으로는 서양 철학의 해석이었을 뿐이다. 사유의 역사적인 근원으로의 회귀나, 그리스 철학 이후 아직도 물어지지 않고 있는 물음의 숙고는 전통으로부터의 이탈이 아니다. 나는 다음과 같이 말할 뿐이다. 니체가 무너뜨린 전통적인 형이상학의 사유 방식은 이제 막 시작된 기술 시대의 근본 경향을 적절하게 사유하면서 경험할 수 있는 가능성을 더 이상 제공 할 수 없다.
SPIEGEL: It has, of course, always been a misunderstanding of philosophy to think that the philosopher should have some direct effect with his philosophy. Let us return to the beginning. Is it not conceivable that National Socialism can be seen on the one hand as a realization of that “planetary encounter” and on the other as the last, most horrible, strongest, and, at the same time, most helpless protest against this encounter of “planetarily determined technology” and modern human beings? Apparently, you are dealing with opposites in your own person that are such that many by-products of your activities can only really be explained in that you, with different parts of your being that do not touch the philosophical core, cling to many things about which you as a philosopher know that they have no continuity – for instance to concepts like “home” [Heimat], “rootedness,” and similar things. How do planetary technology and “home” fit together?
HEIDEGGER: I would not say that. It seems to me that you take technology too absolutely. I do not think the situation of human beings in the world of planetary technology is an inextricable and inescapable disastrous fate; rather I think that the task of thinking is precisely to help, within its bounds, human beings to attain an adequate relationship to the essence of technology at all. Although National Socialism went in that direction, those people were much too limited in their thinking to gain a really explicit relationship to what is happening today and what has been under way for three centuries.
SPIEGEL: This explicit relationship, do the Americans have it today?
HEIDEGGER: They do not have it either. They are still entangled in a thinking, pragmatism, that fosters technological operating and manipulating but simultaneously blocks the path toward a contemplation of what is characteristic of modern technology. In the meantime, attempts to break away from pragmatic-positivistic thinking are being made here and there in the USA. And which of us can say whether one day in Russia and in China age-old traditions of a “thinking” will not awaken that will assist human beings in making a free relationship to the technological world possible?
Monday, June 02, 2008
Book Reviews: John Durham Peters, "Courting the Abyss"
The advocacy of complete, unfettered freedom of expression may have its roots in Enlightenment doubt and belief in the power of rationality, but it leads to some complex problems about the values of tolerance, cultural transgression and ethical conduct. Asking and pursuing ethical questions in relation to the principle of free speech runs the risk of being criticized as narrowly conservative, judgemental, puritanical or worse – fundamentalist. Such questions are not necessarily associated with any of these even though they are easily reduced to stereotype or caricature. If their dismissal cannot rest on such reductions, what satisfactory response can be made to them?
...
‘Critics of cultural offensiveness, or even those who want to come to terms with the tangle of a conflicted public sphere today, are left with little room to manoeuvre’ (p. 8). It is Peters’ intention to find more room for manoeuvre by taking liberalism itself as the problem, rather than transgression or the taking of offence, and subjecting to sharp critical interrogation its default positions in thinking about the relation between communication and democracy.
...
Here the liberal celebration of free expression does not hold up too well. In the face of the ethical perturbations raised by beliefs and practices opposite to its own, which of course include those in which racist stereotypes and caricatures are
endemic, the only viable option seems to be that of continuing vigorously to champion the virtue of tolerance.
Consorting openly and civilly with the enemy is intended to show the superiority of liberal values, as for instance when, in the name of free speech, the publication of sadistic porn is upheld, or when, in 1978, the American Civil Liberties Union defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, where there was a substantial Jewish community, some of whom were survivors of the Holocaust.
Peters calls this homeopathic machismo: ‘the daily imbibing of poisons in small doses so that large draughts will not hurt’ (p. 6). The idea is that a little bit of what you don’t fancy does you good. It helps maintain the health of the moral and social order, and is the price you pay for what is the basic good of freedom of expression.
The strange logic in this is that liberty is best maintained by defending those who would destroy it, or as Nietzsche put it, what does not kill me makes me stronger. The strange machismo comes with the display of self-discipline, remaining calm and smiling when cultural taboos are flagrantly broken, or strong and righteous when extremist views are aired.
Enjoying the abuse of mockery is for Peters a central stripe in the liberal temperament, but as he points out, the drama in all this also requires the intolerant critic as a counterexample of the value of self-suspension. We are then back with the stereotypes and caricatures of bigots, prudes, puritanical exponents of censorship and the like, with their usual hostility to namby-pamby liberals. ‘The threefold drama of the liberal enabler, the convention-buster, and the outraged bystander’ shows how neatly ‘the liberals have rigged a double-bind’ for potential objectors to their system.
‘Critics of cultural offensiveness, or even those who want to come to terms with the tangle of a conflicted public sphere today, are left with little room to manoeuvre’ (p. 8). It is Peters’ intention to find more room for manoeuvre by taking liberalism itself as the problem, rather than transgression or the taking of offence, and subjecting to sharp critical interrogation its default positions in thinking about the relation between communication and democracy.
No sin, no virtue; no obscenity, no civility. This takes us to Peters’ own variant on the triumvirate of tolerant liberal, profane transgressor and outraged critic. The transgressor is the abyss-artist, and we immediately think of such notables as de Sade, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Genˆet, along with a ragged line of rock stars and hell-raisers from stage and screen. Self-reflective liberals become abyss-redeemers, existing symbiotically with the abyss-artists, supporting them from the sidelines, supplying the right critical caption at the right time. The third option is abyss-avoidance – preference for the main highway rather than the dark ditch, and refusal of any dalliance with demons. This leads him to ask if, in order to know the abyss, we really need to see a pirate video of Daniel Pearl being beheaded by his kidnappers, as The New Republic (20 June 2002: 8) believes. Are we
scaredy-cats if we don’t? Looking in the mirror and reflecting on the dark historical record and the dark night of the soul may be better intellectual resources.
So the drama of free expression, and its chief characters, continues to unfold, with liberal righteousness one of Peters’ main targets. In going on to explore the liberal ideal of self-abstraction, and the attitude to pain and suffering that informs this, Peters turns to John Locke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. His focus is on Stoicism as a form of public character that continues to inform notions of collective life and communication in western societies. This is linked to further discussion of the free speech contention that refusal to judge is an ethical stance, and of moral abstemiousness in the social sciences.
...
What he is most after in all this is an ethic of receptivity, openness and other-mindedness as a vital element of public communication and political democracy. One difficulty here is the question of how to regard the suffering of distant others, especially in the endless stream of news images of human pain, disaster, misery. How should we respond to this surfeit of information without becoming callous? Can we ever reasonably, responsibly, ethically, filter these images in any way? If so, how does this square with the norm of the informed citizen? Peters examines three ethical premises for the civic act of looking upon suffering – catharsis, compassion and courage – and delivers a keen-eyed review of the politics of pity.
...
It is surprising that Peters ignores the important work of Kelly Oliver in discussing witnessing. Oliver’s critique of neo-Hegelian notions of identity and subjectivity and the ways in which these inform struggles for recognition would seem to offer support for the position Peters wants to develop. Her goal is similar: how ethically responsible, compassionate relations may be possible, and how various obstacles in contemporary thought stand in the way of realizing them. For Oliver, being a witness and bearing witness are central to the development of subjectivity and agency, and to how we negotiate the tensions between our own place and circumstances and our infinite encounters with otherness. Her ethics of witnessing in the contexts of multiculturalism and modern experiences of suffering and trauma appear close to those of Peters, or at least close to some of his major concerns, for he pursues various other themes as well. These include seeking to overcome the impasse between scientific rationality, cultural relativism and moral absolutism, and trying to stem liberalism’s own illiberal tendencies. This splendid book does much to take us beyond the lame truisms of free speech theory and rejuvenate the liberal democratic tradition. It shows us the continuing relevance of various moral and philosophical traditions for thinking about democracy and communication, and the continuing importance of practising intellectual history as cultural criticism.
http://ejc.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/20/4/538.pdf
Michael Pickering
Loughborough University
...
‘Critics of cultural offensiveness, or even those who want to come to terms with the tangle of a conflicted public sphere today, are left with little room to manoeuvre’ (p. 8). It is Peters’ intention to find more room for manoeuvre by taking liberalism itself as the problem, rather than transgression or the taking of offence, and subjecting to sharp critical interrogation its default positions in thinking about the relation between communication and democracy.
...
Here the liberal celebration of free expression does not hold up too well. In the face of the ethical perturbations raised by beliefs and practices opposite to its own, which of course include those in which racist stereotypes and caricatures are
endemic, the only viable option seems to be that of continuing vigorously to champion the virtue of tolerance.
Consorting openly and civilly with the enemy is intended to show the superiority of liberal values, as for instance when, in the name of free speech, the publication of sadistic porn is upheld, or when, in 1978, the American Civil Liberties Union defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, where there was a substantial Jewish community, some of whom were survivors of the Holocaust.
Peters calls this homeopathic machismo: ‘the daily imbibing of poisons in small doses so that large draughts will not hurt’ (p. 6). The idea is that a little bit of what you don’t fancy does you good. It helps maintain the health of the moral and social order, and is the price you pay for what is the basic good of freedom of expression.
The strange logic in this is that liberty is best maintained by defending those who would destroy it, or as Nietzsche put it, what does not kill me makes me stronger. The strange machismo comes with the display of self-discipline, remaining calm and smiling when cultural taboos are flagrantly broken, or strong and righteous when extremist views are aired.
Enjoying the abuse of mockery is for Peters a central stripe in the liberal temperament, but as he points out, the drama in all this also requires the intolerant critic as a counterexample of the value of self-suspension. We are then back with the stereotypes and caricatures of bigots, prudes, puritanical exponents of censorship and the like, with their usual hostility to namby-pamby liberals. ‘The threefold drama of the liberal enabler, the convention-buster, and the outraged bystander’ shows how neatly ‘the liberals have rigged a double-bind’ for potential objectors to their system.
‘Critics of cultural offensiveness, or even those who want to come to terms with the tangle of a conflicted public sphere today, are left with little room to manoeuvre’ (p. 8). It is Peters’ intention to find more room for manoeuvre by taking liberalism itself as the problem, rather than transgression or the taking of offence, and subjecting to sharp critical interrogation its default positions in thinking about the relation between communication and democracy.
No sin, no virtue; no obscenity, no civility. This takes us to Peters’ own variant on the triumvirate of tolerant liberal, profane transgressor and outraged critic. The transgressor is the abyss-artist, and we immediately think of such notables as de Sade, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Genˆet, along with a ragged line of rock stars and hell-raisers from stage and screen. Self-reflective liberals become abyss-redeemers, existing symbiotically with the abyss-artists, supporting them from the sidelines, supplying the right critical caption at the right time. The third option is abyss-avoidance – preference for the main highway rather than the dark ditch, and refusal of any dalliance with demons. This leads him to ask if, in order to know the abyss, we really need to see a pirate video of Daniel Pearl being beheaded by his kidnappers, as The New Republic (20 June 2002: 8) believes. Are we
scaredy-cats if we don’t? Looking in the mirror and reflecting on the dark historical record and the dark night of the soul may be better intellectual resources.
So the drama of free expression, and its chief characters, continues to unfold, with liberal righteousness one of Peters’ main targets. In going on to explore the liberal ideal of self-abstraction, and the attitude to pain and suffering that informs this, Peters turns to John Locke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. His focus is on Stoicism as a form of public character that continues to inform notions of collective life and communication in western societies. This is linked to further discussion of the free speech contention that refusal to judge is an ethical stance, and of moral abstemiousness in the social sciences.
...
What he is most after in all this is an ethic of receptivity, openness and other-mindedness as a vital element of public communication and political democracy. One difficulty here is the question of how to regard the suffering of distant others, especially in the endless stream of news images of human pain, disaster, misery. How should we respond to this surfeit of information without becoming callous? Can we ever reasonably, responsibly, ethically, filter these images in any way? If so, how does this square with the norm of the informed citizen? Peters examines three ethical premises for the civic act of looking upon suffering – catharsis, compassion and courage – and delivers a keen-eyed review of the politics of pity.
...
It is surprising that Peters ignores the important work of Kelly Oliver in discussing witnessing. Oliver’s critique of neo-Hegelian notions of identity and subjectivity and the ways in which these inform struggles for recognition would seem to offer support for the position Peters wants to develop. Her goal is similar: how ethically responsible, compassionate relations may be possible, and how various obstacles in contemporary thought stand in the way of realizing them. For Oliver, being a witness and bearing witness are central to the development of subjectivity and agency, and to how we negotiate the tensions between our own place and circumstances and our infinite encounters with otherness. Her ethics of witnessing in the contexts of multiculturalism and modern experiences of suffering and trauma appear close to those of Peters, or at least close to some of his major concerns, for he pursues various other themes as well. These include seeking to overcome the impasse between scientific rationality, cultural relativism and moral absolutism, and trying to stem liberalism’s own illiberal tendencies. This splendid book does much to take us beyond the lame truisms of free speech theory and rejuvenate the liberal democratic tradition. It shows us the continuing relevance of various moral and philosophical traditions for thinking about democracy and communication, and the continuing importance of practising intellectual history as cultural criticism.
http://ejc.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/20/4/538.pdf
Michael Pickering
Loughborough University
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