I'm on another lil' Kant kick, so I was reviewing what I've written about Kant over the years on the blague. There are many posts. Maybe twenty or thirty.
This seemed especially relevant to what I'm going to do with today's post:
KANT AVEC SADE
Increasingly the right reminds me of Kant
The categorical imperative & the need to do one's duty
The left sees its duty as to liberate all desire
And this on the other side reminds me of Sade
Together, the two remind me of Lacan's essay
Kant Avec Sade
In which Lacan argues that desire and duty
Become a Moebius strip
& that's how I see the American electorate
Driven by desire for duty or dutiful desire
In the way that Creon & Antigone
Are opposite sides of the same hard-headed koinonia
So the left & right, the red & the blue
Are two sides of our community
The red & the blue as aspects of the flag
Interspersed with stars and stripes of white
Representing peace
Peace as the deep background of America
& red & blue as the part of the story
That makes good TV.
November 19, 2004
This is from my first year of the blague. What is stunning about it at first is my sanguine assessment that red and blue will be able to get together in the white space of peace represented by the stars in the blue field of our flag, as well as in the alternation with red stripes in the larger field. To some extent I believe that red and blue are aspects of any culture, as there is always a Falstaff and there is always a Henry V. But at the end of the Part II, they separate, and Henry V says to Falstaff that unless he adopts different moral maxims, they can no longer know one another.
Their cultural fields were quite different, and counter-cultures may simply be unable to live together in the same house. As Lincoln put it, "A House Divided Cannot Stand."
Or as I might put it, it's hard to stand being in the same house with someone who has a completely different set of axioms from the ones from which you have built your house. In Kant's day, everyone believed more or less the same thing. Diversity, as we know, is almost never intellectual diversity. It may be color of skin, it may be gender, but unless we believe more or less the same things, it may ultimately be impossible for us to stand one another. Personally, most people drive me out of my mind, but I rarely show it. I couldn't for instance JOIN a St. Patrick's Day Parade, but I am outwardly tolerant of it. I just wouldn't want to jump up and down over the color green, and the cultural field that it represents (beer and potatoes). I don't think it's terrible that there are those who get off on this, but I am not sure I could live with people in the same house who lived for the color green and for potatoes and beer.
On a less trivial level, I am not sure that I can really stand people who live for sexual kicks, either. When I was younger, I used to think, I will just submerge my differences, and try not to care. But ultimately, I just thought: these people are insane to live on a phrase like, "If it feels good, do it." The notion is terrible to me, and has no place in my moral universe. I feel that we have a duty to the Law (Ten Commandments) but can never fully embody the Law (self-righteous people drive me out of my mind, as does the whole notion of sainthood). I can stand Abraham Lincoln, in other words, but not John Wilkes Booth.
Kant says that our communities are made from phrases. There are people who live by the phrase, "Work first, and then play." I like that group, although I don't really belong in it. I try to turn all work into play, and have turned play into work as a result. But I respect work, and those who do their duty. What I don't really like are those who merely shake their booty. Kant argues that our basic verbal axioms determine in which community we live.
3 Phrases from Immanuel Kant
1.
Selling one's hair is not altogether free from blame.
2.
A man may be an atheist in theory and not in practice.
3.
Argument is a kind of entertainment that outlasts jesting.
To some extent I agree with each of these phrases. I'm not sure if you time-warped me back to Konigsberg that Kant and I would be the best of friends. But I love him on paper. He clarifies my thought.
"We call a man evil, however, not because he performs actions that are evil (contrary to law) but because these actions are of such a nature that we may infer from them the presence in him of evil maxims" ("Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone," p. 370, in Basic Writings of Kant, Modern Library, 2001). If we have freedom, we have the freedom to choose our maxims.
"Treat others as an end in themselves and not merely a means."
Anyone going against this is evil. Thus, promiscuous sex is by nature EVIL (which is why I am against the phrase, "If it feels good, do it.")
For the longest time I tried to get along with the left because I was assured that the right was even more evil, since their phrase seemed to be, "It's all about money," which I thought was even more atrocious. I am no longer certain that it is more atrocious, especially since the children that often result, or are killed by the spendthrifts and mayhem types in the act of abortion, are costing the nation not only its moral character, but billions of dollars, and whole lost generations.
The rule of maxims (for me, The Ten Commandments, and NOT the Sermon on the Mount, which I hold to be for the next Kingdom and not binding in this one) is important, and so it is apparent that in choosing our maxims we also choose not only the nature of our lives, but the nature of our community with which we surround ourselves, and the kind of thing we can stand in one another.
The red and the blue are separated by their phrasings, and shall never again come together. If we are to be united, it must be on basic phrases that render us mutually comprehensible. At present, I think these are more and more different, as the left gets their phrasing from Marx and Foucault (they are largely unaware of this as their party has been hijacked from within during the Long March that was instigated by the left in 1968), and the right from the Bible and from Locke.
The wild lawlessness in relation to others that I perceived in the Beats (especially in Burroughs and Ginsberg who openly joined NAMBLA) could be contrasted with the demure careful qualities of a poet like Marianne Moore. Both were writers, and to that extent they were the same, but their phrasing was different. They were writing DIFFERENT THINGS. Marianne Moore and Allen Ginsberg simply could not have spent a weekend together: because the phrasing by which they lived were so impossibly different. Moore was a Republican, and Ginsberg to the left of the Democratic party of his day. The propensity to accept a maxim like "If it feels good do it," is indicative of an evil heart, Kant says, while the propensity to accept a phrase like, "Do unto others," is indicative of a good heart. Imagine Marianne Moore and Allen Ginsberg sharing an apartment together.
We may disagree on many things as long as we don't really know one another. Argument is as fun as jesting, Kant also says. We are not animals. We can choose our phrases, judiciously, but on important matters there can be a parting of the ways, creating a rift as deep as the opening of the Red Sea.
Where differences are slight, humor can reign. Where they are major, there can be no true discussion, and no humor, as there, a certain seriousness reigns. One cannot laugh at the altar. There can be such a thing as one "who despite a corrupted heart yet possesses a good will, there remains hope of a return to the good from which he has strayed" (394). When there is a presupposition that another has at the very least a good heart, then we can continue to argue in jest.
What worries me is that if the phrases are totally separate, as they increasingly seem to be with red and blue, we may also think of the other as irredeemably separate, and as possessing a corrupted heart. Where this is the case all discourse must cease, and the silence of the white stripes can mean a boundary more firm than the one we have with Mexico, more firm even than the military boundaries of WWI with barbed wire and trench warfare, more firm than those which we use to wall in maximum security prisoners.
25 comments:
Okay, Kirb, let's take some of these phrases one by one, and put them under the blue light.
"Promiscuous sex is by nature EVIL (which is why I am against the phrase, "If it feels good, do it.")"
Defining a biological fact as an ethical quality is certain to raise problems. The pleasure--actually a sensory phenomenon (not a concept)--we feel, for instance, in eating, or having sex, or exercising, or sitting in a hot-tup, or listening to music, has, first, nothing to do with morality. These are physiological urges or reactions which are recorded in the brain. There are reasons we have these neurological functions, and they aren't "rational." Animals can feel many of these same things, but we would never consider a dog a "rational" or "moral" being. Morality is the frame through which we see and interpret pleasure, as with all other activities. Anyone who would say they do things simply because it feels good, is merely reporting the obvious: I like to feel good. And that's true of everyone: Eating feels good, and so does sex. No one would deny this. The question becomes moral only if you make a dilemma in which pleasure and work, or pleasure and pain, or pleasure and its absence, are opposed. These are not opposed in nature. Pleasure exists for a biological reason, as does pain. They serve specific ends, which enable us to survive, and reproduce. These are undeniable facts. They served us very well for millions of years, and will undoubtedly continue to do so.
Claiming that Marianne Moore and Allen Ginsberg could not on any account live in proximity suggests that, in a rational democracy, their mutual existence was a contradiction. But in fact our mutual tolerance, which is a cornerstone of democracy, is precisely what allowed them to live most of their lives in very close proximity, pursuing different agendas, leading different lives. Why would we need to subject them to the same rigid standard of behavior? We could say, for instance, that each might have benefited from a little of the other's tendencies and beliefs. Some cross-fertilization might well have been possible. Imagine if they were trapped together for a few days in a collapsed building. They would end up talking and exchanging ideas. I suspect, knowing a little about each of them, that this would lead to lively discussions, and mutual understanding. Whereas, one gets the feeling that you think this would be bad, that both would suffer as a result, that if Moore couldn't adopt and improve Ginsberg, it would be a bad occasion. But the best outcome would be mutual instruction.
Moore was by no means a perfect human being. She was an excellent poet, and an eccentric character. But this was also true of Ginsberg. Why must we repudiate one? Must we repudiate everything about a person, whatever their gifts and accomplishments, simply because we disagree about one or another aspects of their character? This is partly a rhetorical question, but in a democracy, tolerance is built right into our laws. You can't march into Ginsberg's apartment and arrest him for "sins against the state" the way they did in the Soviet Union. I suspect that Moore would have been just as suspect as Ginsberg, in the Soviet Union. Both would have been targets of state security.
Kirb:
You say--
"What worries me is that if the phrases are totally separate, as they increasingly seem to be with red and blue, we may also think of the other as irredeemably separate, and as possessing a corrupted heart. Where this is the case all discourse must cease, and the silence of the white stripes can mean a boundary more firm than the one we have with Mexico, more firm even than the military boundaries of WWI with barbed wire and trench warfare, more firm than those which we use to wall in maximum security prisoners."
This sounds really harsh. "All discourse must cease"? We must wall ourselves off from others, as with thick prison walls? This sounds very backward.
The overriding irony, for instance, of WWI, was how incredibly trivial and pointless the pretexts for that war were. The probable "advantages" to any combatant were so small as to be not measurable. The costs were gargantuan, and exceeded every reasonable estimate, or limit. Nations poured their youth into battle almost for honor alone, and nothing else. After a certain point, there were no winners: They were fighting over pock-marked, devastated fields, living like rats and frogs in mud and filth, destroying each other. This is not the way civilized people behave.
Why are we bombing Libya? No one seems to have an answer. We're just doing it.
Kirby,
I've tried to tell you this several times, so I'll let Paul speak instead:
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
We are not under law, but grace. Luther was wrong--or at least your understanding of him is. The kingdom of heaven is within us and we are supposed to reflect that faith that we have in our loving actions.
Well, I think we can be moral, but not reliably, and we certainly cannot attain a state of grace, or at any rate, I don't know of anyone who has attained this state.
The Bible mentions that Paul TRIED to do good things, but did bad things that he couldn't help doing. If Paul cannot attain a state of perfection, I have no idea how I'm supposed to go past him.
Dream on, say I.
On the other hand, we can attempt to use reason as per Kant to straighten out some of our moral guidelines by which he means our guiding axioms.
Going over the Small Catechism every week helps me.
The worst axiom of all time is "You gotta do what you gotta do," which is basically freedom to do anything the heck you want.
But this is not why we're bombing Gaddafi's forces in Libya.
It has to do with universal human rights.
Every country should have the right to freely elect its leaders, have freedom of speech for all, rule of law under which even the least is protected, etc.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is online, and is what the UN uses to decide its actions. We're not just bombing Libya for no reason. We have reasons. We're not just bombing Canada, or bombing England. We're bombing Libya by universal assent.
Gosh, Kirb, I thought you guys wanted to gut the United Nations.
I guess it does have its uses, at least as long as we need to demonstrate solidarity in our police actions around the world. It's true the UN would dissolve within weeks, were the U.S. to withdraw its support from that august body. It's also true that, without our military participation, its ability to enforce actions and perform good works in our name wouldn't exist.
Remember the aluminum tubes and the yellow cake? Remember Saddam's "nuclear arsenal"? I do. They didn't exist. But we "convinced" the UN to authorize our little "police action" in Iraq.
"Collective will" and "common consent" and "shared purpose" sound a little pathetic in this context. Does anyone think we need anyone's approval for anything we do? After all, we're the "last great superpower" in the world. Woops, we're "owned" now by China. Maybe China would like to chip in a few pennies to the cause? No?
Gosh, I'm awfully naive.
Also, I'm sorry if I was too harsh. It hurt me that Brett and Stu were so angry about O'Keefe and not at all angry at NPR or ACORN, who are the perpetrators of the frauds that O'Keefe has exposed.
NPR and ACORN take government funding but are totally biased organizations. They should drop their funding willingly, and offer a mea culpa.
O'Keefe was bad in HOW he exposed them. But WHAT he exposed is still accurate, even if the lens and the exaggerations are not precisely accurate.
I think Stu and I are completely fed up with one another, but I'm still hoping he comes back, too.
I just wonder if it's possible for red and blue to really talk and really listen. I did realize how angry the left is about O'Keefe's actions. Most of them still think ACORN is a legitimate operation that deserves federal funding, apparently.
That's ghastly, but we do have to continue to listen to one another's phrasing.
Jazz is hard.
Easier is classical, where the composer gets the final say and there's only one composer.
Helps you keep your composure.
Curtis, I don't know who you mean by "you guys."
Sean Hannity doesn't like the UN, and there are other conservatives who don't like it, and want to gut it. I like the UN, and stand by it, and their actions.
I think we need the UN.
Sure, they have a lot of PC tommy rot in their communiques, but we do need to talk to one another.
I like the UDHR document. It's a good document, even though it was largely penned by liberals like Mrs. Roosevelt. But liberals like Mrs. Roosevelt are more or less what I am. (I am not a communist, but then, neither was she.)
Liberal and Marxist have become conflated terms. But of course they have in fact NOTHING to do with one another.
You are cynical, which is a kind of naive.
Cynical is what happens when you grow up idealistic and get ironized too often in the rear end.
It leaves a permanent imprint.
The more we know about human motivation, the less likely we are to take anything at face value. Skepticism is a very healthy strategy.
But what do I know? I only read the papers.
Western Civilization: Gandhi: "I think that would be a very good idea."
From JADL:
Please post, Kirby:
Kirby, thanks for the posting on Kant, who in his philosophical wisdom knew that the mental, moral, and spiritual dimensions of man could not be reduced to their material substrates and their attendant hedonistic effects.
I suspect Faville to be an adherent to the claim that through biological evolutionary processes of gene replication and natural selection human neural activity in the brain deludes us (the "Blind Watchmaker" and "selfish gene" arguments of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, et al) into fancying we possess free will and agency and actually reduces what most of us call consciousness, intentionality, and rationality itself to what they are for dogmatic materialists like D & D, that is, at bottom, unconscious adaptive mechanisms that also reduce art, religion, morality, etc. to mere material epiphenomena.
This is, baldly put, "the mind is what the brain does" claim. While neural activity seems necessary to consciousness, it in no way follows that it is sufficient, let alone equivalent to it. While such conceptual outrages displayed on the D & D show have their prestigious partisans, there are a number of other heavy-hitting scientists and philosophers who utterly dispute their grandiose reductionist claims. And in no way are these claims "undeniable facts."
Gandhi, of course, played on British sentiment, and used it to free his country from imperialistic colonialism (far easier than what we had to deal with in our own revolution with the Brits, which indicates quite a level of evolution in the next 200 years of British cultural life and thought).
When you look at Myanmar, North Korea, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia over the last 50 years, much less the Chinese in Tibet, I don't think we could argue that they have arrived at a superior state to the west. Many think this to be so, but I beg to differ.
The greatest poverty in the world is in the Indian subcontinent.
But the world's biggest film industry is there, too.
Pure escapism from what I can make out.
Their caste system is not exactly evidence of the greatness of Indian civility.
But what do I know? Just saying.
Kant would argue that there are no such things as biological facts in themselves. Everything we experience is read through a universal moral screen (Critique of Practical Reason). We may argue about the "universality" of the moral screen, but most of us do judge everything others do as through amoral screen. This is almost very important. It's what allows us to live together in a community.
Most of us agree that egregious harm to children is something to be scorned.
That the government should protect liberties rather than take them away.
The Libyan government is NOT doing that, which is why they are being bombed. Bush and Obama can agree at least on THAT much.
Our moral screen does not permit genocide. That's one of the most important principles the United Nations has stood for since the UDHR. I think it's healthy and important.
The entire Security Council was either pro-no-fly-zone or at least not against it.
Therefore, it's a universal decision, and is done through a moral screen, or moral grid, provided by the UDHR.
A few hippies and a few far right Christians are against any violence even to stop further violence. But most of us see that police actions are necessary (even if they are also expensive).
The Chinese don't see this, of course, which is what makes them the barbarians that they are.
Our biology tells us to do things to make ourselves 'feel good' which are unhealthy, unwise, and/or immoral.
Morality comes into play in being able to recognize the long-term consequences of our actions and whether or not they are right to do...
If we do what feels good, we will do wrong...
Now, if you teach yourself (or are taught by otherse) to have appropriate emotional responses to moral and immoral acts (your own or others), that is a good thing - we can manipulate or train our emotions/feelings to help us 'act spontaneously in the right,' as the great amateur philosopher and professional camp director Frank Cheley said.
Bad cultures are ones that attach feeling good to immoral acts. Good cultures do the opposite. weee!
Brett:
Weeeeeee!
Kirby was defining pleasure as an evil.
Do you really agree with this?
Is pleasure evil?
I think not.
Moderation in all things. Duty and rest, work and play, chores and coffee-breaks. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Are you dull?
Or do you achieve a balance between opposites, that divine equilibrium which produces the cherished life?
http://vinaylal.wordpress.com/
The link above is for a blog written by a blogger who lives in Delhi. The other Delhi. I'm interested in his posts because he supervised my sister's dissertation.
I've found I have something in common with this fellow. We both wrote our master's essays on Emerson. Mine got me drummed out of the academy. His got him an award for thesis of the year at Johns Hopkins and a career that's included teaching stints at University of Chicago, Columbia, UCLA and the University of Delhi.
Reading his stuff I get the sense that Kant for him is a little more than just a categorical imperative.
Curtis, I was defining "promiscuous sex" as "evil."
Promiscuous sex may fit within "pleasure," as a subset, but I wasn't defining all pleasure as evil. Growing flowers is a pleasure, but I didn't define that as evil.
If you think I really defined "pleasure" as "evil," please quote.
Craig, who are you referring to as believing that Kant is nothing more than the categorical imperative?
The desire to legitimate non-procreational sex is what the Democratic party consists of since 1968. Most of them see nothing wrong with what Bill Clinton did in the Oval Office, most see nothing wrong with the carnal acts that eventuate in AIDS and other venereal diseases, almost none see anything wrong with abortion itself. Sex is sacrosanct for them, as it was for the Romans, including even incest (this is becoming more apparent in John Irving's novels, from The Hotel New Hampshire forward). S & M is just another form of amusement.
Foucault goes so far as to argue that there should be no limits to sexual pleasure, and no governing principles whatsoever, even laughing at the thought that child prostitution should be criminalized.
Foucault is more or less the centerpiece of leftist aesthetic and moral thought today.
Kant would not have gone down this road, but he would not have denied pleasure. His pleasures were certainly less bodily: jokes, looking at a sunset, looking at stars, music (but I doubt if he would have countenanced rap or rock and roll by the Beach Boys much less Nine Inch Nails -- itself a mockery of the nails used to make Christ into a "pin-up").
Sexual diseases now take up the lion's share of the CDC budget. This is still not good enough for the left. They want to live off the government while doing nothing but have sex day and night.
There's something wrong.
The arts express the ideals of a generation. If you look at Lady Gaga's videos you can see the neo-Roman values in every aspect: the pools, the massive dogs, the nude sculptures, the lack of trust between men and women, as each jockeys to maximize pleasure without concern for the other's moral or spiritual well-being (which is increasingly held to not exist):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESGLojNYSo
american pragmatism has made a web of knots of practical morality to the point where it's only good if it involves money or can be rationalized as progress
as i get older i find that pleasure is associated with good people who wish people well and enjoy the goodness of people when it is possible
we balance our lives between feasting and fasting
it is possible to find pleasure in both
a moral sense is almost impossible without some sense of contingency with something greater
humility is a prerequisite for moral sensitivity...it would appear
tom aquinas never tired of stating that evil can be understood only in terms of a lack...a lack of love...a lack of intelligence...actions deriving from incomplete understanding of ramifications
listening to music is a high moral act
music is impossible without recourse to the human being (although birdsong contends)
recorded music is not music
this is a moral statement
i take the moral highground here
if i cannot see the human making the sound it is not music it is something else...noise perhaps
the only purpose for recorded music is for historical record and for learning
countless humans have made noble decisions to forego pleasures in response to the intuition of something greater...all of them are probably insane
the only virtue for kant was (is) duty
there is an american dialectic at work in the two party system we perpetuate...it's a conversation...it would seem imperative that at some level hatred should dictate the rhetoric
ours is a culture of superficiality
so who knows??
kant can't chant or cant
he's a canned can of tuna
and can't find his way
out of the category
of canned fish
joseph marechal is the only person to have salvaged anything worthwhile in kant
and nobody reads him anymore
kirby i think it's time for you to mandate that for the next year you will only accept comments from women
i love you guys
but i'm tired of the same old tirades
some people enjoy torture
i guess that's ok as long as you don't hurt anyone
i enjoy sleep
it is a moral act
an act of faith
and it is there i go
i'm reading don quixote again
i think he was the last great moralist
jh
I like the tirades, there are sometimes very slight modulations in them, but largely it's the same themes over and over, but louder and louder and louder, and then, ah, silence.
Curtis demands pleasure through coitus. Coitus is an undertheorized pleasure, or possibly an overtheorized pleasure (thanks to Foucault), although Tillich got some things started in that direction.
Evil as lack, is lacking in something.
A tad of something is missing.
What IS sin?
Everybody wants company, everybody wants pleasure, and courtesy of Coitus, I suppose, many people believe that they can achieve two birds with one stone.
I feel therefore I am Coitus.
The idea that only women should comment would probably lead to one great long silence in the comments box.
Maybe we could all just wear Easter bonnets as we comment.
But I like the idea.
I love Coitus therefore I am.
That should have been the motto of the sixties.
Yeah, pleasure's not necessarily evil.
Someone who would say this is stupid.
But it's just as stupid to say that pleasure is necessarily good.
Which is what some stupid people on the left say.
"Just imagine what would happen if instead of having all of these socially-constructed hangups that society shoves down our throats, we just Did what we Really wanted to do at all times?"
That's the line of thought in the 'left' that Kirby is attacking, and so am I.
Reminds me of people who want us to look to children and animals for our morals.
It's like that phrase...oh, what was it Rahm Emanuel said about leftist organizations spending money to campaign against blue-dog democrats?
yeah...
it's like that. It's probably even more off-base than claiming that all the left wants to do is have promiscuous sex while living off the government...(which is saying a lot, since what Kirby said is pretty wrong...It would be akin to me saying that the right is all about hating poor people and hating brown people. Which isn't true...it's just as true as what Kirby said).
Here's something interesting. John Dewey wrote his dissertation at Johns Hopkins on The Psychology of Kant. Then he taught at the University of Chicago for several years before taking a position at Columbia University. That's the same sequence followed by the Indian fellow, Lal, who supervised my sister's dissertation at UCLA. It looks like Lal is still on the UCLA faculty, but on indefinite loan to the the University of Delhi. Dewey created American public education by using pluralism and pragmatism to reform Kant, the ultimate Prussian educator. The Kingdom of Prussia is within. It ain't heaven, but it'll have to do until the real thing comes along.
You don't quite understand the political implication sof Kant's categorical imperative, which concerns not merely sunday school morality but, say, the statesman's decisions. To invade Iraq or not. Or Libya. Or Poland, etc. To overturn the New Deal or not.
Kant's not a rightist, as in machiavellian, or Lockean-whig opportunist . That would be the religious zealots he battled .
He's actually an egalitarian, quite skeptical (ie, not knowing the ding an sich) and favored the French Revolution initially.
(relating to yr fave poets takes you to non sequitur land. Kant would have disapproved of both Moore and Ginzo, and you).
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