Thanks for the quote - it's certainly beautifully written (page number pls?)
- but it's a quote that amongst other incitements calls us to think and
speak for ourselves. Or does it? The word "reflection" is strikingly
undecidable.
>Perhaps it is time to re-post a quote from The Order of Things that was
>posted here a while ago:
>
>"The modern (ethical form) formulates no morality, since any imperative
>is lodged within thought and its movement towards the apprehension of the
>unthought; it is reflection, the act of consciousness, the elucidation of
>what is silent, language restored to what it mute,
If we merely (?) reflect (mirror), as in a pure repetition (of a quote, for
example), then nothing is silent or mute but what is already said repeats
itself, through our repetition, like a prayer or litany. Nothing
"unthought" has yet been thought.
Yet "reflection" also means thought, to reflect, to think. Therefore there
is a strange relationship between repeating the words of an-other (mute
speech) and thought (which, I say, takes the name of action)
> Modern thought has never, in fact,
>been able to propose a morality. But the reason for this is not
>because it is pure speculation; on the contrary, modern thought, from its
>inception and in its very density, is a certain mode of action. Let
>those who urge thought to leave its retreat and to formulate its choices
>talk on; and let those who seek, without any pledge and in the absence
>of virtue, to establish a morality do as they wish. For modern thought,
>no morality is possible. Thought had already 'left' itself in its own
>being as early as the nineteenth century; it is no longer theoretical.
>As soon as it functions it offends or recoils, attracts or repels,
>breaks, dissociates, unites or reunites; it cannot help but liberate and
>enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must
>be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought, at
>the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is in itself an action
>-- a perilous act. Sade, Nietzsche, Artaud, and Bataille have understood
>this on behalf of all those who tried to ignore it; but it is also
>certain that that Hegel, Marx and Freud knew it. Can we say that it is
>not known by those who, in their profound stupidity, assert that there is
>no philosophy without political choice, that all thought is either
>'progressive' or 'reactionary'?
To say "that there is no philosophy without political choice" and "that all
thought is either 'progressive' or reactionary"' is not the same thing. I
can easily concur with the former while not agreeing with the latter.
>Their foolishness is to believe that all
>thought 'expresses' the ideology of a class; their involuntary profundity
>is that they point directly at the modern mode of being of thought.
>Superficially, one might say that knowledge of man, unlike the sciences
>of nature, is always linked, even in its vaguest form, to ethics or
>politics; more fundamentally, modern thought is advancing towards the
>region where man's Other must become the Same as himself."
>
Wonderfully said! But this is left up in the air.
The sciences of nature are not linked to an ethics or politics? Are we sure
about that? This is a very high level of belief (faith/ideology/insistence)
on the "sciences of nature" - if there is such thing (I thought we'd gotten
rid of cartesian dualism).
BJH
------------------
- but it's a quote that amongst other incitements calls us to think and
speak for ourselves. Or does it? The word "reflection" is strikingly
undecidable.
>Perhaps it is time to re-post a quote from The Order of Things that was
>posted here a while ago:
>
>"The modern (ethical form) formulates no morality, since any imperative
>is lodged within thought and its movement towards the apprehension of the
>unthought; it is reflection, the act of consciousness, the elucidation of
>what is silent, language restored to what it mute,
If we merely (?) reflect (mirror), as in a pure repetition (of a quote, for
example), then nothing is silent or mute but what is already said repeats
itself, through our repetition, like a prayer or litany. Nothing
"unthought" has yet been thought.
Yet "reflection" also means thought, to reflect, to think. Therefore there
is a strange relationship between repeating the words of an-other (mute
speech) and thought (which, I say, takes the name of action)
> Modern thought has never, in fact,
>been able to propose a morality. But the reason for this is not
>because it is pure speculation; on the contrary, modern thought, from its
>inception and in its very density, is a certain mode of action. Let
>those who urge thought to leave its retreat and to formulate its choices
>talk on; and let those who seek, without any pledge and in the absence
>of virtue, to establish a morality do as they wish. For modern thought,
>no morality is possible. Thought had already 'left' itself in its own
>being as early as the nineteenth century; it is no longer theoretical.
>As soon as it functions it offends or recoils, attracts or repels,
>breaks, dissociates, unites or reunites; it cannot help but liberate and
>enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must
>be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought, at
>the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is in itself an action
>-- a perilous act. Sade, Nietzsche, Artaud, and Bataille have understood
>this on behalf of all those who tried to ignore it; but it is also
>certain that that Hegel, Marx and Freud knew it. Can we say that it is
>not known by those who, in their profound stupidity, assert that there is
>no philosophy without political choice, that all thought is either
>'progressive' or 'reactionary'?
To say "that there is no philosophy without political choice" and "that all
thought is either 'progressive' or reactionary"' is not the same thing. I
can easily concur with the former while not agreeing with the latter.
>Their foolishness is to believe that all
>thought 'expresses' the ideology of a class; their involuntary profundity
>is that they point directly at the modern mode of being of thought.
>Superficially, one might say that knowledge of man, unlike the sciences
>of nature, is always linked, even in its vaguest form, to ethics or
>politics; more fundamentally, modern thought is advancing towards the
>region where man's Other must become the Same as himself."
>
Wonderfully said! But this is left up in the air.
The sciences of nature are not linked to an ethics or politics? Are we sure
about that? This is a very high level of belief (faith/ideology/insistence)
on the "sciences of nature" - if there is such thing (I thought we'd gotten
rid of cartesian dualism).
BJH
------------------