Yes... A very good addition to the conversation. But I wonder if you might
give us the page reference...?
On Jan 20, 10:33am, malgosia askanas wrote:
> Subject: Re: Ethics and Poststructuralism
> 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, the illmination of
> the element of darkness that cuts man off from himself, the reanimation
> of the inert -- it is all this and this alone that constituted the
> content and the form of the ethical. 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'? 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."
>
>
> -malgosia
>-- End of excerpt from malgosia askanas
------------------
give us the page reference...?
On Jan 20, 10:33am, malgosia askanas wrote:
> Subject: Re: Ethics and Poststructuralism
> 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, the illmination of
> the element of darkness that cuts man off from himself, the reanimation
> of the inert -- it is all this and this alone that constituted the
> content and the form of the ethical. 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'? 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."
>
>
> -malgosia
>-- End of excerpt from malgosia askanas
------------------