Re: Reading Order of Things - prefaces


Hey guys,
Let's just call "preface" the preface F wrote to the original
text, i.e. the French one, and "english preface" what he wrote for the
English edition. Less confusing than "first" and "second," I think.



> I have a big problem around here (p xx) anyway. F seems to be drawing a
> kind of continuum where culture (folk knowledge?) is on one end and
> scientific/philosophical knowledge is on the other. And the "true" order
> can sometimes be glimpsed in the middle. (I can't believe this IS what
> he's saying, but it sure sounds like it.)
>
Try this on for size. F starts this talk of order as he ends
the analysis of Borges' text: "il y aurait ainsi ... une culture vouee
tout entiere a l'ordonnance de l'etendue, mais qui ne distribuerait la
proliferation des etres dans aucun des espaces ou il nous est possible de
nommer, de parler, de penser." (p11) English: "There would appear to be,
then a culture entirely devoted to the ordering of space, but one
that does not distribute the multiplicity of existing things into any of
the categories that make it possible for us to name, speak, and think."
(pxix) I take it that the foregoing is the way F will want to
characterize Chinese culture FROM a Western point of view. Herein lies his
big claim. Cultures are things that are in the business of ordering.
In other words, order is not something inherent in things; it is the
product of "un regard [a glance], une attention [an examination], un
language." So, order is something that is posited; it does not inhabit
"things" naturally. And to the extent that cultures order differently,
some categories of order are, for foreigners to a culture, unthinkable,
unspeakable, unnameable.
If you grant him this much, that cultures differ from each other
insofar as they order in varying ways, then the next point is rather banal.
Anyone born into a certain culture will have certain ordering schemas to
contend with. In the margin of my book next to this
point, I wrote "Heideggers Befindlichkeit." This point seems very
similar to a Heideggerian notion translated often as "thrownness." Our
culture (for F) or existence (for H) determines our possibilities for
knowledge. Here, knowledge has no fancy meaning; it just refers to the
background through which we make sense of the world.
But back to this "region mediane" that F writes with such
confidence about. As far as I can tell, and I admit that this is not at
all clear to me, this middle region is supposed to be between the garden
variety of knowledge (why not even "folk knowledge" for some cultures
though that is not how I would characterize the sort of knowledge that
people who work in Silicon Valley or the Paris metro or grade school
teachers in the Midwest or Quebecois bus drivers or even Brazilian singers
employ) and meta-discourse (philosophy and scientific theory whose aims
are foundational). He calls it "l'etre brut de l'order [order in its
primary state]." I cannot resist again calling
upon Heidegger to make sense of this claim. And were it not for F's use
of the word "exist" in its various grammatical forms, I would not. But
clearly, here F is walking down a Heideggerian path here. He is trying to
separate out the being of order whose function he conceives as ultimate
arbiter. This order stands in relation to both garden variety thought
and meta-discourse in the way that the U.S. Constituition stands to both
federal laws and the laws (as well as constitutions) of the various
states of the union.


> It seems to me that this approach objectifies scientific knowledge - he
> says elsewhere he doesn't want to do history of science - but how can he
> avoid it?

So, what he will want to do in this book, I think, is somehow
find the lowest common denominator amongst the three examples of
scientific knowledge that he has chosen to investigate. The result will
be something approximating this "region mediane" this order in its
primary state. Or at least the experience of that order.


>
> More confusing, is this "underlying order" meant to be unchangeable. Or is
> this the "positive unconscious" of knowledge (p xi) - which seems to
> undergo sudden changes as we move from (say) the Classical to the Modern
> era?
> This is exactly where I would put my eggs. This primary state of
order changes and when it does we get scientific paradigm shifts;
theories are overturned.

Am I insane or does this seem plausible (if clear)?

derrick

> The whole thing seems to have a lot more Kant in it than I could accept.
>
> Jim

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