I find these comments very helpful. Let me try to restate parts of
the argument in my own words. First of all, what F means by "emergence
of sexuality" is its emergence as a central problematic in the discourse
of our culture. In "the Christian world of fallen bodies and of sin",
the sexual experience -- perceived in terms of "desire, rapture, penetration,
ecstasy, the outpouring that leaves us all spent" -- did not form a separate
problematic, but emerged into language as part of the discourse of mysticism,
where it was used to articulate experiences leading, "without interruption
or limit, right to the heart of a divine love". Thus, to something beyond
itself, and beyond ourselves. The emergence of a separate discourse of
sexuality, as a cultural "event", is coextensive with the emergence of
sexuality, and also philosophy, as something that "points to nothing beyond
itself". Dialectics, both as a method and as a postulated principle of
our universe, is based on the perception that each thing has something
beyond itself with which it enters into dialectical relationships, and
that through these relationships something new is produced, something
beyond both of them. In particular, dialectics' underlying view of man
is as worker -- in that it fundamentally regards man as shaped through
a process of struggle with his environment (in the widest sense).
The emergence of sexuality, in signalling the end of a perception
of sexual ecstasy as a form of uninterrupted communication that leads
"right to the heart of divine love", also signals the end of a perception
of language as being capable of communication which leads right to the
heart of truth, or even to anything outside itself. In this sense it
marks "the transformation of a philosophy of man as worker to a philosophy
based on a being who speaks".
Do you think this is a somewhat faithful recapitulation?
-m
the argument in my own words. First of all, what F means by "emergence
of sexuality" is its emergence as a central problematic in the discourse
of our culture. In "the Christian world of fallen bodies and of sin",
the sexual experience -- perceived in terms of "desire, rapture, penetration,
ecstasy, the outpouring that leaves us all spent" -- did not form a separate
problematic, but emerged into language as part of the discourse of mysticism,
where it was used to articulate experiences leading, "without interruption
or limit, right to the heart of a divine love". Thus, to something beyond
itself, and beyond ourselves. The emergence of a separate discourse of
sexuality, as a cultural "event", is coextensive with the emergence of
sexuality, and also philosophy, as something that "points to nothing beyond
itself". Dialectics, both as a method and as a postulated principle of
our universe, is based on the perception that each thing has something
beyond itself with which it enters into dialectical relationships, and
that through these relationships something new is produced, something
beyond both of them. In particular, dialectics' underlying view of man
is as worker -- in that it fundamentally regards man as shaped through
a process of struggle with his environment (in the widest sense).
The emergence of sexuality, in signalling the end of a perception
of sexual ecstasy as a form of uninterrupted communication that leads
"right to the heart of divine love", also signals the end of a perception
of language as being capable of communication which leads right to the
heart of truth, or even to anything outside itself. In this sense it
marks "the transformation of a philosophy of man as worker to a philosophy
based on a being who speaks".
Do you think this is a somewhat faithful recapitulation?
-m