On Fri, 7 Mar 1997, Timothy Mason wrote:
> -- [ From: Timothy Mason * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] --
>
> And what i am hearing in all this is the concerned murmur of the priest as
> he rattles his inquisitorial chains.
>
> Timothy Mason
> mason@xxxxxx
>
> By the way, the Boston tea-party was the work of a bunch of drunken
> mercenary thugs. The storming of the Bastille was a pathetic side-show. The
> interesting thing is how these tawdry little episodes were transformed into
> the stuff of epic. And why when me and the lads get up to a bit of michief,
> we're up before the beak in the morning.
>
The inquisition is a great example in this context. How do we distinguish
between the Spanish Inquisition, which we all pretty much agree was a bad
thing, from the similarly inquisitorial practices of Stalin and his
thought police, or Mao and his Red Guards? The obvious response is,
perhaps, "we don't distinguish them! They're the same thing!" And I agree
with that. But, you know, there was a time when some people *did* try to
distinguish them. Michael S. Roth, in his excellent study, _Knowing and
History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth-Century France_ discusses
Merleau-Ponty's _Humanism and Terror_ in this context. M-P argued that the
real choice was not between violence and nonviolence, but among the
diverse implications of historical action. Acts of violence had to be
situated in the logic of a situation and the historic totality to which
they pertain. History, M-P concluded, will give the final word as to the
legitimacy of a particular instance of violence. And when will history
give us this answer? When history ends. From this perspective, the Moscow
Purge Trials, situated as they were in the context of a totality that
included the Soviet Union's efforts to advance the cause of human
emancipation, could be justified. (See Roth, _Knowing and History_, pp.
49-51.)
Remember again the snippet from Doug Henning's comment of March 5: "Can
you have a standard for judging transgressions, in which case they become
revolutionary acts (to use an old, unfashionable political vocabulary), or
is it just the violation that's a thrill?"
M-P thought he had a standard; one which would allow him to distinguish
between the violence of the inquisition and the violence of the Moscow
Purge Trials; one that would allow him to distinguish between
revolutionary acts and mere thrill-seeking (and there's no doubt that
members of the inquisition proper and the Moscow version of it got a few
thrills out of what they were doing).
What I hope to convey is some of what I think is the logic and
justification behind the rejection of final and *a priori* normative
standards, and why I think Henning is mistaken when he says, in his March
6 post, that "people who claim to be free of humanist prejudices and
master narratives aren't."
--John S. Ransom
> -- [ From: Timothy Mason * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] --
>
> And what i am hearing in all this is the concerned murmur of the priest as
> he rattles his inquisitorial chains.
>
> Timothy Mason
> mason@xxxxxx
>
> By the way, the Boston tea-party was the work of a bunch of drunken
> mercenary thugs. The storming of the Bastille was a pathetic side-show. The
> interesting thing is how these tawdry little episodes were transformed into
> the stuff of epic. And why when me and the lads get up to a bit of michief,
> we're up before the beak in the morning.
>
The inquisition is a great example in this context. How do we distinguish
between the Spanish Inquisition, which we all pretty much agree was a bad
thing, from the similarly inquisitorial practices of Stalin and his
thought police, or Mao and his Red Guards? The obvious response is,
perhaps, "we don't distinguish them! They're the same thing!" And I agree
with that. But, you know, there was a time when some people *did* try to
distinguish them. Michael S. Roth, in his excellent study, _Knowing and
History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth-Century France_ discusses
Merleau-Ponty's _Humanism and Terror_ in this context. M-P argued that the
real choice was not between violence and nonviolence, but among the
diverse implications of historical action. Acts of violence had to be
situated in the logic of a situation and the historic totality to which
they pertain. History, M-P concluded, will give the final word as to the
legitimacy of a particular instance of violence. And when will history
give us this answer? When history ends. From this perspective, the Moscow
Purge Trials, situated as they were in the context of a totality that
included the Soviet Union's efforts to advance the cause of human
emancipation, could be justified. (See Roth, _Knowing and History_, pp.
49-51.)
Remember again the snippet from Doug Henning's comment of March 5: "Can
you have a standard for judging transgressions, in which case they become
revolutionary acts (to use an old, unfashionable political vocabulary), or
is it just the violation that's a thrill?"
M-P thought he had a standard; one which would allow him to distinguish
between the violence of the inquisition and the violence of the Moscow
Purge Trials; one that would allow him to distinguish between
revolutionary acts and mere thrill-seeking (and there's no doubt that
members of the inquisition proper and the Moscow version of it got a few
thrills out of what they were doing).
What I hope to convey is some of what I think is the logic and
justification behind the rejection of final and *a priori* normative
standards, and why I think Henning is mistaken when he says, in his March
6 post, that "people who claim to be free of humanist prejudices and
master narratives aren't."
--John S. Ransom