On Tue, 1 Apr 1997, John Ransom wrote:
>
> First he says that "chance is not simply the drawing of lots." Aristotle
> talks about extreme forms of democracy that fill offices by lot. This is
> the most radical kind of democracy because absolutely no consideration is
> given to the qualifications of the individual. Whoever is picked in the
> draw wins. (See _Politics_ Bk. 4 1294b15-1294b39.)
>
> If chance works purely by lottery, the individual is as passive as the
> citizen waiting to find out if his name is picked. There's nothing to be
> done. Foucault and Nietzsche want to keep the element of creativity and
> initiative in the mix. Thus, just as Machiavelli calls upon his prince to
> exercise "Virtu" in order to conqeur "Fortuna," so too F and N see us as
> attempting to master chance, or at least intervene in it, by employing our
> Will to Power.
>
> --John
>
>
>
To take it in a slightly different direction -- its not so much
a question of subjectivity mashalling the forces of the Will to Power in
order to master or even intervene in chance, in the sense that mastery
would be the ability to predict the content of an event, rather its a
question of
openning a space in which chance can intervene in us. Its something
along the lines of
Borges' Lottery in Babylon. At first the lottery proceeded along the
Aristotelean line described above, "...those who won received silver coins
without any other
test of luck." But these lotteries failed because they relied on chance in
only a single dimension, which isn't really chance at all since its more
probablistically concise than a game of craps. However, the Lottery in
Babylon was eventually formulated on a general theory of chance, "If the
lottery is an intensificaiton of chance, a periodical infusion of chaos
in the cosmos, would it not be right for chance to intervene in all
stages of the drawing and not in one alone? Is it not rediculous for
chance to dictate someone's death and have the circumstance of that death
-- secrecy, publicity, the fixed time of an hour or a century -- not
subject to chance?"
For the Babylonians then the mastery of chance is the double necessity in
which the infusion of chaos in the universe can be held in unity with the
propositions of purpose and will. Or, as Nietzsche would have it,
"...all is not purpose that is called purpose, and even less is all will
that is called will! And if you want to conclude from this: 'so there is
only one realm, that of chance accidents and stupidity?' - one will have
to add yes, perhaps there is only one realm, perhaps there exists neither
will nore purposes, and we have only imagined them. Those iron hands of
necessity which shake the dice-box of chance play there game for an
infinite length of time: so that there _have_ to bet hrows which exactly
resemble purposiveness and rationality of every degree."
Flannon