malgosia askanas wrote:
>The distinction I was trying to make was between actual lived relationships
>one has with people, and the construction of "moralities", "humanisms",
>and other such systems. It seems to me that the argument that without
>some kind of an articulated system of morality or a "humanism" we would kill
>each other uses the underlying model that such systems precede and
>constantly mediate the lived person-to-person relationships. Further, it
>seems to me that this model is one in which we are estranged from our own
>lived experience -- which we of course frequently are (perhaps this is the
>key to Foucault's claim that we have been transformed from being who work
>into beings who speak).
"Transformed from beings who work into beings who speak." Oh really? When
did this transformation happen? When the share of women in the paid labor
force nearly doubled, as it has over the last 40-50 years in the U.S.? When
the power of money over our innermost lives increased markedly over the
last 20-30?
And since when are person-to-person relationships prior to "articulated
systems of morality"? As infants we are plugged into a larger society
through our families, who inculate in most of us a socially derived moral
code from almost our first breath. I don't know about you, but that moral
code was hardly "estranged" from my lived experience; the nuns' tales of
the hellish torments reserved for sinners shaped my lived experience from
an early age.
Doug
>The distinction I was trying to make was between actual lived relationships
>one has with people, and the construction of "moralities", "humanisms",
>and other such systems. It seems to me that the argument that without
>some kind of an articulated system of morality or a "humanism" we would kill
>each other uses the underlying model that such systems precede and
>constantly mediate the lived person-to-person relationships. Further, it
>seems to me that this model is one in which we are estranged from our own
>lived experience -- which we of course frequently are (perhaps this is the
>key to Foucault's claim that we have been transformed from being who work
>into beings who speak).
"Transformed from beings who work into beings who speak." Oh really? When
did this transformation happen? When the share of women in the paid labor
force nearly doubled, as it has over the last 40-50 years in the U.S.? When
the power of money over our innermost lives increased markedly over the
last 20-30?
And since when are person-to-person relationships prior to "articulated
systems of morality"? As infants we are plugged into a larger society
through our families, who inculate in most of us a socially derived moral
code from almost our first breath. I don't know about you, but that moral
code was hardly "estranged" from my lived experience; the nuns' tales of
the hellish torments reserved for sinners shaped my lived experience from
an early age.
Doug