:: 6/21/2003 ::

gadamer

"Following Heidegger's lead, Gadamerian hermeneutics sought to reverse the terms of philosophical study. "Worldliness," which thinkers like Plato and Descartes denigrated as philosophical "dross," became absolutely central. Certainty, the traditional telos of philosophical inquiry, was devalued as a burdensome intellectual encumbrance. On this side of the Atlantic, his orientation has found champions among pragmatists and postmodernists such as Richard Rorty and Richard J. Bernstein who believe that his "anti-foundationalism," or rejection of atemporal claims to truth, makes him a kindred spirit.

Yet there seems to be something genuinely naive about postmodernist and pragmatist attempts to invoke Gadamer as an intellectual ally. Whereas postmodernists (if there are any remaining) like to think of themselves as leftists or progressives [?], there can be no doubting the conservative thrust of Gadamer's doctrines, predicated as they are on an unabashed reverence for tradition. Thus, at one point in his scholarly career, the young Heidegger protégé prided himself on the fact that he only read books that were at least two thousand years old.

[...]

In the 1920s and '30s, talk of the "crisis of historicism" was rife. After all, it may be methodologically useful to claim that human knowledge is temporally and historically bound, but it also seems to deprive us of a basis for orientation as ethical and political beings. During the 1920s, the lack of ethical grounding was a complaint commonly leveled against Heidegger's existentialism. He sought to remedy this deficiency through the concept of "decisiveness" or "resolve." According to this view, the specific content of one's life choices didn't matter so much; what was important was that one choose emphatically or decisively. But this approach didn't seem to make much of a difference, since the question of the content or direction of "resolve" remained unspecified. Heidegger's students regularly mocked him by claiming, "I am 'resolved,' but to what end I know not."

As a resolute traditionalist, Gadamer had few sympathies for Heideggerian "resolve." By the same token, it seems worthwhile to inquire whether his aversion to strong philosophical judgments was un-Socratic. On the one hand, Socrates incarnated a philosophical modesty with which Gadamer profoundly identified. In the Apology the Athenian claimed, with his trademark flair for irony, that he was the wisest of men because he possessed an acute awareness of his own ignorance: "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."

On the other hand, Socrates's employment of the dialectical method, the so-called elenchus, aimed at considerably more than negative knowledge. For this reason, it seems radically incompatible with Gadamer's ethical "conventionalism": the view that, instead of making waves, we should follow the rules and procedures of the existing social order. Socrates's entire being as a philosopher was directed against such an orientation.

In fact, the pitfalls of ethical conformism are the central theme of the early dialogues, which were, of course, written by Plato. In his typically provocative manner, Socrates would query his fellow Athenians about the nature of "virtue": courage, piety, justice, beauty, and so forth. Inevitably, the conventionalist orientation—i.e., the commonplaces of the Athenian "street"—fails insofar as it is insufficiently universal. Socrates's interlocutors offer partial definitions of these concepts (e.g., Laches's deficient definition of courage as "not running away in battle"), whereas Socrates is searching for ultimate truths: "beauty itself," "justice itself," "goodness itself." In this respect, Gadamer's veneration of tradition—as in the claim from Truth and Method that "understanding itself should be thought of not so much as an action of subjectivity, but as entering into the happening of tradition in which past and present are constantly mediated" (italics mine)—falls considerably short of the epistemological demands of Socratic wisdom.

[funny:]

To account for Gadamer's questionable acts of political accommodation, Grondin employs the hermeneutic approach: He tries to intuit himself into the frame of mind of those Germans who wholeheartedly supported the regime. In doing so, he repeatedly paints the Nazis as a perfectly reasonable and legitimate alternative: Germany had tried democracy, but it was a political experiment that failed miserably. Moreover, Hitler came to power in a quasi-legal manner and thus enjoyed an aura of legitimacy. In Germany's last free election, the Nazis were the biggest vote getters. In view of the draconian character of the Treaty of Versailles, many of Hitler's revanchiste geopolitical claims seemed perfectly justified to everyday Germans. Grondin makes Nazism out to be such an attractive political option that, in the end, one wonders why any reasonable German would have resisted its lures.

Ironically, though, what Grondin's "sympathetic" method demonstrates is the moral bankruptcy of the hermeneutic approach. To wit: If one "intuited oneself into the frame of mind" of Hitler's victims rather than his followers, one would, of course, arrive at a very different set of conclusions. Moreover, many of the claims Grondin makes on behalf of the Nazis' early successes are at best half truths. The Nazis were Germany's leading vote getter. But in the November 1932 elections they garnered a plurality of 33.1 percent, which meant that two-thirds of the German electorate rejected their program. The Versailles Treaty of 1919 may have been draconian. But to conclude that the Nazi dictatorship was the only politically available mechanism to redress its injustices is false and misleading. Here, too, the ethical indigence of the "conventionalist" approach, which Grondin takes over from Gadamer himself, stands fully exposed.

[aha!]

Thus, in 1933 Gadamer, along with other Marburg professors, signed a public declaration of allegiance to the National Socialist state. The avowal was translated into a variety of languages and circulated abroad. Its aim was to demonstrate emphatically in the court of international public opinion that the Nazi dictatorship had broad support among the German populace, especially among the ranks of the Bildungsbürgertum, or educated elite.

In 1934 Gadamer wrote a scholarly article justifying Plato's banishment of the poets in the Republic. Even the well-disposed Grondin finds Gadamer's views indefensible, acknowledging that they approximate the Nazis' "infamous campaign against 'degenerate art.'" In retrospect, the study may be read as an allegory of the Weimar Republic's rise and fall. Its none-too-subtle subtext is that excessive cultural freedom breeds anarchy.

[oh dear:]

Undoubtedly, Gadamer's greatest compromise with the Nazi regime concerns his lecture "Volk and History in Herder's Thought," presented on May 29, 1941, at the "German Institute" in occupied Paris. To appreciate the performative dimension of Gadamer's text, one must take into account that the various German Institutes were purely and simply vehicles of Nazi cultural hegemony. As such, there could be no illusions about their explicit political function: to convince wavering European elites of the legitimacy of a Nazi-dominated Europe and to convey the sense that Germany's military potency was backed by an immense cultural prowess. The Wehrmacht had done its job in the trenches. It was now time for German humanists to do their part in the battle for the hearts and minds of Europe's elites and opinion leaders.

The themes of Gadamer's lecture harmonized perfectly with the regime's ideological aims. Gadamer argued that Enlightenment rationalism had played itself out. The new era would be characterized by the ascendancy of the German Volk idea, the ideological lineage from Herder to Hitler, as it were. With Germany's blitzkrieg triumph of June 1940 (the date of the fall of France), the sun had set on Enlightenment universalism. It was now time for the reign of national particularisms, and, in this regard, Germany's claim to superiority seemed self-evident. The philosopher's job was to provide intellectual legitimation for the new geopolitical order.

[now back to exhibit a:]

Gadamer's other grounds for resistance pertained to a problematic German literary tradition whose sins were best represented by the circle surrounding the poet Stefan George. Since Gadamer came to know many Georgians in Marburg during the 1920s, it was a debility he presumably knew of firsthand. Under the influence of the Romantic cult of genius, George-Kreis members were prone to writing fawning and compendious hagiographies. The most notable examples were Friedrich Gundolf's biography of Goethe and the medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz's lionizing study of Frederick II. In retrospect these studies represent historical curiosities: They testify to excess and the risk of rapturous, "empathic" scholarship. The idea was to intuit one's way into the protagonist's psyche. The values of critical scholarship were explicitly scorned insofar as they risked undermining the intended apotheosis.

Not only did Grondin ignore Gadamer's warnings and admonitions. At virtually every turn, his efforts rival the hagiographic indulgences of the George cult practitioners. According to a well-known Nietzschean adage, "One repays a teacher poorly by remaining a disciple." Grondin would have done well to have heeded it.

gadamer's method of historical analysis invalidated by means of exposing smelly biography of its maker- great article. enjoy

:: phil 14:02 [link] ::

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Dr. Sex A human-sexuality expert creates controversy with a new book on gay men and transsexuals

Mr. Bailey lives in an apartment on the edge of Boys' Town, Chicago's historic gay district, and frequents gay bars on Halsted Street, both for research and for fun. "It is very interesting and vibrant and kind of wild," he says.

He recalls one time in 1995 when he took students to a gay bar called Vortex, where he was doing research. He was interested in drag queens, surmising that they were a link between gay men and transsexuals. "There was gay porn on video monitors, and here I was with these 21-year-old sorority girls," he recalls.

interesting case study re: political dimension of psychology

:: phil 13:41 [link] ::

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HA... a five minute rant

Post-modernism is so 1980´s, so "end of history". The truth is that we still live in a modernist world of might is right, colonialism and surging technological progress and struggle against nature. The biggest ugliest, strongest motherfucker in town is still the boss and no ammount of french intellectualism (nothing against it) will change things. Post-modernism is dead, or rather has disappeared as a brief illusion that we had entered a different age. It was a pleasant little idea that the world was somehow different now, in an impossibly difficult and impossible to define way. How clever ...

Nor is there a "general movement towards human emancipation", however, what there is or has been is a long slow process of re-definition of "emancipation" "freedom" "democracy" that is frighteningly Orwellian. Religion and Hollywood amongst other evils have created the myth of progress and development, words which the average human being cannot define, and which have become inexplicably linked to dollars, technology and modernity. The world still revolves around the same kind of Industrial capitalism, only on a larger global scale. The priveleged thinkers of the west think we have moved beyond because all the heavy industry has been exported to less regulated/poorer economies. Has the so called "post-modern era" changed or improved the "side effects" of modernism, the Aushwitzes, the eurocentrism, racism etc.? NO... it is New Modernism, the same as old modernism but with excellent public relations... post modernism is for bored academics, half the world doesn´t have running water or electricity.

:: Tony 14:03 [link] ::

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Until quite recently, there was a common belief that despite all the trials and tribulations suffered throughout the world, there was a general movement towards human emancipation. It was felt that society moved on. There were blips in this movement, it was not smooth: wars and famines, natural and man-made disasters took place but these were usually overcome and we all moved on.

However, in the late 1970s, a movement began amongst French intellectuals, that questioned this view of society as moving onwards and upwards, and that there was some unseen driving force within society. It rejected any notion that we were still within the modern era brought in by the Enlightenment, two hundred years ago. The modern world according to these new thinkers had clearly brought in the era of industrial capitalism and scientific thinking but it had also brought in the world of Aushwitz, of the possibility of nuclear war, the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, of neo-colonialism, Eurocentrism, racism and Third World hunger. If this was the legacy of modernism, it wasn’t very pleasant. Had the ideas of the Enlightenment brought us to this? If it had, they thought, to what extent had it been justified by grand theories of society? Wasn’t it more appropriate to see these theories as quite dangerous? They also felt that if modernism had brought in the type of society loosely described as modern industrial society then surely we had now gone beyond it? Had we not now entered a new age - the age of postmodernism?

the challenge

:: phil 16:55 [link] ::

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kommune: "austrian attempt"

"Der Umgangston war ideologisch und brutal. So hieß es abfällig im Wiener Dialekt: 'Geh, du bewußtlosa Trott'll. Du bleada Hund. Du bist ja total kaputt! So a größenwahnsinniger, aggressiver Typ, die weast es nie schaffen! Stell erst mal deinen 'infantilen Haß' dar! Wer bist du und wer bin I!" (...) Es entstanden mehrere Ableger der AA-Kommune z.B. in der Schweiz, Deutschland, Frankreich, Holland und Skandinavien: "Stolz wurde das 'Internationale Gemeinschaftseigentum' und die 'Internationale freie Sexualität' verkündet, die Gründung eines 'Internationalen AA-Konzerns' geplant. Der 'Siegeszug der AAO' begann". Und "der Tag bestand nur noch aus Arbeit, 'Therapie' und Erfüllung der Pflicht zur freien Sexualität. Langjährige Freundschaften und Beziehungen in den Kommunen wurden zentralistisch willkürlich getrennt, um den 'Beziehungssumpf und -schleim' in den Gruppen auszutrocknen. Die Ordnung innerhalb der Kommunen wurden durch hierarchische Durchnummerierung - vom Ersten bis zum Letzten - erzwungen". "Zweierbeziehung und Liebe waren streng verboten: Ehen reine Steuerersparnis-Gemeinschaften; Otto Mühl hatte diktatorische Vollmachten in jedem Bereich". "Warum blieben trotzdem so viele? Mühl wußte es: (...) 'Der Mensch ist ein Tier, und das erste, was er will, ist soziale Anerkennung. Lebensglück ergibt sich aus der Anerkennung im sozialen Kollektiv.'" (Schlothauer 1991, 32ff.).

1992 wurde Otto Mühl zu einer mehrjährigen Haftstrafe verurteilt, weil er angeblich Organisationsmitglieder, darunter auch Kinder und Jugendliche, sexuell mißbraucht habe. Die Kommune löste sich auf. Schlothauer schreibt verbittert hierzu: "Das Ende der Kommune, das Ende unserer Ideale, das notwendige Ende eines totalitären Systems".

Duhm- mitbegr. tamera, portugal

why are all these intentional communities so totally apolitical, and laden with post-modern spiritual clap-trap

Engagiert sich ab 1967 in der marxistischen Linken, wird einer der führenden Köpfe der Studentenbewegung, beteiligt sich an radikalen Aktionen, erhält Straferlaß durch die vom damaligen Bundespräsidenten Gustav Heinemann erlassene Amnestie für politische Straftäter. Er verbindet den Gedanken der politischen Revolution mit dem Gedanken der individuellen Befreiung und wird bekannt durch die Schriften "Revolution ohne Emanzipation ist Konterrevolution", das "Mannheimer Papier" und die Schrift "Jürgen Bartsch in uns". Nach der Veröffentlichung des Bestsellers "Angst im Kapitalismus" mehrere Professurangebote, die er ablehnt, weil er ein eigenes Projekt zur Friedensarbeit vorbereitet. Ab 1975 öffentliche Distanzierung vom linken Dogmatismus und Hinwendung zu einer gründlicheren menschlichen Alternative. Duhm: "Der antiimperialistische Kampf und der Versuch, darin neue Formen von Gemeinschaft und realem Sozialismus zu entwickeln, ist an menschlichen Konflikten gescheitert. Ohne den Aufbau einer tragfähigen menschlichen Basis erscheint mir die Fortsetzung der politischen Arbeit nicht mehr sinnvoll."

In der darauffolgenden Zeit Besuche bei vielen anderen Projekten, darunter auch beim "Friedrichshof" des österreichischen Aktionskünstlers Otto Mühl, von dem er sich 1979 wegen unauflöslicher konzeptioneller Gegensätze trennt. Nach diesen "Lehr- und Wanderjahren" Aufbau des Projekts "Bauhütte". Leitung eines dreijährigen sozialen Experiments mit 40 Teilnehmern im Schwarzwald. Das Thema des Experiments heißt "Gemeinschaftsgründung in unserer Zeit" und umfaßt alle Fragen nach Ursprung, Sinn und Ziel der menschlichen Existenz auf dem Planeten Erde. Es entstehen die Umrisse einer neuen Daseinsmöglichkeit mit den Konzepten der "freien Liebe", der "spirituellen Ökologie", der "Resonanztechnologie". Das Netzwerk "MEIGA" wird ins Leben gerufen mit dem Ziel, Friedensarbeit zu verbinden mit dem Aufbau neuer Lebensmodelle und Plätze zu schaffen, auf denen Menschen mit allen Mitgeschöpfen in einer gewaltfreien Struktur zusammenleben. Es kommt zu einer intensiven, bis heute anhaltenden Zusammenarbeit mit der Theologin Sabine Lichtenfels. Im Jahre 1985 erfindet eine Lokalzeitung ("Markgräfler Tagblatt") einen pornographischen Artikel über eine angebliche sexuelle Massenorgie der Bauhütte. Der Bericht wird ungeprüft von Zeitung zu Zeitung abgeschrieben und um phantasievolle Details erweitert. Er wird auch aufgegriffen von kirchlichen Stellen, die das Experiment "Bauhütte" als Sekte brandmarken ohne jemals vor Ort gewesen zu sein. Es beginnt eine nicht mehr zu stoppende öffentlichen Hetzkampagne wegen angeblicher Komplizenschaft mit Otto Mühl und anderen Geheimbünden, Dämonisierung als Sex-Guru und ähnliches, öffentliche Auftrittsverbote. Richtigstellungen werden ignoriert. Alle diese Vorgänge sind präzise dokumentiert in dem Buch "Sommercamp im Wilden Westen" von Birger Bumb und Beate Möller.

duhm heute:

Das holographische oder holistische Weltbild geht aus von der Einheit alles Seienden. Die Welt ist ein einheitliches Ganzes. Die Struktur des Ganzen, seine Information und Gesetzmäßigkeit, kehrt in allen seinen Teilen wieder und kann auch von allen seinen Teilen her beeinflußt werden. Dazu ein Zitat von George Leonard aus dem Buch "Der Pulsschlag des Universums":
"Da jedes Partikel des Universums ständig Wellenfelder produziert und jede organisierte Kombination von Partikeln auch ihr eigenes unverwechselbares Feld aussendet, ist die Zahl der sich schneidenden Wellen praktisch unendlich groß. Theoretisch könnte man an jedem Punkt des Universums eine Art von Superhologramm erstellen, welches Informationen über das ganze Universum von diesem Blickpunkt aus enthält."

:: phil 18:53 [link] ::

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Sigmund Freud und die von ihm begründete Psychoanalyse, die von Beginn an und über seinen Tod hinaus unangefochten von ihm allein dominiert wurde, waren von Anfang an strikt gegen die therapeutische "Zerstörung" des Über-Ichs, erst recht gegen die Prophylaxe seiner Entstehung. Sie fürchteten den Verlust der Kulturfähigkeit des Menschen, seine Vertierung. Freud hat, schon lange bevor er 1923 das Modell von Es, Ich und Über-Ich einführte, seinen Grundsatz fest etabliert: "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden !" - wobei, wie all seine Schriften zeigen, beim Ich die internalisierte Heteronomie, die Pseudo-Autonomie eines dirigierenden Über-Ichs mitgemeint ist. Von Anfang an vertrat Freud energisch das anthropologische Dogma, das er noch in seiner letzten Schrift, »Abriss der Psychoanalyse« (1938) bekräftigt: "Die Sehnsucht nach einem starken, ungehemmten Ich ist, ... wie uns die gegenwärtige Zeit lehrt [!!!], im tiefsten Sinn kulturfeindlich." (7. Kap.)

Freud hatte in dieser grundsätzlichsten theoretischen Frage der Psychoanalyse nur einen einzigen, entschiedenen Gegner: Wilhelm Reich. Wie er ihn unter stillschweigender Duldung oder Zustimmung (fast) aller Psychoanalytiker kaltstellen und auf Dauer zur Unperson der Psychoanalyse machen konnte, ist einer der instruktivsten Vorgänge zum Verständnis des Niedergangs der Aufklärung im 20. Jahrhundert.

"Unsere Taten richten sich nach Unseren Gedanken (Ideen, Vorstellungen, Glauben), wie in der Kindheit nach den Befehlen der Eltern." stirner, kampf gegen vernunft, s.3

Reich hat sich selbst nie als Anarchist bezeichnet. Er war der Meinung, dass die Anarchisten, gleich welcher Richtung, die ungeheure Problematik der Freiheitsunfähigkeit der gegenwärtigen Menschen stark unterschätzten bzw. ignorierten: "Sie vernachlässigen die hilflose, führungsbedürftige, ja oft autoritätssüchtige Struktur der Masse. Sie sehen nur deren Freiheitssehnsucht; doch diese Sehnsucht darf mit der Fähigkeit, frei zu sein ... nicht verwechselt werden." (zit. n. Laska, S.71f) Schliesslich hat Reich alle politischen Aktivisten (nicht speziell die Anarchisten), die mit der Parole der Freiheit operierten, verächtlich "Freiheitskrämer" genannt, Leute, die um eines zweifelhaften Profits willen etwas anpreisen, von dem sie selbst nicht wirklich wissen, was es ist.

mehr

"Das Wesen der mutterrechtlichen Institution besteht darin, dass die materielle Vorsorge für die Mutterschaftsmöglichkeit der Frau von allen Männern der Gesellschaftsgruppe - hier also des ganzen Stammes - gewährleistet wird. ... Die Mythologie aller Völker bewahrt die Erinnerung an den prähistorischen Zustand des freien Mutterrechts in der Idee von einem gerechten goldenen Zeitalter und Paradies der Urzeit, und dass die Hoffnung auf eine bessere Menschheitszukunft auf eine Wiederkehr des freien Mutterrechts gerichtet sein muss, wird nach den Arbeiten Caspar Schmidts [Stirner!] wohl nicht mehr lange zweifelhaft sein."

(Otto Gross, 1914)

:: phil 20:55 [link] ::

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