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Levinas and Hitlerism

How is universality compatible with racism? The answer-to be found in the logic of what first inspires racism involves a basic modification of the very idea of universality. Universality must give way to the idea of expansion, for the expansion of a force presents a structure that is completely different from the propagation of an idea. The idea propagated detaches itself essentially from its point of departure. In spite of the unique accent communicated to it by its creator, it becomes a common heritage. It is fundamentally anonymous. The person who accepts it becomes its master, as does the person who proposes it. The propagation of an idea thus creates a community of “masters”; it is a process of equalization. To convert or persuade is to create peers. The universality of an order in Western society always reflects this universality of truth. But force is characterized by another type of propagation. The person who exerts force does not abandon it. Force does not disappear among those who submit to it. It is attached to the personality or society exerting it, enlarging that person or society while subordinating the rest. Here the universal order is not established as a consequence of ideological expansion; it is that very expansion that constitutes the unity of a world of masters and slaves. Nietzsche’s will to power, which modern Germany is rediscovering and glorifying, is not only a new ideal; it is an ideal that simultaneously brings with it its own form of universalization: war and conquest. But here we return to well-known truths. We have tried to link them to a fundamental principle. Perhaps we have succeeded in showing that racism is not just opposed to such and such a particular point in Christian and liberal culture. It is not a particular dogma concerning democracy, parliamentary government, dictatorial regime, or religious politics that is in question. It is the very humanity of man.1 Emmanuel Levinas

As a victim of fascism and concentration camp survivor, Levinas well understood the outcome of power and racism. In the quote above Levinas sketches out what he believed to be a critical ground of racism not in the horrific acts of racism but in the seemingly banal appeal of what he terms the “idealist liberalism” in historical Christianity. Levinas thinks that in Christianity we have a liberation of spirit, an unprecedented act of freedom in the idea. Prior to this denouement where freedom begins, the human spirit was chained to the powerlessness of the body and the brutality of the natural world. Levinas writes,

It makes it impossible to apply the categories of the physical world to the spirituality of reason, and so locates the ultimate foundation of the spirit outside the brutal world and the implacable history of concrete existence. It replaces the blind world of common sense with the world rebuilt by idealist philosophy, one that is steeped in reason and subject to reason. In place of liberation through grace there is autonomy, but the Judeo-Christian leitmotif of freedom pervades this autonomy.

The temptation the liberation of the soul from the body brings is expanse. Expanse is the exercise of power. Force is the ontic effect of power. Power does not diminish in its use; it intensifies itself in the manifestation of force. I might add, the freedom and universalization of the idea perhaps indulges the natural narcissism of human being. As the old motif goes ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’. The spiritual liberation of spirit sets the conditions for infinite expansion of the ego. From this authentic epoch of being, a new man draws its first breath, the modern master and the slave emerge. The master expresses the ideal world of the soul. The slave remains bound by the shackles of the natural world, the abomination of abominations. In the clear light of reason an unbridled exercise of egoistic freedom announces itself, free, liberated, unchained from every constraint, natural and ethical determinations. In this moment, Hitlerism blinks and gazes long into an abyss and the abyss gazes back.2

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1 Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism

Author(s): Emmanuel Levinas and Seán Hand

Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 62-71

Published by: The University of Chicago Press

 

2 I would like to thank Robert Bernasconi for an inspiring lecture last night at the University of Colorado in Denver and the occasion for my discovery of this text of Levinas.

Avenues Into Philosophy

Listening to some academic philosophers discuss the question, “Why philosophy?”, I hear a kind of implicit response to a question not posed. Namely, “How can philosophy apply to the ‘real’ world?” where ‘real’ here means vocation. For undergraduate students taking a philosophy class, I can certainly see the relevance of posing and answer to this question. However, this kind of positioning of the question of philosophy can also be a bit of a subterfuge which leads away from the real questions and relevance of philosophy. To make a living teaching philosophy puts some constraints on a professional philosopher which cannot or perhaps should not be avoided. However, perhaps the unbridled truth is that philosophy does not have a very solid connection to the demands of practicality and capitalism. This in itself could lead one to begin to question capitalism or at least to clarify to oneself why one would think of capitalism as a kind of arbiter of the good. In any case, in this paper I simply want to lay out some of the basic pathways into philosophy.

Whether we like it or not or admit it or not, we all make synthetic judgments. In other words, we have some sort of unitary idea of how things came about and how they work. Let’s start our journey with two basic beginnings. We have unity and change. In the extreme would could have change which spawns off incessant differences. We would have forms or appearances without necessarily any intrinsic connection. It would be like a stream of consciousness. We would have apparitions appearing and disappearing without ever having a sense of a beginning or end or even a unifying idea of ‘objects’. This would be pure sensations. On the other hand, we could start with unities, wholes, objects, God, gods, laws of nature or physics and from this, necessarily, the notion of origins, beginnings (the Big Bang) which make the notions of unity possible. However, if everything starts as unities we may have problems explaining changes which appear to be totally detached from their unities. For example, if we start with the ideal triangle where the sum of its internal angles will always equal 180 degrees we may have a hard time with the observed fact that no existing triangle has ever had the sum of its internal angles equal 180 degrees. In the ‘real’ world (which is itself another unity) there is always some error which keeps the perfect form forever away. Socrates might call the ‘real’ world triangles shadows or apparitions. Since both unity and change pose solutions and contradictions let’s explore a new avenue: the synthesis of the two.

For the sake of this paper let’s say one possibility for synthesis is what I will call the ‘bag of tools’ approach. In this approach ourselves, the universe, existence is the culmination of a collection of tools we have acquired. This is not so unlike the condition where eventually 100 monkeys, given enough time, could build the Empire State building. Somewhat like Nietzsche’s metaphysics of eternal recurrence of the same, if time is infinite and matter is finite eventually any and every possibility will happen again and again. Since one of those already determined, limited and bounded (in advance) possibilities is 100 monkeys building the Empire State building eventually the building will appear. Notice that now we are facing two more avenues: randomness or causation. Nietzsche’s solution evokes the random. There is no apparent casual connection to effects only happenstance given unlimited time and limited space. Of course, modern physics tells us that both time and space is created by the expansion of the universe so unlimited time may be problematic. Also, limited mass may be intuitively correct as ‘what must be’ but this is not a positive proof only a stand-in for the lack of a positive proof. This we can call a negative proof. If there are infinite universes as some have postulated in recent physics, then at the least we have an alternative ‘negative’ explanation which has no positive proof as of yet.

Evolution embodies the notion that we have over time acquired a ‘bag of tools’ which has culminated in language, history (the knowledge of), science and even a more ‘primitive’ beginning in religion. The ‘bag of tools’ approach is the proverbial “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps” intuition. This approach depends on certain sets of given conditions necessitating or causing determinate outcomes. Of course, the problem with this is the old ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma. In order to support this theory we have to keep substantiating our ‘given conditions’ so the effects we want to explain will ‘naturally’ follow. This means that this way of thinking depends on origin and beginning. However, if we follow the path of evolution back to single cells, bacteria, molecules, atoms and all the way to the Big Bang we have a problem. It seems as if our reliance on the beginning has come to an end. This presents a dilemma: our strategy of beginnings has collapsed in on itself. We are left reeling with only a negative proof that there must be a beginning before the Big Bang.

Now, we have come full circle to the other approach than the ‘bag of tools’ approach. This approach is the ‘God’ approach. By ‘God’ here we include gods, mysticism, faith. This approach does not require a ‘proof’ negative or positive, only a belief. God cannot be subject to ‘proof’ or the laws of physics since God created those things. Note that we have already made a critical distinction: things and non-things. This will be useful latter. For the ‘God’ approach we cannot explicitly rely on knowledge since ‘God’ also created knowledge. Knowledge cannot lead us to God but ‘revelation’ can. Revelation is a form of knowledge which cannot be falsified. It cannot be falsified because it begins in faith. The downside of faith is dogma. The problem with dogma is a vice. In modern terms we call this vice narcissism. In older times it was known as the sin of pride. The person of faith will always have to straddle the precipice of faith and dogma. Proof was the apparent solution to this dilemma. However, the history of science is no stranger to dogma and faith. The claim of the validity of science over ‘god’ is that science can be falsifiable whereas ‘God’ can never be false in any sense for the believer. In religion false gods are always measured by the true ‘God’ whatever form that takes on.

The incestuous relationship of knowledge and language to ‘God’ or science has always presented a conundrum to philosophers. Aristotle thought of this dilemma in terms of forms and being. The essence of form is change. Form has appearance. Appearance is mutable. All appearances in the ‘real’ world change over time. Yet, we have a notion of stuff being the same over time in some sense. Time as an intuition, not a relative idea, does not change. So, even in the midst of changing forms we have a phenomenon which apparently does not change and even seems to validate sameness: time. Well, that intuition is not exactly true since Einstein. Now we know, counter to intuition, that time can change. However, as Heidegger points out this intuition of time as linear and always the same is actually abstract. This notion is really a historical development.

Earlier civilizations thought of time as more like a quality than a quantity. The early Greeks had the word kairos and chronos. The Greeks observed that what Heidegger termed ‘lived time’ had a stretch. When one is feeling joyful or elated time feels like it moves quickly. When one is bored or having anxiety one feels that time is dragging on. There is also sacred time. For the ancients sacred time had a feel of vastness, later thought as ‘eternal’. Kairos, for the Greeks, was the supreme time, the fullness of time, the moment of all moments. Chronos was a sequence of ‘now’ moments. It is what we intuit as time contemporaneously and project it as never ending or infinite. Heidegger thought this notion of time as vulgar time. So, if our modern intuition of time is actually abstract, not in line with relativity, and not like we actually experience time we need to ask ourselves a couple questions: 1) How is it that intuition can be ‘fooled’ by history? – 2) What is it about us than can make ‘abstract’ time into what we think as ‘real’ time?

If intuition can be fooled, can revelation also be fooled? We are at the least left with an insecurity about the very nature of knowledge itself. If knowledge is subject to mutability it cannot be thought as ‘true’ at least in an absolute sense. Knowledge is always provisional. It is circumstantial. It has the real possibility of being false. If knowledge can be false what is the difference between knowledge and the chirping of a bird? This is the beginning of skepticism and existential doubt. We are thrown back upon our assumption of ‘truth’. How does this insecurity of knowledge effect our intuition of unity, of sameness, of God, of our founded-ness in the world? Are we reductively and merely products of change, of history? Are we accidental? How does this affect our sense of meaning? Does meaning have to be eternal to be true? As we live phenomenally, do we have a real or true sense of unity, of sameness. Surely we are not just a stream of consciousness in the way most of us experience ourselves. If we were simply to stand back and observe this sense of unity in ourselves we could be informed by at the least its appearance. Existence as we know it, as it can only be known with the word ‘existence’ does imply some sense of immutability. At minimum, it implies a relative differentiation between change and sameness. This was the problem Aristotle, in particular, was consumed with.

In the tradition of Aristotle, Heidegger also raised anew the question of Being in his monumental work “Being and Time”. All of us assume we know what being means but upon closer inspection this intuition appears to be one of the most empty of all meaning. We act as if it were absolutely ‘real’ and ‘true’ but try to sit down and write out what you think it is. Inevitably, most folks will just end up with a circular argument, “it is true just because it is (true)”. This is called a tautology. The root of tautology is Identity. Identity must always be ‘true’ because it can only ever only restate itself. The interpretive circle called the hermeneutical circle can only always and ever reaffirm itself like faith. However, in phenomenology our method is always to step back and ask what does this affinity in us show us about ourselves? Well, certainly it shows that we are historical in our being-ness. It also shows us that we cannot not think of ‘true’ or ‘real’ because for one, pragmatically we must act as if there is ‘real’ or ‘true’ to be in the world. The ‘true’ and ‘real’ seems to dog us like a shadow. In spite of this we seem to have a kind of poverty about absolute knowledge (unless of course you are a Hegelian). So now we have a lived, phenomenal sense of the ‘real’ or ‘true’ and we also (as is the case for the notion of being) have a kind of emptiness about what the heck it is. We must act as if it is true (pun?) in the face of our own fragility and mortality.

This then is how philosophy begins…

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Republicans are calling out the Clintons for not disclosing all the donors to their charity foundation. Let’s see, what party to this accusation has put all the resources and money into making it easy for political donors to not disclose their identity? What party bought and won the Citizen’s United Decision?1 If there is quid pro quo in the Clinton’s case, a vigilantes group shouting hang-um high and tying to reap the political benefits of gossip is not the way to settle it. We have ample law enforcement groups in the Federal Government to discover and prosecute any violation of law. Of course, if you conveniently have been conditioned to hate or distrust the Federal Government then you probably have also decided another source is more reliable and trustworthy like Fox News for instance. Certainly there must be more checks and balances in Rupert Murdoch’s organizations than anything the framers of our Constitution could have set up. After all Rupert set up the largest collection of gossip media on the planet so he must know something about facts right?

I really do believe the Republican’s dominate rhetorical strategy is to publicly disavow the Darwinian, survival of the fittest,2 ‘free’ market strategies they employ and shift any righteous indignation from the less survivable types towards any ideologies which threaten the conqueror’s dominance. They actually blame the advocates of these ‘dangerous ideologies’ for the very activities they employ covertly and overtly much more effectively and with much greater impact. So, for example, Hillary Clinton is accused of taking money for a charity organization where she receives none of the proceeds for some alleged quid pro quo bribe. She did not benefit from these contributions directly but other, less fortunate folks benefited from them. Allegations of indirect financial benefit have no basis in fact but convenient election year politics by a factually challenged author.3 All the while, the political party which consistently aligns themselves with big business has effectively changed laws which benefit their benefactors.

One such effort the Republicans got through in the Clinton administration deregulated the financial market. From the Clinton years through the Bush years, the sub-prime loans these derivatives where partially based on went from millions of dollars to multiples of billions of dollars. The Bush administration continually resisted efforts to reign in sub-prime lending by gutting regulatory oversight.4 This directly resulted in the collapse of these ‘free range’ financial derivatives effecting the entire planet during the Great Recession. The failures of mortgages alone in the U.S. could have never had this large of an impact on the world economy without the multiplier effect of the deregulated derivatives. Yet, the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation blamed sub-prime loans in the U.S. not financial deregulation even though the bi-partisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission found financial deregulation to be a major factor in the collapse.5

In addition, Republican intelligentsia know if they can convince the slaves they are free they can suppress rebellion and trouble makers. They cater to the aspirational desires of the less fortunate with an illusion of financial success and freedom all the while enacting laws and protections which make it harder for the less fortunate to realize their dreams and easier for the most fortunate to protect and increase their gains. It will be interesting to see how long this charade can go on before it begins to wear thin and it dawns on folks that perhaps the ‘free’ market is more like Santa Clause than reality. One thing we can certainly ascertain that Marx seemed to have missed completely is that people appear to be much more disposed towards aspirational, wish-fulfillment6 than necessity.7 To die without hope is worse than to die without food. It is too bad that this dismal bi-polar choice is also a produced illusion as the tools of a market economy and democracy and fairness do not have to be essentially at odds.

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1 Formalism: When a Lie Becomes Truth (really)

2 Free Market Either/Or Government?

3 The Washington Post, Rachel Maddow explores ‘Clinton Cash’ book’s connection to New York Times, Washington Post

4 The Credit Crisis: The Bush Administration’s Record of Denial and Regulatory Neglect

5 Latest Observations on the Housing and Economic Crisis

6 Aspirational, wish-fulfillment is not rooted in the material conditions of human labor and overcoming alienation. It has no practical basis in need but in wish, phantasma. In this sense, fantasy becomes the nexus of wish and fulfillment. It is rooted in the concrete production of abstract possibility for the implicit purpose of perpetual illusion, the mirage of utopia. In this case, Sisyphus did not roll the huge boulder up the steep hill for punishment but for reward which can never quite be realized. The machinery of this production is built on the ever deferred pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Immediate need is marginalized for the promise of unbridled success. This notion makes Marxist alienation into fulfillment. In effect, it reverses the dialectic of materialism into a totalizing dialect of spiritualism. It diminishes the negative effects of alienation into non-existence, unconscious sublimation which favors the ‘truth’ of the desire for completion over the concrete struggle for existence. The collective and constant reaffirmation of fantastic aspirations replace the Marxist dialectic of aspiration and alienation. Perhaps, this could be thought in terms of Marx’s critique of Hegelian Idealism but with the ‘higher order’ production of non-falsifiable and totalizing ideals and desires for capital utopia replacing the Hegelian Idea (Begriff) and inverting the Marxist analysis of alienation into a collective virtue.

“True heteronomy begins when obedience ceases to be obedient consciousness and becomes an inclination. The supreme violence is in that supreme gentleness. To have a servile soul is to be incapable of being jarred, incapable of being ordered. The love for the master fills the soul to such an extent that the soul no longer takes its distances. Fear fills the soul to such an extent that one no longer sees it, but sees from its perspective.”
Levinas, E. (2012-12-06). Collected Philosophical Papers (Phaenomenologica) (Kindle Locations 1066-1069). Springer Netherlands. Kindle Edition.

7 What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

“Personhood” Amendment in Colorado

If you oppose the latest attempt by a radical minority in Colorado to continually usurp the will of the voters, please send your elected representative an email and let them know. You can use any or all of the letter I wrote to my state representative and senator below…

 

I am writing to ask that you oppose Senate Bill 15-268, A BILL FOR AN ACT CONCERNING OFFENSES AGAINST AN UNBORN CHILD. This bill is a yet another blatant attempt by the anti-abortion folks to force their dogma into government policy. The bill contains the following description:

THE TERM “PERSON” INCLUDES AN UNBORN CHILD AT EVERY STAGE OF GESTATION FROM CONCEPTION UNTIL LIVE BIRTH.

This bill and others like it should be struck down by good legislative stewardship for the following reasons:

The voters in Colorado have voted against these “personhood” bills for some time. This is the will of the people.

During weeks 1 and 2 of gestation a woman “is not yet pregnant”. Also, week 5 is when the heart and brain begin to develop in a fetus. The science tells us that certainly without a brain we cannot call the fetus human or a person. See Fetal Development

The Supreme Court has continually reaffirmed that a fetus is not a person if it cannot survive outside the womb. Any law which goes against the solid, historical jurisprudent precedence will ultimately cost the Coloradan taxpayer needlessly for legal expenses.

Any aggravated assault of a pregnant woman already caries criminal penalties which include life in prison. This law is not necessary and a blatant attempt to erode the will of the people.

Since the beginning of the gallop pole in 1975, only 20% of our citizens believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and 80% believe that abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances even though some of the latter folks call themselves “pro-life”. See Gallop Pole

I believe all these facts indicate that responsible, legislative representation should resist any and all attempts of a radical minority to legislate what is ultimately their religious beliefs.

Best Regards,

Breaking News From Fox News

Hillary Clinton’s charity foundation took money from bad guys to help children. The bad guys could have spent the money on bad deeds so it was wrong that Hillary took that money to help kids. Also, her foundation took money from foreign countries that discriminate against women to fund programs that reduce discrimination against women. “That is just wrong” a Fox News spokesman told us.

Additionally, Fox News reports that while Hillary may ‘say’ she is for the lower 90% and against the upper 10% of income earners she is really part of the upper 10% herself so “how in the world could she ever understand the plight of the lower 90% as Fox News, the Republican Party and the upper 10% which makes up the most of the financial support of the Republican Party do”?

Fox News also reports that the total mess the Democrats have made of foreign policy and the economy is not how the former President left it when he left the office. It was the leadership of the former President that let the world know the United States is in charge as Afghanistan and Iraq proved. Also, the top 10% actually made more income during the Great Recession that was started during the Bush administration and the trickle down jobs started by the job creators simply made the current President look good but was really a direct result of successful wall street, free market, policies advocated by the Republican Party. They also went on to say that on their watch they proved that they would go up against corporations to big to fail as Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns discovered before they were bailed out. It just so happened that the former President’s policies to help poor folks get houses bankrupted the world with wacky financial tools that the Republicans pushed through Congress in financial deregulation during the Clinton years.

An unofficial spokesman for Fox News who did not want to be disclosed told us that thanks to the Citizens United Decision of the Supreme Court, wealthy Republicans have secretly converged to finance the campaigns of all the Republican Candidates to make the public think all the conservative voices are being heeded by the Republican Party but their plan is to strategically pull the funding so their candidate of choice, as yet undisclosed, can sail through their primary process and win in the general election with more moderate claims and high indebtedness to their benefactors.

Note: In the interest of fair and accurate reporting all the news above was really fabricated by a commy, liberal unless you think it actually made Republicans look good in which case it was totally true.

An Interlude to Anaximander

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Philosophy Series Contents (to be updated with each new installment)

Philosophy Series 1 – Prelude to the Philosophy Series

Philosophy Series 2 – Introduction

Philosophy Series 3 – Appendix A, Part 1

Philosophy Series 4 – The Pre-Socratics – Hesiod

Philosophy Series 5 – A Detour of Time

Philosophy Series 6 – The Origin

Philosophy Series 7 – Eros

Philosophy Series 8 – Thales

Philosophy Series 9 – An Interlude to Anaximander

Philosophy Series 10 – On the Way to Anaximander: Language and Proximity

Philosophy Series 11 – Aristotle and Modernity: The Eternal and Science

Philosophy Series 12 – Levinas and the Problem of Metaphysics

Philosophy Series 13 – On Origin

Philosophy Series 14 – George Orwell and Emmanuel Levinas Introspective: Socialism and the Other

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An Interlude to Anaximander

Someone must have already stated this elsewhere so for lack of citation let me reiterate, there are many academics but few scholars. Scholars attain a breadth of mastery that few academics ever realize. Analogously, most folks are philosophers in one way or another but few find concrete paths from philosophy to existentia, actual existence. This why philosophers in modernity from existentialists to post-existentialism has focused philosophy on the concrete fact of death. Of course, death, itself, also holds the possibility for abstraction. This is why Heidegger, for example, is swift to frame death in terms of “my death”. Death is not just an end but in non-negotiable ways “my end”. When limit is thought in terms of ‘mineness’, something passionate and irreplaceable comes to the fore. Religions are also able to harness this ‘something’ in concrete displays of passion and ‘faith’. For Kierkegaard, faith is the absolute passion of existence. While academic philosophers, spurred on by the quest for recognition and therefore, economic reward, are goaded by the continuing requirement for sustenance, they are also pricked by the constraints of their specific traditions. Their freedom must end in the horizon of other’s genius. Thus, the academic is born. However, existence persists and places on each the necessity of an existential answer. However, this ‘answer’ takes form, as religion, science, morality or polis/political, denial, it must be responded to, existence therefore evokes. Evocation has long fascinated the phantasma of human imagination as magic, sorcery, desire, wish-fulfillment and even love.

In undertaking this philosophy series, I am continually facing the prospects of pure academia or existentialism. For me, philosophy dies in pure academia. Philosophy finds value and virtue in its fundamental evocation. Whenever philosophy becomes instantiated in ‘isness’ or perhaps as Levinas might sway us to, il ya, it can become obsession or insomniac. It loses a certain kind of weightiness, a certain kind of necessary ‘evocativeness’ is deferred. In the loss of limit, the bounds of ‘mineness’ can be displaced, and thus, the possibility for radical alterity. The ‘end’, this peras, was also noted by Anaximander and many before including Hesiod. Peras, simply translated as end or limit is only the beginning of its etymological intonations. The early Greeks as many archaic traditions recognized change, transition, mutation of form. The Ionians were fascinated with the notion that transitions were not magical apparitions, popping in and out of existence but had some substratum, some basis of mutability. Science and religion have been intrigued ever since. Anaximander, perceptively enough also echoing other archaic traditions thought of these limitations as intensified by re-occurrence of some sense of the same, the dissolution and reemergence of like forms. Iteration, when amplified infinitely by a notion of the same, persistence and unity through time, becomes a-peras (apeiron), the negation of limitation. It becomes intense, imposing, non-negotiable…existential as my being-towards-an-end which cannot grab hold of what this means. This inability to be able is cast without limit, without understanding in the midst of understanding. This type of overflowing itself could be thought as a beckoning of exteriority. This intensity thought in Greek terms is kairos. Kairos as the beckoning moment of answer, necessitates and requires, completion, finality, condensation, movement and action. As such, it is qualitative. It overflows itself as qualitative. In this moment, existence is borne and born.

The urgency and necessity of this evocation did not escape the keen observations of the Greeks. Nor has it yet escaped the gaze of science’s Orphic vision. Necessity is certainly embodied in biological evolution. Survival, as utmost, is dependent on successful adaptations. Could it be that habit as specific to an individual organism, the repetition of successfully completed iterations where ‘success’ is thought in terms of survival, of tarrying to the next iteration, can find some genetic bridge over successive generations of ritualistic practice into what we think as ‘instinct’. Can ‘instinct’ be ingested into DNA? Just as Nobel Prize winner Barbara Mcclintock found the cellular reflection of environment into itself as equally primordial to the cells’ internal structure, could it be that ‘adaptation’ is the innate struggle (polemus) of the internal and the external to come to stasis, to a temporal completion of ‘moment’ when neither impose its form on the other but mutually respond and co-habitat with the other. In genetic encoding then this moment becomes ‘physical’, ‘biological’ and ‘chemical’. It also becomes ‘physics’ as atomic or better sub-atomic.

In modern physics we have the notions of isolated, closed and open systems. Isolated systems can neither pass energy or matter. Closed systems can pass energy but not matter. Closed systems in classic mechanics would be considered an isolated system in thermodynamics. Isolated systems do not exist in actuality. Open systems can pass both energy and matter. In isolated physical systems we say that momentum is conserved. In an isolated system we can account for change, transition, mutation and thus energy is conserved. However, in an open systems we have a loss of accountability we call entropy that shows itself as error. The isolated system is thought yet again as the Hegelian dialectic of internal and external, the particular and the universal. The isolated system demonstrates a kind of respite, a cessation of strife, of the temporal tearing, incessant bubbling of sub-atomic particles, a transformation (aufhebung), where, what Hesiod termed, a ‘yawning gap’, chaos, subsides and the moment of archy, of origin, of birth, opens up genesis, genetics, genet’. This moment is a kind of equilateral-ism, congruency, a pause thought as stasis. Aristotle’s discussions of actuality (actualitas Latin, energeia Greek) or work as what persists and potential (potentia Latin, dunamis Greek) or possibility as what could be, find their stasis in motion or kinetic (kinesis) as the actuality of potentiality, as the persistence of possibility. Temporality and motion, known in Classic Greece, is conserved and preserved by persisting through time by limitation, by form. A temporal wholeness or completion as ousia, being, is evoked from apeiron, perhaps Hesiod’s ‘before the gods’ of chaos. Of necessity, this temporal pause to the incessant change of form, is first made possible by a terminus, a telos, a limit or boundary. The existential weight of evocation, the ‘must’ of action, cannot be ignored or denied without only re-affirming it. Any turning away is yet again a turning towards as the existential moment of existence must obey a call from without as a singularity, as a persisting form cast upon the void, the yawning gap.

The isolated system in physics is always a kind of existence creating moment. It is imposed by boundary and limit, arrangement and designation. However, closed systems, as the perfect triangle, are idealizations. Any isolated system in reality leak and absorb information in the larger context of an open system. Isolated systems in the real world are intrinsically and essentially effected by externality, they have entropy. Information cannot be completely recovered in an isolated system. Information must be truncated in the idealization of an isolated system. The loss is irretrievable in an isolated system context. Typically, the universe is thought in the motif of a closed system. A closed system universe could interact with other energies, perhaps from bubbling multi-verses or multi-dimensional factors but not with any ability to transfer mass. This then gives rise to a metaphysical question, is the notion of the absolute open, closed or isolated? Or, could it be that, the notion of the absolute is an iteration, a singularity, a tautology of a primordial limit in an isolated system context? Some might say this question, devoid of existential import, may as well ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

In modern physics, a singularity such as the infamous ‘black hole’ is a margin from the isolated system con-text. It is a parenthesis, a deferment until logos, understanding, can finally recover its enigma. Is information conserved or lost in a black hole? Has physics reached an absolute limit in a black hole? The black hole is a unity. It is not a solely a swarming buzz of sub-atomic particles popping in and out of existence. It is not a formless chaos. It is in stasis, driven by necessity to be, and yet it’s being is an absolute limit in a multitude of ways…more importantly, to understanding, the very possibility of understanding. Physics has in recent times brought to the fore more and more staggering limitations of itself with the ‘God Particle’, super-symmetry, multi-verses, higher order dimensions, dark matter and dark energy and brought with these, reflective questions of knowledge itself. Not that there is an alternative to knowledge but it has brought to the fore the necessity of knowledge and at the same time it’s absolute limit. Absolute limitation in physics mathematically become singularities. Singularities are nonsensical, Alice in Wonderland. While ‘bad science’ is thought to end in a proliferation of singularities, they cannot be ignored as they pose fundamental questions which defy ‘reality’, the light of, even the possibility of, knowledge and as such convey an unsettling existential angst.

Mass and energy are inextricably linked just as Aristotle’s thinking of actuality and potentiality are linked. Now with the proof of the Higgs Boson we have a particle ‘field’ whose origin appears in the first moments of the Big Bang which determines and necessitates mass. It transforms massless energy to relative degrees of stickiness, of clumping, of resistance, weightiness; mass. This boson imposes an ir-refusable limit to matter. Thus, the name ‘God Particle’.

The point of this divergence into modern phusis is to show that the import of ‘my death’ never achieves an ‘outside’. It can only converge in upon itself into a singularity. It cannot retain information without irretrievable loss. Even more so, we see this phenomena everywhere we look in phusis. This is the setting in essence of ancient Greek inquiry. The Greeks did not have the apathy of centuries of abstractions into being. They felt the import originally with other archaic cultures and the interruption of the raw gap, the chaos, not yet historically named but recognized in imposing enigma. They understood the transformations of forms as mutations of hot and cold, damp and dry, atom and void. They thought with resoluteness and determination the absolute connotations of limitation, of death, of knowledge. These differences could not easily rest in stasis as being and nothingness, self and other, as pure, self-determining Idea. These differences brought them to the abyss that looks back into our souls, beyond Dread to a gap, an otherness not captured by thought but intensified as the moment of dissolution and birth, of limit in which even light cannot penetrate or escape.1

Philosophy Series 10 – On the Way to Anaximander: Language and Proximity

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1 The next installment in this series will probably take some more time for research and thought as the topic of Anaximander brings with it enormous scholarly attention and far reaching possibilities for departure. There may be more preliminary discussions before I really start with the textual, philological and canonical discussion.

The Big Picture: Facts Concerning History, Politics and the Economy

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The historical data below shows important U.S. political and economic factors from 1917 to 2014. The charts were made in an Excel 2007 spreadsheet. The spreadsheet with the data tables and charts can be downloaded here. For each chart, the charts shows the Republican and Democratic makeup of the U.S. Congress, the Republican or Democratic President and the following data:

Chart 1

Bottom 90% annual income share in percentage of total income including capital gains1

Top 1% annual income share in percentage of total income including capital gains 2

Top 5% annual income share in percentage of total income including capital gains 3

Top 10% annual income share in percentage of total income including capital gains 4

Chart 2

Annual Gross Domestic Income (GDI) per capita5

Bottom 90% average income in dollars including capital gains6

Top 1% average annual income in dollars including capital gains 7

Top 5% average annual income in dollars including capital gains 8

Top 10% average annual income in dollars including capital gains 9

Annual Federal deficit per capita10

Chart 3

Annual GDP % change11

Annual Unemployment rate12

Annual Inflation as a percentage13

Chart 4

Annual Federal deficit per capita14

The purpose of these charts is to layout the full political and economic facts to get a sense of perspective based on solid sources detailed below in the endnotes. I always approach this type of data as ‘come what may’. Of course, I have opinions and conclusions as we all do. However, I really believe in letting the facts speak for themselves. If the facts show I am wrong about an opinion I will, and historically have, changed my opinion to suit the facts. I do not have that high a degree of personal stake in my opinions which would override whatever truth may come from the facts. There is a degree of truth that can be ascertained by well sourced facts about politics and the economy. However, it takes continual work to try to accommodate opinions and conclusions to reality.

There are way too many fanciful ‘facts’ flippantly tossed about that result in erroneous conclusions. Conclusions based on mere opinion with little or no underlying facts allow perceptions to rule in elections. Perceptions are the only concern of political commercials. Truth, to whatever degree it can factually be ascertained, is fundamental to a working democracy. I have included some conclusions I think can or cannot be drawn from the data below. I would welcome any further comments pro or con as well.

The charts, as shown below, are too large in a web format to see details adequately. However, there are some things seen below that immediately jumped out at me. First, notice the squeeze in the 1920 to 1940 and 1980 to the present, income levels in the United States on Chart 1. What this tells us is that the bottom 90% of income share in the United States came down around the Great Depression and started coming down in Reagan years until the Great Recession of the 2008. Also, notice that the top 10%, 5% and 1% of income share rose during those years resulting in what I term the Great Crunch.

Chart 2 shows the dollar amount of the Great Crunch. The gross domestic income per capita was relatively flat during the Great Depression years and rose slightly from the Reagan years to the present. This was probably the effect of the upper income bracket’s large rise in income share during those years. After the Great Depression, the upper income brackets were taxed in the 90+ percentile tax bracket after a certain amount of income was obtained. Ronald Reagan cut those large taxes on the wealthy and they continued to pay lower and lower taxes from then to the Clinton years when their taxes went up. In the Bush years their taxes went down again. They also accrued more and more tax shelters during these years. If the claim of the right that lower taxes create jobs is correct, we should have seen unemployment go down in the Reagan years. However, the data actually shows that unemployment actually went up in the Reagan years. Conversely, President Clinton raised taxes on the very rich in the 90s and employment went up.15 If the claim of the right is correct, where is the proof? The proof goes counter to their claim.

Chart 2 also shows the bottom 90% average income going down slightly from the gross domestic income per capita and can be seen better in the more detailed view of Chart 2 further below. The spreadsheet tables show the actual dollar amounts started at around $11,000 annually in 1917, went to a low of about $7,500 in the Great Depression, started rising to about $36,500 in 2000 and declined from there to about $31,000 in 2012. The upper 10% income brackets did bump up some just before the Great Depression years in real 2012 dollars but in recent decades since Reagan those brackets rose tremendously with the upper 1% rising 300% to 400% in the decade of 2000 and more than doubling for the top 5% and top 1%.

Another claim of the right is that all the meddling of the Federal Reserve results in inflation, boom and busts and unemployment. Chart 3 does not validate this claim. Inflation, unemployment and GDP have been tamed much more since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration greatly empowered the Federal Reserve, created depository insurance and financial regulatory requirements. Inflation, unemployment and GDP were much more erratic from 1917 through the Great Depression (and even before 1917). Do we really want to get rid of the Federal Reserve, depository insurance and financial regulatory requirements as the Austrian Economists suggest and go back to those days?

The charts also show that Democratic Presidents and Democratic Congress’ presided over the recovery from the Great Depression and the Great Recession of 2008. It also shows that Republican Presidents and Republican Congress’ presided just before these economic catastrophes. However, much to my surprise, mixed parties controlled the Congress and the Presidency over much of the more economically stable period from the recovery of the Great Depression to the Reagan years. My personal opinion is that the Old Right16 was much more sympathetic to the bottom 90% than the new right of recent years. Democrats and Republicans were able to pass bills which actually benefitted the middle class in those years and spread the income share between the bottom 90% and the top 10% as evidenced by Chart 1.

Chart 4 shows the Federal deficit per capita. The right has made much of Obama Care and the Federal Government’s hit on the national debt. The national debt is fueled by the annual deficit. While the deficit per capita bumped up slightly during the Great Depression recovery, it had a surplus of $1,000 per person in 2000 under President Clinton and a debt of $6,000 per person in 2009 under President George W. Bush until President Obama was inaugurated. Since then it has gone down to less than $2,000 per person of debt. This is obviously not what the right has been telling us. The facts actually tell us that the right has told us a blatant lie. The deficit did spike up from the social safety net set in place by Democrats and Republicans over the decades under mandatory spending requirements which no president could unilaterally change; only an act of Congress can change mandatory spending. The social “safety net” as, President Reagan called it, did exactly what is was suppose to do. If it had not done its job, the Great Recession of 2008 would have had a much more severe impact on average working families and probably would have prolonged the effects of the recession. However, the deficit immediately start coming down under President Obama; again, contrary to the blatant lies of the new right.

I believe that the 2014 elections were rigged, thanks to the narrative paid for by virtue of the Citizens United Decision,17 by lies which obviously benefit the wealthy not the working class. There was a right at one time that did care about the middle class and proved it with facts. However, the new right does not resemble that party in reality and the economy. It is high time that the old notion that Republicans are better for the economy get updated to reflect reality and not aspirational nostalgia. I would also add a word of caution I see in the data that the worst may not be over yet. The Great Crunch does not look like it is receding yet. Economists have told us for many years that the engine of the economy is the consumer not the wealthy. The consumer spreads out the risks of the economy and thus minimizes the chance of economic catastrophe. The facts bear this out. If we continue down the path which rewards wealth and punishes the consumer we may not have seen the ‘big one’ yet. A mixed party of Executive and Congressional branches of government may not fan the flames of the Great Crunch but we need to move away from the precipice of decreasing the income of the bottom 90% and increasing the income of the top 10% or we may find ourselves in a depression that will make the Great Depression look like a dress rehearsal.18 If a Republican is elected as President in 2016 with the new majorities of Republicans in the Congress, we could be well on our way to economic catastrophe as history is the witness.

The charts below are the same as the charts above but with more detail. In order to do this, the timelines have been split. Note that not all the data fields are fully filled out due to the lack of earlier reliable data. The top of each chart shows the percentage of Democrat and Republican, U.S. Senators and Representatives. The solid horizontal colored bars shows the presidential party in power at the time. Democrats are displayed in blue and Republicans are displayed in red.

Here are the dates from 1917 to 1971 for Chart 1.

Here are the dates from 1971 to 2014 for Chart 1.

Here are the dates from 1917 to 1973 for Chart 2.

Here are the dates from 1971 to 2014 for Chart 2.

Here are the dates from 1917 to 1973 for Chart 3.

Here are the dates from 1970 to 2014 for Chart 3.

Here are the dates from 1917 to 1973 for Chart 4.

Here are the dates from 1971 to 2014 for Chart 4.

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1 Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, The World Top Incomes Database, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/, 11/12/2014, See The World Top Incomes Database, real 2012 US Dollars, gross income before taxes, fractiles defined by total income including capital gains; income includes capital gains, the income share is the percentage share of annual income of the bottom 10% in the United States

2 Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, The World Top Incomes Database, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/, 11/12/2014, See The World Top Incomes Database, real 2012 US Dollars, gross income before taxes, fractiles defined by total income including capital gains; income includes capital gains, the income share is the percentage share of annual income of the top 1% in the United States

3 Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, The World Top Incomes Database, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/, 11/12/2014, See The World Top Incomes Database, real 2012 US Dollars, gross income before taxes, fractiles defined by total income including capital gains; income includes capital gains, the income share is the percentage share of annual income of the top 5% in the United States

4 Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, The World Top Incomes Database, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/, 11/12/2014, See The World Top Incomes Database, real 2012 US Dollars, gross income before taxes, fractiles defined by total income including capital gains; income includes capital gains, the income share is the percentage share of annual income of the top 10% in the United States

5 See Gross Domestic Income per capita, FRED Graph Observations, Federal Reserve Economic Data, Economic Research Division, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Gross Domestic Income (GDI), dollars per person, annual, not seasonally adjusted, the dollar amount is found by dividing each annual GDI by the population for that year as defined by the Census Bureau

6 Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, The World Top Incomes Database, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/, 11/12/2014, See The World Top Incomes Database, real 2012 US Dollars, gross income before taxes, fractiles defined by total income including capital gains; income includes capital gains, average income-including capital gains

7 Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, The World Top Incomes Database, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/, 11/12/2014, See The World Top Incomes Database, real 2012 US Dollars, gross income before taxes, fractiles defined by total income including capital gains; income includes capital gains, average income-including capital gains

8 Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, The World Top Incomes Database, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/, 11/12/2014, See The World Top Incomes Database, real 2012 US Dollars, gross income before taxes, fractiles defined by total income including capital gains; income includes capital gains, average income-including capital gains

9 Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, The World Top Incomes Database, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/, 11/12/2014, See The World Top Incomes Database, real 2012 US Dollars, gross income before taxes, fractiles defined by total income including capital gains; income includes capital gains, average income-including capital gains

10 See Federal Deficit per capita, the dollar amount is found by dividing each annual deficit by the population for that year as defined by the Census Bureau

11 See GDP from 1929 to the present(xls), U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP in billions of chained 2009 dollars

12 See Bureau of Labor Statistics, Unemployment Rate

13 See Inflation

14 See Federal Deficit per capita, the dollar amount is found by dividing each annual deficit by the population for that year as defined by the Census Bureau

15 See THE TRUTH ABOUT TAXES: History Suggests High Tax Rates On Rich People Do Not Hurt The Economy, See The Numbers Don’t Lie-Why Lowering Taxes For The Rich No Longer Works To Grow The Economy

16 See Conservatism and Liberalism: A Historical Perspective

17 See Formalism: When a Lie Becomes Truth (really)

18 See Plutocracy and Democracy: A Credit Suisse Report

 

From this site:

Financial Great Depression Facts

* In the 1920s, the wealthiest one percent owned more than a third of American assets.

* When stock speculator was a prominent practice, banks lent money to investors to buy stock. Nearly $4.00 out of every $10.00 borrowed from the banks was used to buy stock

* The average income of the American family dropped by 40 percent from 1929 to 1932. Income fell from $2,300 to $1,500 per year.

* During the 1930s, manufacturing employees earned about $17 per week. Doctors earned $61 per week.

* The stock market didn’t return to pre-depression levels until 1954.

– See more at: http://great-depression-facts.com/#sthash.2qT5aOAn.dpuf

Marriner S. Eccles, who served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve from November 1934 to February 1948, detailed what he believed caused the Depression in his memoirs, Beckoning Frontiers (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951).

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth — not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced — to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation’s economic machinery. [Emphasis in original.]

Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.

That is what happened to us in the twenties. We sustained high levels of employment in that period with the aid of an exceptional expansion of debt outside of the banking system. This debt was provided by the large growth of business savings as well as savings by individuals, particularly in the upper-income groups where taxes were relatively low. Private debt outside of the banking system increased about fifty per cent. This debt, which was at high interest rates, largely took the form of mortgage debt on housing, office, and hotel structures, consumer installment debt, brokers’ loans, and foreign debt. The stimulation to spend by debt-creation of this sort was short-lived and could not be counted on to sustain high levels of employment for long periods of time. Had there been a better distribution of the current income from the national product — in other words, had there been less savings by business and the higher-income groups and more income in the lower groups — we should have had far greater stability in our economy. Had the six billion dollars, for instance, that were loaned by corporations and wealthy individuals for stock-market speculation been distributed to the public as lower prices or higher wages and with less profits to the corporations and the well-to-do, it would have prevented or greatly moderated the economic collapse that began at the end of 1929.

The time came when there were no more poker chips to be loaned on credit. Debtors thereupon were forced to curtail their consumption in an effort to create a margin that could be applied to the reduction of outstanding debts. This naturally reduced the demand for goods of all kinds and brought on what seemed to be overproduction, but was in reality underconsumption when judged in terms of the real world instead of the money world. This, in turn, brought about a fall in prices and employment.

Unemployment further decreased the consumption of goods, which further increased unemployment, thus closing the circle in a continuing decline of prices. Earnings began to disappear, requiring economies of all kinds in the wages, salaries, and time of those employed. And thus again the vicious circle of deflation was closed until one third of the entire working population was unemployed, with our national income reduced by fifty per cent, and with the aggregate debt burden greater than ever before, not in dollars, but measured by current values and income that represented the ability to pay. Fixed charges, such as taxes, railroad and other utility rates, insurance and interest charges, clung close to the 1929 level and required such a portion of the national income to meet them that the amount left for consumption of goods was not sufficient to support the population.

This then, was my reading of what brought on the depression.

 

Republicans are free marketers…when convenient

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“LET THE MARKET DECIDE” is the battle cry of Republicans except when they do not like what the market decided.

Republicans want to blame President Obama and the Democrats for interfering with oil company profits. Writing of energy production, they tell us “Democrats Should Join the Revolution“. The Republicans have conveniently ignored the fact that oil production in the Obama administration has increased to the point where we are predicted to be energy independent by 2015.1 CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a Republican free marketer advocate, recently stated concerning gas price caps in “China, India and all of the Middle East”, “Now personally I think they should get rid of price caps completely.”2 Well, now that the Saudis have cut oil prices, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera stated this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show that the Saudis are trying to drive U.S. shale production out of business. She also stated the Saudis are trying to hurt the Russian oil market too. Hey Republican’s, try not to contradict yourself! You claim we should live and die by the prices set by the market but when the market is killing your oil production buddies you start squealing and complaining? It seems that the Democrats are not your biggest enemy but the free market. Maybe you should just shut up and take your medicine. After all, you are the ones that prescribed it.

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1 See IEA Predicts the U.S. Will Be the World’s Largest Oil Producer by 2015

2 See Caruso-Cabrera’s Snowball in Hades: ‘Europe’s High Gas Taxes Pay for Outdated Socialist Programs’

The problems with the Democrat’s campaign strategy…

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In Colorado we have been beaten to death with commercials on both sides of the political spectrum which assume everyone listening is an absolute idiot. At the least, they think enough people out there are idiots enough to get swayed by these ridiculous commercials to put millions of dollars in them. I do not know how these strategists come up with their strategies but here is my two cents:

Don’t let the other side set the narrative. The Republicans have totally set the narrative for the 2014 elections. The Democrats are constantly caving, placating and playing defense. You do not get ahead by playing defense in politics, you only minimize your loses. In the long run, negativity and fear based propaganda tire folks out, discourage them and make them apathetic. That strategy is not the strategy that works for the Democrats. Even the smartest Republicans have figured out that happy, smiling, ‘apparent’ non-nut-case-politicians go further than gun totting, ethnic and government hating, religious fanatics. Make no mistake, Cory Gardner is as right as they come and will vote Republican 99.999% of the time but he plays a good happy, go-lucky optimist. No matter, the Koch brothers own him lock stock and barrel. He has obviously been groomed very well to portray the image that Democrats find most natural, happy and positive. Why are our strategists thinking they can play the Republican game and win. Hey guys, go to the other side if that is how you want to play. You are not playing to our strengths as Democrats as the current election cycle should tell you.

Democrats have a positive agenda unlike the other side and need to set that agenda. Many Republicans tend to vote because they hate Democrats not because they have a positive agenda. They do not have any social answers except let the market decide. The market decided not to do a damn thing about health care for decades and that was ok for the Republicans but not for us. Many of our Democratic members vote because we have positive ideas for helping the country like health care, economics which help the middle class, address poverty in a way that stimulates the economy, improve our infrastructure and make education better and more accessible. I have done lots of hard core research and written lots of posts on this blog and I know that Democrats have the facts on our side. We do not need negativity, lies or apologies. We have the facts and the results. We actually accomplished something historic in health care on the heels of one of the worst presidencies in our history, George W. Bush. Bush crashed the economy started two absurd wars with the help of the war hawk, neocons in his party and what do the Democrats have to say about it now?…We are sorry. We did not like Obama or health care. We apologize that the economy is much better. You would never know that Colorado has the best recovering economy of any state by listening to political commercials. Are we sorry we got our country out of massive wars and massive national deficits. This strategic response has to go down as the most idiotic, cynical, sniveling, gutless campaign in history. Democrats, please let these spineless strategists go to the other side. Get some folks in there that will be proud of what we have done and advertise the hell out it. We will not win over the cynical Republicans. Cynicism is their game not ours. We own the long term in this country so start acting like winners not losers . Conservative white guys are dying off. We have an evolving electorate that will go for us but we need to show them how we have earned their vote not play the fright night game on them. Our message is positive and has a truthful, solid record of accomplishment. We do not get our jollies off watching all the fear and negative crap on Fox news. Watch Fox and then watch MSNBC. Look on their faces for the sneers, half smiles, one squinted eye, dogged sternness. Look for round faces, proportional smiles, relaxed and unstrained facial muscles. The difference you see will tell you something about who we are and who we are not. Folks that are not in either camp will not get converted no matter how alarming and negative the TV ads are. They are probably not that interested in politics and trying to figure out who is right or wrong, fact based or not. These are not the apathetics. They do not vote anyway. These are the folks that care more about the demeanor than the ideas. They want to see genuine, relaxed faces which exude confidence and positivity. They want to see ‘can do’ not ‘screw you’. They do not like sniveling, apologetic wimps. Don’t cower, tower. People like people that are genuine, never lie or exaggerate, do your homework on the facts, use credible unaffiliated sources. If you are wrong, apologize directly and get back on the horse. Don’t sit in the dust and snivel and cry. Take some pride in yourself. Whatever you do, do not listen to the strategists that want you to be fake and phony and soften the truth. You end up looking like a despicable clown and don’t think people can’t see right though you, they absolutely can. Strategists, if you can’t take pride in what Democrats have done, we do not need or want you. Do us a favor and get another job. You really don’t have a clue.

    

The Work of Days (revisited)

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This started as a footnote to the previous post but ‘grew’…

I would also suggest that this ‘stuff’ we call ‘matter’ may have an exteriority which, as the history of science demonstrates, resists our most concerted efforts to finally understand it, to know it in totality. Could it be that we can learn something about ‘knowing’ from this observation? ‘Knowing’ tends toward totalizing. In the Greek sense of telos, knowing aims and is directed in advance by the desire to understand. Under-standing is desire for arche, for origin. It seeks foundation, founded-ness, to arrive and yet, in view of the history of science or metaphysics, never arrives.

Never arriving is an exteriority to the desire for knowing. Never arriving is an essential teleological characteristic of knowing. Thus, the desire and the impossibility of the desire generate anxiety. Anxiety results in totality and historical metaphysics. Historical metaphysics’ telos aims at first philosophy. However, its history shows us much unapologetic failure. Totality is permeated by historical metaphysics just as historical metaphysics is permeated by totality. Thus knowing wants to ‘take account’ of exteriority, of error, and exteriority is violently appropriated by knowing. In both cases totality desires to take precedence, to understand, to rest. However, for desire to be desire it can never terminate; it can never complete itself in its object. Thus, desire is endless by necessity. The ancient Greeks called this struggle peras and apeiron, simplistically translated form and chaos (void).

Peiron in ‘a-peiron’ is the Ionic Greek for boundary or limit. The older form of this, peras, meant ‘beyond’ or ‘further’. Thus, a-peiron in Ionic Greek from Anaximander is the alpha privative, the privation of boundary and limit or without boundary or limit. Even in the much earlier archaic period of the Greeks, in Hesiod, we have Uranus (father sky) and Gaia (mother earth). Sky suspends, stands off, provides perspective. Sky is the son and husband of earth. Therefore, earth is generative. As the first of the gods, Earth is yet to be differentiated, it is undifferentiated.1 Earth is the origin of sky. Thus, Earth is arche. In Hesiod, Earth, what we now call ‘matter’, was the first of the gods. Yet, Hesiod’s Muses tells us that first of all was khaos, chaos. Chaos means the ‘yawning gap’, a void. Thus, chaos differentiates and separates (the heaven and the earth). Earth is permeated through and through with chaos, undifferentiated but fertile and generative.

The Ionic Greeks further refined this notion to what post modernism might call the “play of difference” (differance [sic] in Derrida). The play of differentiation and a-differentiation, without difference, is not a confusion of differences or a tautological identity of sameness but an exterior to difference. According to Heidegger Phusis, through Latin, got translated as natura (or the modern word nature) and lost the original meaning of the word which is to grow, to emerge, to unfold. Phusis is generative. Heidegger calls this emerging-abiding sway. He maintains that phusis was the original Greek idea of being. Thus, differentiation, the earliest beginnings of science, of phusis (later physis, later physics) gives context to the already understood (pre-cognitive) notion of ‘is’. Yet, even earlier, we have chaos which is the necessary condition, “first of all”, and by absolute exteriority conditions and generates growth, differentiation and physics by chaos, a yawning gap. What was lost from the archaic period of Hesiod was the gap, the anarchy, which cannot be captured, totalized, brought into the light of knowledge or, as Plato may have written, “the good beyond being”.

In meta-physics we do not have the beyond as later Latin thinkers would have us believe. Aristotle does not use that title since it came much latter. His work currently titled and typically understood by the Latin word Metaphysics is really “τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά” and may have been added by an editor. Aristotle claims the work was about “first philosophy”.2 Heidegger thought it was Aristotle’s exploration into Being, ontology. It was not beyond or contrary to phusis but an inquiry into the ‘first’ of phusis. Perhaps we could think it as the great question of Hesiod, “what came first”. As such, the depth and richness of this question begins science; it begins physics, not transcends it. Earth generates sky but undifferentiating does not generate differentiation, it separates it. This separation or gap excludes a middle, an ever mediated in-between. This suggests that what always and ever grows seeks it telos, its completion, in bridging the gap, completing the difference, the error, in a unified totality. However, it can only ever, like Sisyphus push the rock uphill to have it roll down again. The Desire cannot be complete as it would no longer be Desire but the loss of Desire as sameness, totality and Error.

When the place of absolute exteriority is lost in totality and interruption of the other is taken as the same, as the already understood of ‘is’ (materialism, dualism, pluralism, stuff, thing, substance, atom, etc.), the otherness of the other, radical exteriority, can only be effaced. The effacement of the other in its most radical form is genocide. Ethics leaves the gap, the first as other and has always been at work in metaphysics, in the notion of God and gods. The problem is that so has the work of totality. Metaphysics errs by assuming the other as substance just as science can err. However, the virtue found in science is the deference to error, the possibility of falsifiability. To be sure, science can also be defiant and dogmatic as well but its health comes from its recognition of error. Metaphysics as religion has a tendency to forget its propensity for error. Its error then seems to be the error of dogmatism and denial, of another substance called God. The play of alterity in the history of science and metaphysics is what validates or what fails to validate particular differentiations.

The endless play of difference as Desire can never end in totality, the Truth. It can only bridge the yawning gap in violence, in totality and thus fail to achieve ethics. Desire as Eros can never find completion but it can find work. The work of physics-first philosophy as differentiation and the telos of differentiation as completion, fulfillment and wholeness desire finality. Ethics resists finality as totality. Only death as the possibility of the impossible can finalize Desire. Death as the radical alterity of the other overtakes us from without, from an exterior which can never be conquered. We can never have power over death. We can only be absolutely passive beyond all passivity in the face of death. Death is the answer to phusis not totality. Our telos is not in power or truth but in absolute exteriority. As such exteriority is the ethic of Desire. Since finality can never achieve totality, ‘archy’ (arche; origin) can never achieve an-archy. Arche can never find light, meaning, logic or value in anarchy. Anarchy can never ‘make sense’ to arche but it can always interrupt arche and provide the gap which keeps arche from totality, science from absolute knowledge, religion from false god-hood (idolatry). Anarchy is the openness of phusis which comes from without. It makes science and religion possible.

Ethics as Desire is the embodied of work. The work of days achieves value and meaning in ethics. Ethics in this sense stands back from purity or the proper, the achievement of totality. It recognizes limit and boundary. It grows from error and does not die in dogmatism. Totality is the premature termination of Desire, the facade, the semblance. In the play of Desire, what the Greeks termed Eros, we encounter the gap, the absolutely excluded in-between, which is neither mortal or divine. The work of Ethics gives value, meaning and place to the stranger, the wanderer, the homeless, the errant with dignity which can only be reserved for the gods.

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1 See Reading Hesiod’s Theogony (with Notes and Questions)

“But I want to ask again, do we need to make this assumption of such a “pre-existing undifferentiated field”? I do think it is called for by Hesiod’s words.” Page 13, Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive Essays, Drew A. Hyland, ‎John Panteleimon Manoussakis – 2006, See this

2 τὰ μετὰ [in the midst of, among, after] τὰ φυσικά [physics] If the editor, Andronicus of Rhodes [50 BC], placed this title on Aristotle’s work, it may simply have meant that he physically placed the material after Aristotle’s books, the Physics. See this and this.

In Metaphysics A.1, “Aristotle says that “all men suppose what is called wisdom (sophia) to deal with the first causes (aitia) and the principles (archai) of things”” (981b28), and it is these causes and principles that he proposes to study in this work. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, First published Sun Oct 8, 2000; substantive revision Mon Jun 11, 2012