Rolling Philosophy

@markers - fwiw kaufmann and hollingdale are the ones i have as well. this guy agrees with max on the clark/swensen

man I don't know anybody who still reads the constance garnett translations! but kaufmann is still widely used afaict

i was at a dissertation defense a few weeks ago where one of the professors went on quite vociferously about how crappy the new translations were (the married couple) and how much better Garnett was. but she is probably a minority opinion.

I'm not a terribly big fan of the married couple

theyre translations are really good imo

I can't remember who I contraristan for above them though, I'll have to check my contraristan log, I've definitely expressed this opinion elsewhere on ILX

i think the Garnett translations are almost their own thing at this point, with their own cultural relevance, given when they came out and the number of writers who first encountered D and T in that form.

i do this all the time but i also really cannot recommend this book enough as a secondary

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-New-Nietzsche-David-Allison/dp/0847689794

Pre-ordered the Zizek too. Up for reading group.

count me in on that

just got Simon Critchley's new one in the mail: http://www.amazon.com/Faith-Faithless-Experiments-Political-Theology/dp/1844677370/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328075101&sr=8-1

and speaking of Critchley and Zizek, here's essay response to Zizek by Critchley on politics and violence. I found it interesting and it articulates some of my reservations about Zizek:

http://nakedpunch.com/articles/39Violent

way too long but my two initial thoughts:
1. i think he misunderstands zizek's "ultraviolence" which could easily be the violence he describes (and for many activists, even the smallest suggestion of violence becomes this revolutionary historic moment, ie Occupy Wall St)
2. kinda feels like a secret defense of obama + the doctrine of marginal gradual change tbh

i don't think i can read the whole thing tho. i bailed out after his reading of Benjamin and i realized that despite stating his case four or five times already i still had 3/4ths of the article to go

I think 2 is the gist of Zizek's disagreement with Critchley. I am in broad disagreement with Critchely. I think. I do know Zizek's rhetoric bothers me, and i also don't really think Marxism/Leninism is really the only game in town as far as thinking outside Capitalism goes.

oops. I am in broad AGREEMENT with Critchely, i meant to say.

(especially since you'd think Zizek would be the first to admit that kind of rhetoric doesn't really escape from the domain of Capitalism anyway. he's got nostalgia for an "outside" that's not really accessible anymore. then again i'll shut up since im dumb about political philosophy.)

yo kant is clarity incarnate. if you're confused it's bc your brain is all twisted up from life + shit.

...

x-post: hence Critchley's point that Z is basically advocating doing nothing...

i don't think Z is advocating doing nothing bc i think he's not an advocate. who said that the role of philosopher is to advocate for political revolutionary? i think he's making an observation tho about the kinds of violence that actually shift hegemonies, and even if Critchley wants to encourage ppl to revolt now and even in minor ways (with the hope that they make gradual shifts), I don't think Zizek is totally off-base to suggest that's itself an apology for the hegemony

advocate for the* political revolutionary

maybe he discusses it further down but where are all these non-ultra-violent revolutions that are seriously challenging capitalism? i don't see them.

yeah i see what you're saying. that's the crux of the problem isn't it? it wouldn't really be hard to turn that whole argument against Z as well (ie, that what he's doing is an "apology" for hegemony. hence Critchley's quote of Lacan telling the Leninists, "What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a master.")

but Critchley definitely steps in it when he shifts to being an advocate (even if one for "infinite" demands)...and perhaps what's at stake is a (philosophical) defense of that act.

and that's why his demands have to be "infinite" (or effectively without content).

Though perhaps it'd be fun to read Z as basically posing exactly the "infinite demand" that Critchley wants, just in the form of a nostalgic Leninist mode.

new spivak apparently

http://www.amazon.com/Aesthetic-Education-Era-Globalization/dp/0674051831

ryan, did you finish the critchley book? worth reading?

markers: I thought there was some value in it, and the parts about mysticism were really interesting to me, but overall I'm kinda left wondering why he felt he needed to stage his argument in the way he did, and perhaps his sense of the organizing power of religion is more a holdover from theocratic politics than something that belongs to religion per se. Anyway, I liked it and learned stuff, though I'm not sure it leads anywhere.

I mean "your conflating religion with politics" at once a dumb criticism since thats the argument of the book! But at the same time I think he fails to articulate what the secular meaning of "sacralization" in contemporary politics could be. He wants a positive form of religious feeling that leads to spontaneous political organization where I only see negative theology.

oooh that spivak looks really interesting. was just thinkin about schiller again the other day!

ya i've been reading schiller lately, SHE'S ONTO US.

nick land goes in for the post-austrian paleo-reactionary scene

http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1880/the-dark-enlightenment-part-1

against democracy! (in a strange coincidence i just brought up "mencius moldbug" yesterday)

this line is particularly glib, considering the blistering pro-rumsfeld/cheney line he took on the old hyperstition blog. he condemns, in a slew of other things, "reckless evangelical ‘wars for democracy’

nobody? jeez, should have gone to the right-wingery thread

nick land goes there

yo nakh let's shmooze about bh

http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1901/the-dark-enlightenment-part-2
http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1920/the-dark-enlightenment-part-3

just now reading critchley's "infinitely demanding" really digging it

At the heart of a radical politics there has to be what I
call a meta-political ethical moment that provides the motivational
force or propulsion into political action. If ethics without politics is
empty, then politics without ethics is blind. Taking my cue from a
heterodox reading of Levinas, I claim that this meta-political
moment is anarchic, where ethics is the disturbance of the political
status quo. Ethics is anarchic meta-politics, it is the continual
questioning from below of any attempt to impose order from
above. On this view, politics is the creation of interstitial distance
within the state, the invention of new political subjectivities.
Politics, I argue, cannot be confined to the activity of government
that maintains order, pacification and security while constantly
aiming at consensus. On the contrary, politics is the manifestation
of dissensus, the cultivation of an anarchic multiplicity that calls
into question the authority and legitimacy of the state . It is in
relation to such a multiplicity that we may begin to restore some
dignity to the dreadfully devalued discourse of democracy.

Taking my cue from a heterodox reading of Levinas, I could really go for some fried chicken right now.

lol

that's quite nice tho, I am never sure if I'd get on w/ critchley

finally defended yesterday. now I can read what I want to! think im gonna fill in my two biggest blind spots (relatively speaking): Lacan and Deleuze.

ogmor: I've read a lot of critchley and im still not sure if i get on with him. but his Very Little, Almost Nothing is really lovely and moving and smart.

hey congrats!

thanks man! huge relief. i now have one official life accomplishment i can point to.

hurrah, ryan

well done

Thanks guys!

good work! what was your thesis on?

essentially reading American Pragmatism through systems theory and "second-order" cybernetics. Hopefully I'm able to argue that's not as strange a combination as it sounds!

That sounds like a really cool topic. Systems theory and cybernetics are pretty interesting fields of thought ... like if philosophy actually dealt with the real world.

oh, cool! I know someone working on Peirce and erm computation theory and things like that?, it sounds like a really interesting connection even if I don't quite know enough about either side to see exactly what's going on with it.