k-punk said:Yes, on the face of it, conservative and neo-conservative/Blairite thinkers seem to be full of positive rhetoric about 'freedom'
rhetoric aside, isn't self-determination the guiding principle of liberal democracy -- i.e., give people scope to determine the nature and course of their own lives, which necessarily involves placing limits on what they can do with respect to others
so w/ an iraqi liberal democracy, the majority would be given scope to make law and forge a modern culture, though constrained by limits designed to protect the interests and rights of minority groups in iraq -- which might in the end rule out a sectarian shiite state, even if this is what majority wants
or is self-determination not a principle???
k-punk said:the key defining characteristics of this axis is its showy disavowal of anything deemed to be utopian. The appeal is always to what, in a theatrical gesture of faux-regret, they call the 'real world' (its assumption being that the nature of reality is basically fixed, we know what people are really like)
so you don't think there's such a thing as human nature or at least certain basic human drives and passions, as well as certain basic human types (each type determined by the predominant passion in his psychological make-up), even if each person is ultimately a singularity
i certainly think we could have a much better society than what we're stuck with now -- one where people were given less scope to pursue financial profit, one where people did not have to work so much to no apparent end, etc -- but i think that an utopian project, to be desirable, would have to accommodate the complexity of human nature and not do undue violence to it -- there would need to be space for people to have a private dimension to their lives, their own lovers, own families -- there would need to be different kinds of social spaces, i.e., not everyone forced to go to same bowling alleys and pubs, i.e., you'd still need the rich variety that capitalism has on offer -- there would need to be some scope for the ambitious, etc, so long as they did not enslave others or acquire too much status at the expense of others (perilously close to protecting each person's self-esteem)
and what do you get??? something like john rawls??? -- and wouldn't such a world be rather vanilla and devoid of pain in the worst possible way?
wouldn't we be rather bored with utopia -- like people in heaven wishing they could die?
k-punk said:Parliamentary politics as practised today does not in any way consist of setting objectives inspired by principles and of inventing the means to attain them.
what should the principles be?
presumably some combination of "liberty" and "equality"?
if so, aren't we still within the orbit of liberal democracy?
k-punk said:It consists of turning the spectacle of the economy into the object of an apathetic (though obviously unstable) public consensus.'
yes, but badiou (like arendt) is too neat in separating political questions from economic questions
if the main issue is class conflict, then economic questions should be brought to the fore
apathetic public consensus is the result of false and unsustainable prosperity
k-punk said:This politics articulates itself in terms of a defence of 'human rights' but these ''human rights' are rights to non-evil', so that 'Evil is that from which Good is derived, not the other way round.'
so are you proposing this alternative = EITHER limit men's capacity to do evil by exploiting their most powerfully felt passions (fear of death and grievious injury) OR take your bearings from their highest potential (for pursuit of knowledge, creation of art, or some such end, which require leisure)
don't both sides of this alternative imply that there's such a thing as human nature????
k-punk said:there can be large-scale commitment of resources only to the 'ridding of Evil', not to the construction of any Good.
yes, but how can you have a GOOD if you don't know "what" it's good for -- i.e., something is GOOD only if it's good FOR man (or perhaps only certain people?) -- which in turn implies that man has certain basic needs or purposes, i.e., a kind of nature
k-punk said:Interesting that the disavowed utopian impulse is never ACTUALLY translated into a pure pragmatism. The neo-con agenda isn't actually 'realistic'; its vision of extirpating all tyranny from the world is every bit as dewy-eyed as any scheme dreamt up by the Left. It is not as if, for instance, 'the war on terror' has the remotest prospect of succeeding.
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