Conatus

Notice

2010-02-09T11:19:00.001-08:00

This place is now dead, going over to Wordpress.com. I just find it a bit easier and neater than blogger really. The new url is:

http://kalleconatus.wordpress.com

Badiou-blogging and some updates

2010-02-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

About a month ago me and a couple of friends started a reading circle on Badious "Being and Event". We even started our own blog where we have put out recordings from the meetings etc. The blog is written in the beautiful language of norwegian. If you happen to understand norwegian AND have a keen interest in the philosophy of Alain Badiou, you ought to check out our blog Alle skal med!.

Not much have been going on here lately, I really ought to change the name of the blog, but it so happens to be that I have finished my studies in pedagogy with not much time to keep up with this blog and philosophy in general (the reading circle being the exception). I guess it's just the common result of changing interests due to a changed environment - away from purely academic philosophy, towards work and other things that interest me. Now philosophy still interests me a great deal, but I often find that I read philosophy from a different angle these days, not as a set of academic problems that needs to be dealt with, understood, classified, debated and solved within the strict rules of academic philosophy but more as a set of general perspectives that I actually use within everyday life. So for instance, parts of Spinoza's ontology gives what I would call the proper materialistic outlook and a theoretical basis for my environmental concerns. I admire parts of Plato. I still find Marx helpful in social and political issues. Badiou has the right understanding of what dedication and involvement means. Besides that, I tend to read stuff from other academic fields as well, such as biology (Dawkins-"The Ancestors Tale" has so far been a great read), John Cage's book "Silence", some elementary physics and set-theory. For me, this is basically just great stuff because it forces me to think outside of the boxes and (for me kantian) dualisms of philosophy. I have been doing a lot of music as well lately. You can check out my myspace page here.

Besides all of this, I just wanted to post this:

Robert Hoftun Gjestad bøyer seg for indierockens hellige ku

2009-06-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

Bare en kort sak sent på kvelden.
I begynnelsen av mai posta Mark Fisher aka. k-punk et par glimrende analyser om Sonic Youth. Uten å repetere hele argumentet til Fisher: SY er indie-rockens hellige ku. De surfer videre på gammel heltestatus. De har aldri vært ordentlig farlige, derfor slik appell blandt politisk impotente indie-kids med markeringsbehov. Helt urettmessig identifiseres de fortsatt med diy og avantgardisme blandt både unge og (flere og flere) gamle, mens de i realiteten gir ut samme skive igjen og igjen. Sonic Youth har siden begynnelsen av 90-tallet gått igjennom en gradvis metamorfose, så gradvis at ingen av fansa har merka det; de er i ferd med å bli Rolling Stones eller et tilsvarende papparock-ikon.
Hele greia kan du lese her.
Så, I dagens Aftenposten gir Robert Hoftun Gjestad den nye Sonic Youth skiva en 5'er. Som forventet. Hele anmeldelsen fikk meg til å grine. For hva er det Hoftun Gjestad skriver? Jo:

"Kan dette bandet egentlig gjøre noe feil? Nei, det virker ikke slik. Etter snart tredve år i rockebransjen høres amerikanerne fortsatt ut som om de lager ett av sine første album [sic!!!!]. Legendestatusen har vært der siden gjennombruddet med dobbeltalbumet Daydream Nation i 1988, og nå er de tilbake på det samme, mindre plateselskapet som den gang. Uten at det har endret den musikalske kursen.
Sonic Youth har alltid gjort som de selv har ønsket, også i tiden da de var signert på verdens største plateselskap Universal. Årets utgivelse er hakket mer rocka, rufsete, fyldigere og seigere i uttrykket enn forgjengeren Rather Ripped, som var en helt fabelaktig stilstudie i dyrking av antydningens kunst, bygd på utrolige melodier i bunn.
Men alle som har fulgt bandet gjennom årene får også her nesten én time med typiske Sonic Youth-godsaker som lener seg på forskjellige perioder i bandets utvikling, fra de korte rocka til de melodisk dvelende låtene.
Det eneste ankepunktet må være at de ligner så mye på sin egen patenterte gitarrock at det kan tære på interessen her og der.
Men idet anonymiteten truer med å senke seg over deler av materialet, lufter de produksjonen, røsker til på instrumentene, legger inn sine elegante tekster og gleden er tilbake. Og det er ingen ting som tyder på at disse ikke kan holde det gående i nye tredve år."

Rationalism and the Receptacle in Plato's metaphysics

2009-05-22T08:34:00.001-07:00

Due to my almost complete neglect of ancient Greek philosophy, I was quite perplex, to say the least, after my first reading of Plato’s Philebus and Timaeus - generally agreed to be Plato’s main dialogues dealing with his metaphysics and questions about the creation of the universe (besides the ontological Sophist and the theory of forms found in the Phaedo). I don’t really know what I expected from a reading of Plato’s metaphysical works, but I guess it can be put like this: Plato was the complete rationalist philosopher with a hierarchic theory of being, where reason (or logos) goes “all the way down” to the primordial act of creation in the One. Now to fully qualify as a “rationalist”, I believe that you have to adhere to a philosophy for which there is not a single part of being or existence that cannot be rendered intelligible, understood or somehow explained by human reason, if not now, then at least in the future with the progress of science and philosophy. For the rationalist there is no part of reality that escapes the grasp of reason. I guess an example of such a philosophy would be Spinoza’s (for which the existence of the one substance is necessarily eternal and so need not be explained).

As mentioned, I thought Plato qualified as a rationalist, at least of some sort. Boy, was I wrong. Let me just recap the argument of the Timaeus. First of all, the physical world is rendered as a work of creation by a god. Timaeus starts his cosmogony with these words: “First, I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense. All that becomes and is created is the work of a cause, and that is fair which the artificer makes after an eternal pattern, but whatever is fashioned after a created pattern is not fair. Is the world created or uncreated?—that is the first question. Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and if sensible, then created; and if created, made by a cause, and the cause is the ineffable father of all things, who had before him an eternal archetype.”

So the world is created by a god (in the Timaeus called the Demiurge) who is eternal and who creates the world of sensible and temporal, and therefore created and caused things. But the act of creation is not rendered as a creatio ex nihilo. First of all, creation is done through the use of a Pattern that he Demiurge has contemplated, a creative factor that explains the logos-nature of the visible world. Raphael Demos calls this Pattern “the ultimate in the metaphysical situation” as it “accounts for structure and order in nature, its regularity, and the fact that things have definite characters.” But the Demiurge needs something to work on (as the Pattern is just a formal image of the things to be created, the paradigm or model that guides the Demiurge in his creation). Seeing that the Demiurge creates the world like an artisan, he needs some material. In the Timaeus, this “material” Plato calls the Receptacle:
“In our former discussion I distinguished two kinds of being—the unchanging or invisible, and the visible or changing. But now a third kind is required, which I shall call the receptacle or nurse of generation…The containing principle may be likened to a mother, the source or spring to a father, the intermediate nature to a child; and we may also remark that the matter which receives every variety of form must be formless, like the inodorous liquids which are prepared to receive scents, or the smooth and soft materials on which figures are impressed. In the same way space or matter is neither earth nor fire nor air nor water, but an invisible and formless being which receives all things, and in an incomprehensible manner partakes of the intelligible.”

The Receptacle is likened to an indeterminable chaos, a space or a primordial “matter” (though invisible) that has not yet received any kind of form or determinate shape. This makes sense in the broader picture of a creation of the visible world by and artisan god. The god wills creation, he has his Form or Idea (the Pattern) of what he wants to create and he has his matter (the Receptacle) that he shapes according to the Forms and Ideas. The visible world is a mixture of the Pattern and the Receptacle. But the problem is that the Receptacle is not really God’s and not really in line with reason. All kinds of questions arises: Where does this stuff come from? Is it as eternal as God? What is it’s Nature? And for the more theologically inclined: What kind of God would need some matter that he did not himself create?! This is truly blasphemous! These questions are never answered in the dialogues. And in fact, Plato seems quite puzzled himself about this chaotic “stuff”. Seeing that only the eternal Pattern gives the possibility of intelligibility and explanation, Plato finds himself dumbfounded but consistent as he admits of a “difficulty in arriving at an exact notion of this third kind.” Moreover, to repeat one of the abovementioned sentences: “In the same way space or matter is neither earth nor fire nor air nor water, but an invisible and formless being which receives all things, and in an incomprehensible manner partakes of the intelligible”. The Receptacle is beyond human reason. It might even transcend the reason of God because it seems to exist vis-à-vis God in the act of creation. But Plato still needs the notion of the Receptacle to make sense of his idea of creation as the work of an artisan.

So to sum up, the philosophy of Plato is not rationalist, at least not at the level of his metaphysics. In fact, it produces a limit to rationalism at the start of the metaphysical situation, a limit that is somehow discouraging for the further activity of platonic philosophizing. But, it would still be interesting to look into this limit as having an analogical relation to the “Thing in itself” in the philosophy of Kant, or the material substrate in Schelling’s philosophy, as a necessary but “scandalous” notion for the business of a philosophy that attempts to explain the All.

Exercise junkies as time-capitalist: The following discussion

2009-04-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

Seeing that my latest post ("Exercise junkies as time-capitalists") sparked an interesting discussion between me and Heine on Facebook, I decided to put up the whole thing. The discussion was in many ways clarifying and ought to be read after reading the original post. (Some parts are in Norwegian).

Heine Alexander Holmen skrev den 21. april klokken 05:17
This is sophistery, my friend. Here's why:Since well-being is the goal, and not time, you fail to take all invested effects into account. Exercise gives you four things in fact when you do it wisely: (1) future health and more future well-being (time); (2) well-being and increased confidence in your other activities immediately after exercise (... Les mernot to mention you might feel better about yourself as someone who actually pulls things through: the pleasure of mastery); (3) increased bodily skills that besides from making you feel good will assist you in achieving more sucess in your efforts to gain other kinds of well-being as well; (4) enjoyment in action: I've heard of people who are able to meditate (the best runners do that while focusing only on their body for an hour or so, which is good if you can stop thinking about it afterwards). Some plan their day or solve other problems whilst running. Wittgenstein recommended walking for doing philosophy; in 2009 philosophy is running.

Kalle Risan Sandås skrev den 21. april klokken 09:45
I agree on almost everything here, except the accusation of sophistery. I am not discussing health benefits or other positive effects that might result from exercise. I think I make it clear that I am discussing a quite specific mentality. It is the kind of (modern I think) mentality that only views each here and now in the light of a future time. It is the mentality for which the present time is a means and not and end in itself. This has an analogical structure to capitalist mentality. Philosophy is always running. Vi drives av fremtidens fravær.

Ida Aalen skrev den 21. april klokken 15:50
Nå fikk jeg mer å tenke på neste gang jeg løper ;)

Heine Alexander Holmen skrev den 21. april klokken 17:21
Oh, okay. I thought you were discussing a phenomenon not just some stupid dude's wrongful conception of his own activities. So he should just think differently about what he is doing; after all, what he is doing is a worthwhile activity regardless of his own conception of it. However, in that case your argument smells badly of a non-existing strawman rather than sophistry. Is there really any such people? On the other hand, if what you say is that this is the only way market philosophy can understand this activity, then I think you can be on to something (i.e. against their ideology that predicts such a totally inflated and futile conception of human agency). But be aware: the Not noths. Your strawman might suddenly come to seek you up when you least expect it.. ;)

Kalle Risan Sandås skrev den 21. april klokken 18:27
ok, my bad. the point is basically this: while the health-benefits of exercise are obvious, and some (though I doubt all) people actually enjoy doing exercise, there is something very problematic about the ratio of constantly delaying desire-fulfilment instead of what I call consuming/wasting a good that is present. This is no strawman, today we are seeing quite a few healthfreaks willing to put their lifes under a strict ascetic regime and constantly delaying the moment of desire-fulfilment. Are they suffering from an ideological delusion? Perhaps, I dont know. Yes, I am talking about a specific mentality but the way ideology functions here is besides the point. My point hinges on questions of rationality, and how to spend the scarce amount of time we have on this earth. I am basically just being Adam Smith against Malthus here, saying: If you have capital (or something valuable) consume it NOW! It will not do any good just having it around or saving it for a later occasion.

Heine Alexander Holmen skrev den 21. april klokken 18:48
Now this is getting interesting: what exactly is it that healt-freak does not consume whilst exercising? Obviously, it cannot be time since, after all, clock is ticking whilst running. Or, to flip the questino around, what would it take for the health-freak to start consuming (time) as you think he or she should? Isn't there a sense in which the health-freak is consuming already despite her own errounous thoughts about the matter? Maybe the question is not so much whether she consumes but rather how she consumes. Is she making the best out of her time? Well, I cannot think of any reason why one cannot think like Goethe while one's on the run or why such thinking is best done on a cafe or something.

Nora Krogh skrev den 21. april klokken 20:52
Heine, du leser for lite dameblader. Disse menneskene finnes opplagt og de nekter seg nesten alt, hovedsaklig med to mål for ... Les merøyet, langt liv og tynnhet. De vet kaloriinnholdet i all mat og de vet hvor lenge du må løpe for å forbrenne 2 gulrøtter og 11 mandler.( Da snakker vi ikke 12 mandler, altså.) Det er kontroll og presisjon. Det er dessverre ganske mange som tenker på denne måten og lever sånn. Så spør du hva de mister mens de higer etter et lengre liv i trangere kjoler. Tja, spontanitet, evnen til å glede seg over god mat/drikke uten å tenke på hva den påfører deg av skade eller hvordan maten skal fortrenges av riktig antall minutter spinning og styrketrening. Det er ikke trening som er problemet, det er livsinstillingen som ser ut til å ha kommet litt skjevt ut for enkelte.... Hvor fett er det å være drittynn og 100 år men aldri ha latt seg selv få lov til å spise en full tre retters meny, eller smake på en brownie?

Kalle Risan Sandås skrev den 21. april klokken 23:45
Heine: Yes, this is definitely getting interesting, though I am afraid my original Conatus-text was hopelesly vague. My argument bases itself on a disctinction between consuming/wasting/spending time on leisure and pleasure and investing/"saving" time for a future moment/longer life. This is the idea of the double character of time I wrote about in the blog-entry (spending the present on something pleasurable/investing the present in a future state). I take this distinction for granted. Followingly, it wont do to say that the health-freak "spends" time on running or other exercise. Of course it is in one way right to say that he does, but then you are just using the trivial sense of "spending", as in "being in time". My use of spending/investing has to do with the way we relate "economically" to the present time. As always, my beloved is able to translate my argument and intentions with perfect clarity. In fact, I think she puts it better than I ever could. Nora: Takk!

Heine Alexander Holmen skrev den 22. april klokken 04:31
Nora: enig, jeg leser lite dameblader :) Men er usikker på om jeg leser FOR lite av dem. Samtidig gir jeg deg helt rett i at jeg burde tatt mer høyde for disse folkene som åpenbart har problemer.Kalle: See if this is a correct interpreation of your argument's application: using Nora's new class of freaks as paradigm, I can feel the grip of your paradox as it applyes to a specific conception of exercise shared by a more or less narrow range of particular freaks, who obviously gets thing wrong and should consume time in a different manner. Is that right?Now, is it further your idea that they can serve as paradigm for the capitalist conception of time consumption? or that this in any sense generalizes to exercise more broadly? or is this only a diagnose for the condition of this crazy bunch? I honestly thought it was something further and general you were after here, which was what caught my interest in the first place.

Kalle Risan Sandås skrev den 22. april klokken 11:38
Yes, I think it could be used as a paradigm for the capitalist conception of time consumption. But I in no way meant that neither every woman and man interested in exercise was a time-capitalist nor that we all are. My initial thought was that the bunch of health-freaks served as a prototype for time-capitalism (something like a "concrete universal"/or at least a concept/object-match), and that other people come to resemble this prototype in varying degrees. Some peoples lifes show more of a resemblance, some less. Isn't it right of us to use such a concept of a prototype? Time-capitalism might be found other places as well, like I said: it's all about following a certain "logic" or "path of thought". BUt I think that if we try to analyze time-capitalism as a broader phenomenon, not only on the level of exercise junkies or health-freaks, we will have to use a very complex concept of ideology.

Kalle Risan Sandås skrev den 22. april klokken 12:14
I am in fact quite ready to give a first suggestion to the properties combined in the concept of 'time-capitalism'. Of course, each of these properties are necessary but not sufficient for time-capitalism. 1. Value the prolongation of life and the delaying of death (suggested addition: the prolongation of youth?). 2. Use the present time in such a way that you increase the chances of prolonging your life and delaying death.3. Repeat point 2. consistently so that no 'present time' is spent or used for other purposes than points 1. and 2. 4. Spend all time gained by points 2. and 3. to again do 2. and 3. 5. Devalue other forms of time-spending than done in point 2. and 3. 6. Suggestions anyone?As you can see Heine, there can be many of us who "shares into" the concept of time-capitalism, though in varying degrees and with varying degrees of self-clarity as to what we are doing.

Kalle Risan Sandås skrev den 22. april klokken 12:26
one more thing. The net amount of time gained following point 2. will eventually show the same declining rate as Marx described as the "declining rate of profit", since death surely will be the end point sooner or later.

Exercise junkies as time-capitalists

2009-04-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

Just like "time is money", it is interesting to note how the role of time within a certain kind of modern phenomenon can follow a very special type of "logic" that has similarities with a more well-known "logic". I am thinking of the role that time plays in the life and mind of the exercise junkie that is obsessed about prolonging his own life through daily training, workout and living healthy. Aren't we up against a special kind of time-capitalist? A person who's relation to his own time on earth follows the logic of capital as described by Marx? The point of analogy resides in this: The exercise junkie obsessed about prolonging his life (being perhaps afraid to die) invests time (through exercise) in the production of a future time (by likely delaying his death by a certain amount of time). Now, if the exercise junkie continues to invest time in exercise in order to gain more time in the future, we basically have the logic of capital as described by Marx: the investment of capital (M) into a commodity (C) that produces a gain of surplus capital/profit (M) which has to be further invested and so on and so on.
The first thing to note is that for the exerise junkie afraid to die as for the capitalist afraid to lose market shares, the gain or surplus cannot be consumed, that is: it can not go to waste, but has to be invested in production of further surplus (more future time/delaying death). The second thing to note is that this look on time and prolongation of life represents just the type of irrational reversal of means and ends in capitalist society as described by both Marx and later Adorno. Just like every commodity has a use-value (which is subjectively enjoyed in the act of consumption) and a exchange-value which counts as its marked value, so time has the double character of either a use-value (time spent on consumption/enjoyment/leisure) and the more profitable "exchange-value" (time invested in obtaining a desirable future state/delaying death). And just like the use-value of a commodity has a lower degree of importance for the capitalist compared to its exchange-value (the classical ascetic capitalist never consumes, just invests further), the importance of the use-value of time is downplayed to its "exchange-value" by the modern time-capitalist. But this actually leads to the familiar paradox of use-value and exchange-value: If all time is invested in a future state, which then again gets invested and never "wasted", the whole motivation behind the investment fails, i.e. it would be impossible to understand why someone would invest their time at all. Time is never consumed, thus never enjoyed and followingly becomes worthless. The production of capital/time becomes an end in itself, without any reference to a good/desire fulfilment that could make this production understandable. The exercise junkie becomes like the capitalist: it's all about production for productions sake, "keeping the wheels" going. Just like the capitalist has forgotten the original reason behind commodity production, the exercise junkie has forgotten the original reason behind why time is a good. All of this furthermore touches on the the familiar denial of desire-fullfilment, the fact that the logic of capital investment always forces one to delay the fulfilment of desire and therefore becomes irrational (or at least "not understandable"). While this is an interesting further topic, it takes us on to questions of rationality and rational agency that I cannot go into here. I'm out. Spend your time wisely, but spend it for G-D's sake.

The right-wing gesture and the loss of the left

2009-04-13T01:19:00.001-07:00

This goes out to anyone who has at anytime entertained any sort of left-winged opinions and beliefs. Ask yourself: How many times have you played the devil's advocate by upholding the cynical right-wing position in discussions? This is more than an annoying party trick, for some its a life-style. Whether its union-bashing or the standard rantings over the leftist parties (even the usual sarcastic comments on Obama or Stoltenberg), the effect is always the same: the self-annihilation of what could be proud leftist positioning for the "cooler" gesture of neoconism or right-wing realism. I think the reason behind this move from left to right is to be found on a more general level: The left is no longer able to speak the language of power and will. Take for instance a leftist party like Sosialistisk Venstreparti (SV), their political agenda is today drenched in ethical considerations within a capitalist welfare state. Starting as a socialist party with revolutionary ambitions, the SV of today cannot act without reference to an ethical framework. Whether its environmental issues, economical issues, Afghanistan or welfare, the voice is that of ethical capitalist-socialism that feels obliged to justify even non-moral issues through the use of a moral vocabulary. Now, there is nothing wrong with fighting for the abovementioned causes. The goal is not the problem here, its the means that are self-destructive. What is wrong is the loss of the ability to speak and act with a clear and powerful voice at certain times. This is politics for G-D's sake. What happened to the left-wing’s pure language of class interest and will (that however well they mask it still drives right-wing policy)? Seeing that the left-parties are becoming more and more like a pure moral conscience, many people are turned on by the more stern rhetoric of the right. Against the right, we have to learn to speak the language of power again.

Hegelian poetry

2009-04-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

Svarteste natten, varme vinduer

Til Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Jeg våknet i natt til et dyp
av et lysfritt hull i mitt hode

Var det gardinene - de mørke nye gardinene
som gjerrig stengte alle gatelykter ute fra mitt rom?

ikke en skygge, ikke en kontur kunne skimtes og jeg tenkte

hvilken rolle spiller det om jeg lukker øynene eller holder dem åpne?
ute og inne er samme sted – hva så?

Nå tenker mørket seg selv, tenkte jeg
Jeg lå her i sengen og sov
det kom forbi og tok tak i meg
og jeg var et viljeløst medium

For nå tenker mørket seg selv
(var det jeg som tenkte dette?)
idet mørket tenkte meg slik et mørkt Jeg tenker seg selv

Nå er det ingen forskjell

Siv Jensen and nietzschean ressentiment

2008-08-17T05:30:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of years, it seems you cannot go anywhere in Norway without the name ”Frp” popping up. The liberalist-populistic political party Frp (short for Fremskrittspartiet, translated: the Progressparty), once a party-not-to-be-taken-seriously, has been steady on the rise since the late 90’s and holds the leading position in todays opinion polls (32,1%, in comparison to the Social Democrats who holds 26,1% in the latest poll). If these numbers are representatitive for next years election, we will probably see Frp in government, either a coaltion-government with the traditional conservative party Høyre or a minority government that will need support from the centre and the right.

I will not discuss the potentially bad consequences of having a Frp-government, first and foremost because Frp today is a difficult party to define and place on the traditional political left-right axis. While Frp, as a liberalistic party, has been advocating tax-cuts, a stripped down public sector, privatization and ”the individuals right to choose for himself”, Frp’s populistic way of ”blowing in the wind” adds a degree of uncertainty as to concrete policy. It is not certain that a Frp-government will amount to an era of thatcherism for Norway. As some have argued, Frp’s identity and rhetoric as an oppositional party will naturally have to change the moment they step into office. But for the time being, we are still confronted with a whining, oppositional and populistic Frp, especially through the party’s leader Siv Jensen.

A lot of different things has been said about Jensen, both as a politician and as a person. Comparing how Jensen’s and her predecessor Carl I. Hagen’s personality comes across in the media one can say that Hagen at least had the tendency to show a degree of warmth and self-irony, Siv Jensen on the other hand is the masculine iron-woman. No doubt you can analyze the phenomenon Siv Jensen on a surface level (asking people why they like her etc.), my hypotheses is that Jensen partly can be described as embodying the psychological type or trait that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) called ’ressentiment’. Further, this trait can in many ways be said to correspond to the populistic and anti-elitist aspect of Frp as a whole. (I have not read the biography on Jensen nor M. Marsdal’s ”Frp-koden”. I am hoping to be excused for any similiarities in my analysis of Jensen).

With the concept ’ressentiment’ Nietzsche meant a hostility and contempt towards the ones that are more powerfull than oneself. This hostility is created by a feeling of inferiority and weakness, but the hostility is accompanied by a value-system or ”morality” that both glorifies the weak and justifies the weak ones hate towards the stronger (which are portrayed as ”bad”). Further, as a value-system that justifies one groups hate and contempt against ”the bad wolves”, ressentiment is in Nietzsches view the way weaker people excercise power over the stronger; negatively and under the guise of a justifying morality. Ressentiment is an instrument of power, the power tool of the castrated. It is also interesting to note how Nietzsche claims that the man of ressentiment gets his identity through this negative opposition to something that he is not (the man of ressentiment can never say ”I am this!”, but only ”I am not that!”.) Historically, Nietzsche identifies ressentiment with the advent of the priest-caste in the judeo-christian tradition, especially Christianity as institutionalized religion through the work of Paul (the real founder of Christianity in Nietzsches view).
One can of course disagree with Nietzsches analysis, and vulgarized it can no doubt lead to pure facist bullshit. My point is how well the psychological expressions and mechanisms seems to fit with the anti-elitist and populistic aspect of Siv Jensens media-life and Frp’s rhetoric. Some Jensen quotes (translated from Wikiquotes):

”We shall be the peoples servants, not their masters. The way to solve people everyday problems is to talk with them. At the end of the day, it is all about talking with people, not to them.”

”We are not whining, we are used to getting slapped.”

”From a birds-eye view it looks like we’re the bothersome duckling that disturbs the idylic ducks-pond.”

”People do not feel welcome at art shows.”

The ressentiment comes across on many levels, I am content with showing a couple:
A. The ”regular guy’s” lack of political power and ability to influence society at large is turned into ressentiment by Frp and Jensen, as the weak ones contempt against political elites. It is well-known how Frp has kidnapped the populistic expression ”folk flest”, an expressision that is badly translated into ”most people”. We get the following statements from Jensen: ”Most people” agree with Siv Jensen and Frp. ”Most people” are concered with the things Jensen and Frp are concerned about. Jensen believes that ”most people” know whats best and right. Most politicians don't have a clue about what ”most people” want and care about. As Jensen said, Frp is the ”servant of the people”, not it’s master. Jensen represents ressentiment as ”the peoples” herd and spokesperson against a technocratic bunch of politicians and beaurocrats. As a woman of ressentiment Siv Jensen is the anti-politician. She portrays politicians as dominating wolwes and herself as representing the ”folks” at home. This is also reflected in economic policy. Here Siv Jensen and Frp represents ressentiment as contempt against all forms of technocratic beaurocracy and economic planning. The disguising of power through ressentiment is also carried out to the fullest. As she successfully manages to portray herself as a woman of the hoi polloi, an oppositional character, she also manages to shake away all signs of the actual political power she has accumulated (”We are not whining, we are used to getting slapped.”, Jensen likes to come across as powerless from time to time).

B. As a woman of ressentiment, Siv Jensen has mastered the art of portraying a certain self-image; that of being insulted and offended. In media-debates Siv Jensen is always offended, not only by personal attacks on Jensen herself, Siv Jensen is always offended by other politicians on behalf of ”the norwegian people”. The clue to a successfull strategy of ressentiment is to appear morally superior, which today has become virtually impossible without first victimizing yourself. As the quotes above show, Siv Jensen embodies ressentiment by way of a rhetoric of self-pity and self-victimization (Again: ”We are not whining, we are used to getting slapped”).

C. Within the field of culture Siv Jensen and Frp represents ressentiment as it takes on what it believes to be the masses contempt and hate for anything connected to ”high- culture”, the high-brow, ”elitist” groupings that in the eyes of Frp is thought to rule the nation (”People do not feel welcome at art shows).

Some thoughts on David, Saul and ethics

2008-08-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

Ethics is a difficult subject and at times hard to believe in. From a radical materialist perspective, man is just one among a myriad of different material things that is spread around the earth and the belief in mind-independent eternal moral laws is dubious. Still, we sometimes experience an absolute ethical obligation towards others, and we are capable of both reflecting on our ethical responsibility and acting on this responsibility as well. In one of the most astonishing chapters of the Old Testament, this responsibility is expressed in a way that partly reflects a strain of ethical thought I sympathize with. It’s a perspective on what it means to be moral that can be found in both Levinas and Walter Benjamin. The french-jewish philosopher Emmamuel Levinas writes about our moral reactions in experiencing the face of the Other. In meeting another person, the face of the other is experienced as something that expresses an obligation towards the other, the face presents itself as something that demands respect and care. In our experience of it, the face ”says” ”Do not destroy me”. (It is important to note how Levinas' ethics is an ethics based on experience rather than principle, in distinction to kantian or utilitarian ethics.) Influenced by theology, Levinas claims that the face of the Other contain traces of the Divinity itself, because of the absolute character of this ethical obligation. The face can be pretty or ugly, it can be the face of a person we hate, but it still contains what we with Benjamin further can describe as ”messianic splinters”. Which leads me to the chapter of the Old Testament I wanted to focus on. The chapter I have in mind tells us about the moment when the young David spares King Saul’s life. Driven by madness and jealousy, King Saul repeatingly tries to murder David, and David has to flee into the desert. One night, David and his men area ble to sneak into Saul’s camp, where Saul is sleeping soundly in his bed. David gets the opportunity to kill the man that is causing him so much misery. Standing over Sauls bed with a weapon in his hand, David states: “YHW [God] forbid that I should raise my hand against YHWs anointed!” (Samuel I 26:11).
As is known by some, “The anointed” is a translation of the hebrew word moshiach, or more commonly expressed: Messiah. The israeli kings where all anointed. Saul, as the king of Israel, was thus called ha-moshiach, “the anointed”. As just another name for the isreali King, the term “the anointed” or the Messiah had a different meaning at the time of David and Saul compared to the eschatological meaning it has today. My reading of this passage in the light of Levinas might thus be seen as speculative and anachronistic because I will focus on the meaning the term has today (but I will leave these philological questions aside.)
The ethical issue is Davids refusal to kill Saul. David both had the opportunity and personal reasons to kill Saul, but still he refuses. Why? one can ask. Because David, through his close encounter with Saul (a terrible person), still recognizes him as the Messiah. Even though Saul formally is the anointed, he has fallen from grace. The story can thus be read as the story of a fallen Messiah (Saul) that is re-recognized as the Messiah on another level, even though he doesn't deserve it. The Messiah is unexpectedly re-established in a moment of ethical experience. Or: He appears. Davids words doesn’t only express his recognition of Saul as the formally anointed king of Israel and his loyalty to his king, David’s words express the belief that the Messiah is inherent in everyone, even the person who wants to kill you. And one cannot hurt or kill the Messiah. As Levinas might have said it: through the proximity of the encounter, the face of Saul is revealed as something containing messianic splinters, David experiences the face of Saul as an obligation to preserve and not to destroy.

2008-07-31T09:29:00.000-07:00

Special repentance issue!

Retarded ethics #1: The argument from mutual guilt

2008-07-31T05:36:00.000-07:00

You can hear it from time to time: Person B counters A's accussation of moral wrong or guilt by pointing to A's own previous guilt or bad actions. While B can acknowledge that he/she did something wrong, the moral guilt or blame is thought to be nullified by pointing to the moral guilt of A, the accuser. Typically, the guilt of A, or the amount of A's moral wrong, is often portraited by B as more extensive than B's own guilt. Further, it doesnt have to be the case that A's earlier bad actions affected B at any time, or that B was a victim of A's actions; B's guilt is nullified because of what A previously did to the third party C. If you can somehow show that the accuser is guilty of worse things, you can get away with a lot.

Variants of the abovementioned argument I call the argument from mutual guilt. A lot of people think that this is good ethical reasoning. It is not good, it is a terrible form of ethical reasoning. And it is used within many sphere of human activity, in politics for instance. I have been in discussions where the line of argument runs like this: Iran is commiting less of a moral wrong in threating Israel with total destruction, because Israel is guilty of murdering the palestinian people. It is interesting to note that the argument is not the same as the argument for revenge or vengeance. In vengeance, A and B just counters the moral wrong commited against eachother, and each considers itself right because each considers himself to be a victim.

Sometimes, the argument from mutual guilt is used to uncover hypocracy. But mainly it is used to reduce ones own guilt, or to justify wrong actions. My point is this: A wrong action isn't wrong just because it stands in a evaluative relation to other actions. Ontologically, it must be identified as something wrong in itself. A morally right or wrong action cannot have a purely relational identity without breaking down the status of cerain actions as absolutely wrong. Using nuclear weapons to anihilate a whole country isn't a moral good, or less of a moral wrong, because someone else anihilates three whole countries. Genocide isn't less of a wrong because it seems to be the popular thing to do. Maybe it is a case of "two wrongs doesn't make it right", the argument from mutual guilt is anyway on the list of retarded ethics.

On individualism: theory and ideology

2008-07-22T13:39:00.001-07:00

What truth is there in the Frankfurter school's theory that the individual is non-existant within modern society and what possible implications can it have for theorizing society at large? There is neither space nor time to address this in all its complexity but there are good reasons to discuss it. In the face of popular beliefs in "each and everyones unique individuality" - so often found in self-help books - and our common notion that we are living in the "age of individualism" Adorno and Marcuse's gloomy description of the individual in modern society offers a stark contrast. But what does it mean? What can it mean to say that the individual doesn't exist?

First of all, taken as a whole the proposition is evidently false in the trivial sense. We are all individual bodies, bodies that each can produce absolutely unique fingerprints and so on. But this clearly isn't what is meant with the statement. Rather it can be seen as a statement that the concrete individual is becoming less and less real within society at large. Less real in what sense? Less real in the sense of being more anonymous, having fewer possibilities to affect the course of society and becoming increasingly replacable within the whole. Since the advent of modern capitalist societies the general social complexity, as well as the functional norms and imperatives that governs societies different spheres has a tendency to make invisible what was easier to be seen in earlier times: the concrete individuals making up society, the baker on the corner, the large familiy living on the farm and in the village. To illustrate: The experience of being anonymous within city life is a common experience, the feeling of political impotence and apathy another, not to mention the knowledge that there are perhaps hundreds waiting in line to take your job and replace you (unless you are one of those lucky few that has the priviliege of having both the competence and the type of job that makes you irreplacable). There is at least some truth then in the notion that within modern society, with its overpopulated cities, political elites and insecure labour-marked, the concrete unique individual is both becoming factually less real qua replaceable individual. Further, one can not doubt that the concrete individual experiences this tendency personally from time to time.

Unless of course, the concrete individual buys into the ideology of individualism. Now individualism is many things, or: there are many individualisms. Individualism is often both descriptive and normative at the same time, meaning that it tends to state that A.) You are absolutely an absolutely unique individual and B.) You should strive to become an absolute unique individual (then you will be more happy). The tension of combining A and B aside (the paradox: if I already am absolutely unique, why should I strive?), there are good reasons to claim that the belief in harbouring an absolute individuality is both mythologizing and hindering for the actual development of individuality. For if there is a degree of truth in the theory that the individual (despite living in the "age of individualism") actually confronts threaths of being overpowered by social tendencies, then believing that one actually is irreplacable, unique and so on is just another ostrich-technique. Individualism is thought-manifestation of an unconscious resistance-mechanism. Taken as ideology, individualism is the thought-secrete of society's own bad conscience for lack of real individuality.

The thought that we as individuals are a specimen of a biological species and not a creature created in the image of a God is a thought that more and more people have gotten used to.
The thought that we as individuals are a specimen of social categories, types or classes and not a free-floating subject, a monad, a Robinsonade in Marx' words, completly independent and unique, is a thought that fewer are able to accept. This is especially true when the thought is applied to one own self. It is one of the few virtues of sociology that it can show, as Bourdieu and many others inspired by him have done, how age, income, sex and social background correlate statistically with aesthetic preferences, values and so on. Within the social life, furious reactions to accusations of bias due to class interest tell quite a lot, from the emphatic "My mother was a communist!", to the more standard claim that "There are no longer classes in Norway".

Taken as a an ideological line of defence for lack of "real individuality" (whatever one puts into that concept), individualism is the wrong way to go within the cherished project of winning true individuality. The right way could be the active breaking down of the resistance-mechanism to see one self as a social specimen. It would be the ideological hard-line strategy against a hard-line reality. Being an individual, whatever one puts into the concept, is hard, but it becomes even harder the more one clings to the veiling ideas of the individualisms.

A few words from our sponsors

2008-07-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

So it arrived late, clumsy and with mixed feelings; a blog. While lousy personal opinions are something one cannot hope to fully remove in this context, it can be minimized with effort (which happens to be a possible translation of the blog's name as well.) That's a promise.