Scurtă digresiune despre culpă,

subiect culpabil și…

creștinism. Karman de Giorgio
Agamben
04.12.2018 | Ionuț TUDOR
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Ionuț Tudor
Giorgio Agamben ocupă un loc
aparte în peisajul intelectual
occidental din ultimele decenii. Îi
atribuim o serie de lucrări
fundamentale pentru înțelegerea
contextelor de emergență și a
factorilor de constituire a
conceptelor juridico-politice.
Lucrări precum ”Starea de
exceție”, ”Homo Sacer”,
”Împărăția și gloria”, ”Opus Dei”
etc. (marea majoritate apărute în
limba română la Ed. Tact și Ed.
Idea) propun genealogii ale unor
concepte constitutive culturii
noastre. Subtitlurile acestor cărți
sunt explicative conceptual:
puterea suverană și viața nudă,
pentru o genealogie teologică a
economiei și guvernării, arheologia
oficiului, războiul civil ca
paradigmă politică, arheologia
jurământului, arhiva și martorul
etc.].
Lectura oricărei cărți de Agamben
presupune un efort suplimentar din
partea unui jurist, căci Agamben
interoghează de fiecare dată
„dispozitivul” de putere și
cunoaștere aferent oricărui
concept, săpând la rădăcina
acestora fără a folosi definiții,
distincții consacrate, organizări
tematice, pentru a ajunge la
rădăcini care au stat ascunse
privirii până acum (rizomatică
juridico-politică).
În ”Karman”[1], apărută în 2018
la Stanford University Press, se
apleacă asupra unor termeni
atribuiți de regulă literaturii
romaniste causa, culpa,
crimen sau actio. Sistemele
juridice moderne au derivat din ele
termeni precum cauză (cauza
contractului), culpă (infracțiuni din
culpă) sau crimă (mai puțin folosit
în dreptul penal, dar încă prezent
în criminologie).
Agamben le plasează în centrul
construcției juridico-politice a
gândirii europene.
Fiecare dintre aceștia se prezintă
precum „un concept-prag, un
hibrid al realității și discursului, al
faptelor și dreptului, furnizând
filosofiei și științei occidentale [și
religiei] unul dintre termenii săi
fundamentali” (p. 5). Conceptul-
prag are statut de pendulare între
un aspect material și unul
conceptual, marcând momentul în
care „ceva” trece din sfera realității
în cea a dreptului.
De pildă, causa semnifica atât
procesul, cât și
motivul/pricina/izvorul generator
al procesului (sensuri reținute și în
prezent). La fel, culpa indica fapta
imputabilă (în niciun caz modul de
săvârșire a unei fapte, fie că era
delict civil sau penal), dar și
neglijența cu care cineva comitea o
faptă (conceptual, culpa romană
trimite mai mult la ceea ce noi
folosim astăzi prin termenul de
vinovăție). Crimen îngloba atât
acuzația (dar nu acuzația în sens
formal, pe care romanii o
numeau nominis delatio), cât și
crima (infracțiunea am spune noi).
Dar Agamben nu este interesat
doar de sublinierea unor etimologii
sau sensuri originare, ci de
evidențierea unor trăsături
esențiale ale dreptului roman:
regula de drept se edifica raportat
exclusiv la acțiune, la faptă, nu la
imperative sociale, deziderate
politice sau valori morale. Acestea
intervin într-o perioadă târzie a
Imperiului, odată cu creștinismul,
care dezleagă subiectul de
acțiune, legându-l de voință.
Autorul italian identifică și
detaliază procesul abscons prin
care emerge în cultura juridico-
politică ceva de genul unui
„subiect culpabil”, care
interiorizează o formă de vinovăție
prin săvârșirea unei fapte.
Conexiunea dintre agent și acțiune,
definită într-o bună perioadă a
Antichității exclusiv factual, este
acum fundamentată într-un
“principiu inerent subiectului, și
anume subiectul culpabil. Aceasta
înseamnă că vinovăția a fost
dislocată de acțiune către subiectul
care, dacă el sau ea a
acționat sciente et volente, poartă
întreaga responsabilitate pentru ea”
(p. 9).
Procesul acestei transformări pare
unul justificat dacă ne gândim la
principiul legalității incriminării,
la nulla poena sine lege, la
necesitatea stabilirii vinovăției
pentru ca cineva să fie tras la
răspundere. Principiile sunt ferm
ancorate în realitatea juridică
actuală, părând imuabile.
Dar nu se ascunde nimic în spatele
lor?
Primatul subiectului culpabil în
cultura juridică europeană[2] nu i-a
scăpat unui important teoretician al
sec. al XX-lea, Carl Schmitt. El a
criticat reducerea subiectului de
drept la o categorie psihologică,
deși a fost conștient că o eliminare
a acestei dimensiuni psihologice
pune în discuție preceptul
fundamental, conform căruia nu
poate exista pedeapsă fără
vinovăție. Vinovăția este „un
principiu în mod esențial
intersubiectiv” pentru că dreptul,
atunci când interpretează fapta,
infracțiune sau delict, nu pleacă de
la un proces psihologic (deși
afirmă acest lucru prin formulări
de genul „reflectarea în
conștiință”), ci de la ceea ce este
externalizat în mod obiectiv.
Totuși, ceea ce este exteriorizat nu
este judecat de drept pentru
obiectivitatea sa, ci pentru
mișcarea psihică internă din care a
plecat. Ceea ce vrea să spună
Schmitt aici este că dreptul
analizează fapta prin prisma
efectelor pe care le produce,
devierea de la prescripția legală,
pentru necesitatea de a atribui
fapta unui subiect și proceselor
sale de conștiință. Este doar
aparent că dreptul se interesează în
mod esențial de psihicul
subiectului, ceea ce rămâne
important este funcția
de atribuire a comiterii faptei unui
subiect, proces care intervine în
mod secundar.
În cultura juridică europeană s-a
produs o mutație atunci când de la
culpa romană, nesubstantivizată,
relațională, faptică (culpa nu poate
și nu trebuie înțeleasă în realitate
decât ca o faptă culpabilă) s-a
ajuns la un concept substanțial de
vinovăție care spune ceva despre
subiect.
Navigând prin sursele primare ale
dreptului roman, prin textele
Sfinților Părinți, lucrări teologice
și filosofice relevante, Agamben
descrie tabloul acestor mutații,
analizând trecerea de la cultura
antică centrată pe potențial la cea
creștină axată pe voință, la
edificarea conceptului de voință
juridică ce se sprijină pe liberul
arbitru (unde evidențiază rădăcina
eminamente juridică a lui liberum
arbitrium, nicidecum religioasă),
la înțelesurile ideii de
responsabilitate/răspundere
morală/juridică.
Credem că dreptul modern reține
„urme” ale dreptului antic (dreptul
roman fiind doar una dintre
formele sale, chiar dacă cea mai
bine conturată), urme care încearcă
să rămână prezente și care
amintesc de faptul că între acțiune
și responsabilitate (conjuncție-
sursă a eticii europene de sorginte
greco-romană) nu se găsește ceva
de genul unui „subiect culpabil”, o
ipoteză care poate lipsi dintr-o
analiză juridică, chiar dacă o
îndelungată tradiție creștină a
încercat să-l impună cu necesitate.
Prin tipul de cercetări de tipul celor
agambiene, genealogice, nu doar
că readucem în discuție
semnificațiile latente ale unor
concepte, dar și (re)descoperim
importanța pe care dreptul a avut-o
în modelarea religiei, filosofiei,
politicii, într-un raport diferit față
de cel considerat până în prezent.

[1] Subintitulată “scurt tratat cu

privire la acțiune, vinovăție și
gest”; karman este un termen indo-
european, sanscrit, care semnifică
muncă în general (bună sau rea),
sau acțiune, și care, conform
indologilor, este sursa lui crimen.
Cartea este disponibilă aici.
[2] Amintim doar în treacăt de
Friedrich Nietzsche, maestrul
absolut al denunțării și criticii la
adresa ideii de subiect culpabil.
When the state is unjust, citizens
may use justifiable violence
Jason Brennan
is professor of strategy, economics,
ethics and public policy at
Georgetown University. He is the
author, together with Peter
Jaworski, of Markets Without
Limits (2015), and his latest book
is When All Else Fails: The Ethics
of Resistance to State
Injustice (2018).
Published in association with
Princeton University Press
an Aeon Strategic Partner
1,300 words
Edited by Marina Benjamin

REPUBLISH FOR FREE

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 Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu
Agency/Getty Images
If you see police choking someone
to death – such as Eric Garner, the
43-year-old black horticulturalist
wrestled down on the streets of
New York City in 2014 – you
might choose to pepper-spray them
and flee. You might even save an
innocent life. But what ethical
considerations justify such
dangerous heroics? (After all, the
cops might arrest or kill you.)
More important: do we have the
right to defend ourselves and
others from government injustice
when government agents are
following an unjust law? I think
the answer is yes. But that view
needs defending. Under what
circumstances might active self-
defence, including possible
violence, be justified, as opposed
to the passive resistance of civil
disobedience that Americans
generally applaud?
Civil disobedience is a public act
that aims to create social or legal
change. Think of Henry David
Thoreau’s arrest in 1846 for
refusing to pay taxes to fund the
colonial exploits of the United
States, or Martin Luther King Jr
courting the ire of the authorities in
1963 to shame white America into
respecting black civil rights. In
such cases, disobedient citizens
visibly break the law and accept
punishment, so as to draw attention
to a cause. But justifiable
resistance need not have a civic
character. It need not aim at
changing the law, reforming
dysfunctional institutions or
replacing bad leaders. Sometimes,
it is simply about stopping an
immediate injustice. If you stop a
mugging, you are trying to
stop that mugging in that moment,
not trying to end muggings
everywhere. Indeed, had you
pepper-sprayed the police officer
Daniel Pantaleo while he choked
Eric Garner, you’d have been
trying to save Garner, not reform
US policing.
Generally, we agree that it’s wrong
to lie, cheat, steal, deceive,
manipulate, destroy property or
attack people. But few of us think
that the prohibitions against such
actions are absolute.
Commonsense morality holds that
such actions are permissible in
self-defence or in defence of others
(even if the law doesn’t always
agree). You may lie to the
murderer at the door. You may
smash the windows of the would-
be kidnapper’s car. You may kill
the would-be rapist.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Updates on everything new at
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policy here
Here’s a philosophical exercise.
Imagine a situation in which a
civilian commits an injustice, the
kind against which you believe it is
permissible to use deception,
subterfuge or violence to defend
yourself or others. For instance,
imagine your friend makes an
improper stop at a red light, and
his dad, in anger, yanks him out of
the car, beats the hell out of him,
and continues to strike the back of
his skull even after your friend lies
subdued and prostrate. May you
use violence, if it’s necessary to
stop the father? Now imagine the
same scene, except this time the
attacker is a police officer in Ohio,
and the victim is Richard Hubbard
III, who in 2017 experienced just
such an attack as described. Does
that change things? Must you let
the police officer possibly kill
Hubbard rather than intervene?
Most people answer yes, believing
that we are forbidden from
stopping government agents who
violate our rights. I find this
puzzling. On this view, my
neighbours can eliminate our right
of self-defence and our rights to
defend others by granting someone
an office or passing a bad law. On
this view, our rights to life, liberty,
due process and security of person
can disappear by political fiat – or
even when a cop has a bad day.
In When All Else Fails: The Ethics
of Resistance to State
Injustice (2019), I argue instead
that we may act defensively
against government agents under
the same conditions in which we
may act defensively against
civilians. In my view, civilian and
government agents are on a par,
and we have identical rights of
self-defence (and defence of
others) against both. We should
presume, by default, that
government agents have no special
immunity against self-defence,
unless we can discover good
reason to think otherwise. But it
turns out that the leading
arguments for special immunity
are weak.
Some people say we may not
defend ourselves against
government injustice because
governments and their agents have
‘authority’. (By definition, a
government has authority over you
if, and only if, it can oblige you to
obey by fiat: you have to do what
it says because it says so.) But the
authority argument doesn’t work.
It’s one thing to say that you have
a duty to pay your taxes, show up
for jury duty, or follow the speed
limit. It is quite another to show
that you are specifically bound to
allow a government and its agents
to use excessive violence and
ignore your rights to due process.
A central idea in liberalism is that
whatever authority governments
have is limited.
Others say that we should resist
government injustice, but only
through peaceful methods. Indeed,
we should, but that doesn’t
differentiate between self-defence
against civilians or government.
The common-law doctrine of self-
defence is always governed by a
necessity proviso: you may lie or
use violence only if necessary, that
is, only if peaceful actions are not
as effective. But peaceful methods
often fail to stop wrongdoing. Eric
Garner peacefully complained: ‘I
can’t breathe,’ until he drew his
last breath.
Another argument is that we
shouldn’t act as vigilantes. But
invoking this point here
misunderstands the antivigilante
principle, which says that when
there exists a workable public
system of justice, you should defer
to public agents trying, in good
faith, to administer justice. So if
cops attempt to stop a mugging,
you shouldn’t insert yourself. But
if they ignore or can’t stop a
mugging, you may intervene. If the
police themselves are the muggers
– as in unjust civil forfeiture – the
antivigilante principle does not
forbid you from defending
yourself. It insists you defer to
more competent government
agents when they administer
justice, not that you must let them
commit injustice.
Some people find my thesis too
dangerous. They claim that it’s
hard to know exactly when self-
defence is justified; that people
make mistakes, resisting when
they should not. Perhaps. But
that’s true of self-defence against
civilians, too. No one says we lack
a right of self-defence against each
other because applying the
principle is hard. Rather, some
moral principles are hard to apply.
However, this objection gets the
problem exactly backwards. In real
life, people are too deferential and
conformist in the face of
government authority. They are
all-too-willing to electrocute
experimental subjects, gas Jews or
bomb civilians when ordered to,
and reluctant to stand up to
political injustice. If anything, the
dangerous thesis – the thesis that
most people will mistakenly
misapply – is that we should defer
to government agents when they
seem to act unjustly. Remember,
self-defence against the state is
about stopping an immediate
injustice, not fixing broken rules.
Of course, strategic nonviolence is
usually the most effective way to
induce lasting social change. But
we should not assume that
strategic nonviolence of the sort
that King practised always works
alone. Two recent books – Charles
Cobb Jr’s This Nonviolent Stuff’ll
Get You Killed (2014) and
Akinyele Omowale Umoja’s We
Will Shoot Back (2013) – show
that the later ‘nonviolent’ phase of
US civil rights activism succeeded
(in so far as it has) only because, in
earlier phases, black people armed
themselves and shot back in self-
defence. Once murderous mobs
and white police learned that black
people would fight back, they
turned to less violent forms of
oppression, and black people in
turn began using nonviolent
tactics. Defensive subterfuge,
deceit and violence are rarely first
resorts, but that doesn’t mean they
are never justified.
Is religion better than atheism as
a coping mechanism?
Unthinkable: Secular philosophies
‘lack the melodrama of religion’,
says Stephen Asma
Tue, Nov 27, 2018, 05:00

Joe Humphreys

5
Children prepare for a nativity
play: “Religion is filled with
fantastical superheroes and
stories.” Photograph: Frank Miller

Many of us have been there in

darker moments: You hadn’t
crossed the threshold of a church
in ages but suddenly you find
yourself starting a conversation
with God.
Stephen Asma knows the feeling.
“I’m an agnostic and a citizen of a
wealthy nation, but when my own
son was in the emergency room
with an illness, I prayed
spontaneously,” he confesses.
Asma, a professor of philosophy at
Columbia College, Chicago, has
written a powerful response to
New Atheists in his book Why We
Need Religion(Oxford University
Press). Of Richard
Dawkins and Sam Harris, he says:
“I agree with them that religion
fails miserably at the bar of
rational validity, but we’re at the
wrong bar.” Religion is not
necessarily meant to be true, he
argues, but it’s meant to be useful.
“Religion helps people, rightly or
wrongly, manage their emotional
lives” and especially cope with
pain.
Asma, this week’s Unthinkable
guest, thus makes the case that
“the reduction of human suffering”
– rather than intellectual coherence
– “should be the standard by which
we measure every religion”.
You portray religion as a coping
mechanism, or emotional crutch.
But do we really need it?
Stephen Asma: “Everyone needs
coping mechanisms. Everyone
needs emotional help now and
then. My argument is a Darwinian
defence of religion. Religion is the
oldest system of cultural
adaptation for apes like us, who
need to cooperate well with others
and survive stressful psychological
challenges.
“When I say ‘we need it’, I mean a
few things. The ‘we’ here refers to
Homo sapiens over historical time
spans, up to the present. A specific
reader of this interview might feel
liberated and unencumbered by
religion, but around the world a
vast majority of people use
religion like a life-preserver to get
through the difficult days and
weeks.
“I lived in Cambodia and travelled
a lot in the developing world.
Many people are crushingly poor
and do not have access to
medicine, and when a loved one is
dying of an injury or terminal
illness – or the family is going
hungry – then there is no other
consolation but religion.
“My view, however, is deeper than
the old saw, ‘reason for the few,
magic for the many’. I think many
of us with good educations, living
in developed countries, will also
meet with miseries that cannot be
ameliorated or consoled by
scientific means. . .
“Religion is real consolation in the
same way that music is real
consolation. It doesn’t need to
correspond to reality in order to
work.”
What about secular philosophies
like humanism, stoicism or some
kind of virtue theory? Could
they not adequately serve the
same function as religion?
“Humanism, stoicism and virtue
theory are indeed very powerful
ways of training the mind to
handle misfortune, and they also
help clarify our values. But they
never catch on with anybody
besides a tiny, elite, educated clan
because those philosophies lack
the drama – indeed the melodrama
– of religion.
“Religion is filled with fantastical
superheroes and bad guys, cosmic
struggles, and stories of adventure,
tribulations and victories, with
images of hybrid gods and
monsters, together with group
activities like fasting rituals,
sacrifices, songs, and so on. This
kind of melodrama is often
dismissed by the sceptic as ‘bread
and circuses’ or even ‘opiates’ for
stupid people. But the sceptic fails
to appreciate that we humans see
the world primarily in dramatic
narrative terms, not in objective
scientific terms.
“Religion not only provides a
coherent and deep narrative for
people, but it also activates our
limbic emotional brains – the
affective roots of empathy, care,
courage and so on.
“As much as I love the stoicism of
Seneca and the virtue theory of
Aristotle and Confucius, they are
too dry and dull to motivate large-
scale societies to cooperate better.
And their power to console comes
after years of rigorous intellectual
study, psychological discipline,
and even aesthetic refinement. By
contrast, most people trying to
survive, to raise their families and
possibly thrive need help right
now.”
Would a world without religion
be better than what we have
now?
“It’s common for critics of religion
to acknowledge its occasional
therapeutic aspect, but quickly
remind us that religion is a form of
‘reality denial’ or ‘reality
avoidance’. No doubt this is true in
some cases, but
psychologist Kenneth
Pargament found substantial data
that religion’s main power lies in
its ‘ability to appraise negative
events from a different vantage
point. Crises become an
opportunity for closeness with God
. . . Even the most desperate
situations can be appraised in a
more benevolent light from the
religious perspective.’
“According to this view, religion
does not increase coping by
denying reality, but by reframing it
in a manner that inspires resolve,
or courage, or whatever is needed.
In this regard, it functions like the
friend who helps you see your
troubles in a more positive light.
Like the friend, religion helps one
reframe obstacles as opportunities.
“Today, most critics of religion are
Enlightenment-styled rationalists,
who see religion as a dark cloud,
obscuring the light of reason.
Supernaturalism is the great
delusion that distracts our
otherwise optimal, rational
calculations of life – if only
religion could get out of the way!
 “In my book, I try to show why
religion will always speak to the
deeper and more desperate
recesses of the human psyche. The
human mind remains irrational and
vulnerable, no matter how trained
and mature the rational mind
becomes. Rationality cannot do the
heavy lifting that is required in the
face of devastating loss. What is
needed is positive emotion and
pain-reduction – in a word,
religion.” Un martir al zilelor
noastre: România
Andrei PLEŞU

Distribuie cu:
•
•

Aparut in Dilema veche, nr. 771,

29 noiembrie – 5 decembrie 2018
Constat că se răspîndește galopant
ideea unei Românii victimizate de
Bruxelles, dar și de alte „oficine“
cu autoritate planetară. Am ajuns
„colonia ălora“, sîntem disprețuiți,
jecmăniți de toate bunurile, privați
de suveranitate, tratați
discriminatoriu față de celelalte
state membre ale Uniunii
Europene. Priviți de sus, ca niște
școlari netrebnici, manipulați
grosolan de tot soiul de „agenturi“
oculte, împinși, inexorabil, spre
destrămare teritorială și catastrofă
națională. Dar dușmani sînt nu
numai în afara țării. E plin de
trădători printre noi, români
antiromâni, colaboratori înrăiți ai
forțelor răului, unelte „securistice“
ale „statului paralel“. Cum să nu te
sperii?! Și cum să nu te întrebi ce
le-a cășunat tuturor pe biata
noastră țărișoară: calomniată,
spoliată, marginalizată, lovită în ce
are mai scump. În fond, ce au cu
noi? De ce tocmai cu noi? De ce
nu se reped asupra Cehiei, a
Slovaciei, a Portugaliei, a
Sloveniei și Croației, a Letoniei și
Estoniei? E drept că sindromul
persecuției a apărut și în Ungaria și
Polonia. (Un neașteptat beneficiu
al acestei crize: apropierea
suferindă de vecinii noștri
maghiari, brusc solidari, tovarăși
de idei, nedreptățiți de aceiași
tirani de la „centru“!)
Retorica anticolonialistă valorifică
temele tradiționale ale
„exploatării“ la care ne supun, de
veacuri, străinii: amestecul în
treburile interne, prădarea
bogățiilor dăruite, preferențial, de
Dumnezeu, subminarea tradițiilor
strămoșești. (Teme colaterale:
Soros, multinaționalele, „oculta“
mondială, #rezist, intelectualitatea
vîndută.) Putem avea, totuși,
oarecari nedumeriri:
1) Uniunea Europeană nu e chiar
totuna, cum se spune, cu „Poarta
Otomană“. Nu ne-a „cotropit“, nu
ne-a băgat pe gît conducătorii, nu
ne cere tribut. Dimpotrivă! Noi am
luat-o cu asalt, noi am vrut să fim
„integrați“, ne-am luptat ani de-a
rîndul să intrăm în „club“ și ne
bucurăm, chiar și acum, să
accesăm fonduri europene.
Evident, am asumat în
contrapartidă, nesiliți de nimeni,
anumite reguli comunitare. Cu alte
cuvinte, „colonizații“ sînt cei care
au forțat ușa „coloniștilor“, iar
acum se simt abuzați… Cît despre
conducători, ni i-am ales, vai,
singuri…
2) Ni se fură bogățiile. „UE ne fură
femeile, copiii, inteligenţa,
zăcămintele, solul şi văzduhul“ –
spune, sfîșiat sufletește, un patriot
de scenă. Dar oare pădurile noastre
au fost tăiate și împachetate pe
furiș, noaptea, de tîlhărești
comandouri alogene sau au fost
vîndute șmecher de românași de-ai
noștri? Iar nenumărații conaționali
(de ambe sexe) care părăsesc patria
sînt adunați de răuvoitorii externi
cu arcanul? Cît despre „văzduh“,
ne descurcăm singuri. N-avem
nevoie de poluatori din afară.
3) Pe de altă parte, e destul de
curios că marile voci
anticolonialiste nu s-au făcut
niciodată auzite pe vremea cînd
eram prizonierii dictaturii
comuniste sau parte a „lagărului“
(nu întîmplător numit astfel)
socialist. A fi sub sfera de
influență sovietică, de la Stalin la
Brejnev, pare să fi fost o bagatelă.
Grav e să fim „umiliți“ de Uniunea
Europeană! Avem, brusc, mari eroi
ai luptei pentru neatîrnare! Un
parlamentar specializat în
democrația mitralierei afirmă,
încercănat, că, pe vremea cînd
Brâncuși sculpta, „europenii“
(„așa-ziși“) făceau orgii (?!). Un
ziar titrează: „Maria Grapini,
singura voce a României“. (N-ar fi,
totuși, preferabil, un „colonialist“
cît de cît educat?) Un tînăr țanțoș,
de viitor, versiune răsturnată a
mișcării #rezist, scrie, curajos,
ștabilor de la Bruxelles, ca să le
bată obrazul. Nu ratează momentul
nici dl Arșinel, cel despre care am
aflat, tîrziu, că e nu numai „erou al
Revoluției“, ba chiar „erou cu
merite deosebite“ (înțeleg că, dacă
nu era el, Ceaușescu era încă la
putere…). Ei bine, comicul
cupletist se simte „călcat pe
grumaz“! De ce? Europenii (care,
potrivit cercetărilor domniei-sale,
fură mai abitir ca noi) vor să-l
condamne la înlocuirea mămăligii
matinale cu pîinea prăjită! Poftesc
la lucruri pe care nu le avem decît
noi. Ca să nu mai spunem că, după
cele două războaie mondiale, o
mulțime de țări au, la noi, datorii
de miliarde!
Ce-au toți cu noi?! Păi, n-am
inventat noi (adică strămoșii noștri
daci) scrisul? Nu i-am învățat noi
latinește pe romani? Nu ne-a
explicat dl Funar că teoria
relativității a fost ideea unui
profesor din Cîmpina, furată,
ulterior, de evrei și pasată lui
Einstein? Expresia „Fiul Omului“
din Evanghelie nu dovedește,
cumva, că Iisus era de prin partea
locului, frate cu vîrful „Omul“?
Păi, aici e tot șpilul: omenirea e
ofticată. Vrea să ne evacueze, ca
să-și regăsească prestigiul, onoarea
„nereperată“, întîietatea!
Pe scurt: o mică formațiune de
gladiatori încercați, gata de
sacrificiu pe altarul națiunii (ați
ghicit: Dragnea, Tăriceanu,
Dăncilă, Codrin, Olguța, Carmen
și încă doi-trei viteji asemenea) țin
piept, obidiți, dar mîndri,
barbarilor care vor să ne tîrască în
mocirla istoriei. Să ne bucurăm că
sîntem bine apărați, că sîntem
reprezentați de cine trebuie. Vom
învinge! Cu asemenea conducători,
dreptatea va fi mereu de partea
noastră! Și ne vom descurca fără
probleme, orice-ar fi! Noapte bună,
vise plăcute!
Beyond true and false
Buddhist philosophy is full of
contradictions. Now modern logic
 is learning why that might be a
good thing
Illustration by Fumitake Uchida
Graham Priest
is distinguished professor of
philosophy at City University of
New York and professor emeritus
at the University of Melbourne.
His latest book is One (2014). He
lives in New York.
3,800 words
Edited by Ed Lake

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Western philosophers have not, on
the whole, regarded Buddhist
thought with much enthusiasm. As
a colleague once said to me: ‘It’s
all just mysticism.’ This attitude is
due, in part, to ignorance. But it is
also due to incomprehension.
When Western philosophers look
East, they find things they do not
understand – not least the fact that
the Asian traditions seem to
accept, and even endorse,
contradictions. Thus we find the
great second-century Buddhist
philosopher Nagarjuna saying:
The nature of things is to have no
nature; it is their non-nature that is
their nature. For they have only
one nature: no-nature.
An abhorrence of contradiction has
been high orthodoxy in the West
for more than 2,000 years.
Statements such as Nagarjuna’s are
therefore wont to produce looks of
blank incomprehension, or worse.
As Avicenna, the father of
Medieval Aristotelianism,
declared:
Anyone who denies the law of
non-contradiction should be beaten
and burned until he admits that to
be beaten is not the same as not to
be beaten, and to be burned is not
the same as not to be burned.
One can hear similar sentiments,
expressed with comparable
ferocity, in many faculty common
rooms today. Yet Western
philosophers are slowly learning to
outgrow their parochialism. And
help is coming from a most
unexpected direction: modern
mathematical logic, not a field that
is renowned for its tolerance of
obscurity.
Let’s start by turning back the
clock. It is India in the fifth
century BCE, the age of the
historical Buddha, and a rather
peculiar principle of reasoning
appears to be in general use. This
principle is called the catuskoti,
meaning ‘four corners’. It insists
that there are four possibilities
regarding any statement: it might
be true (and true only), false (and
false only), both true and false, or
neither true nor false.
We know that the catuskoti was in
the air because of certain questions
that people asked the Buddha, in
exchanges that come down to us in
the sutras. Questions such as: what
happens to enlightened people
after they die? It was commonly
assumed that an unenlightened
person would keep being reborn,
but the whole point of
enlightenment was to get out of
this vicious circle. And then what?
Did you exist, not, both or neither?
The Buddha’s disciples clearly
expected him to endorse one and
only one of these possibilities.
This, it appears, was just how
people thought.
At around the same time, 5,000km
to the west in Ancient Athens,
Aristotle was laying the
foundations of Western logic along
very different lines. Among his
innovations were two singularly
important rules. One of them was
the Principle of Excluded Middle
(PEM), which says that every
claim must be either true or false
with no other options (the Latin
name for this rule, tertium non
datur, means literally ‘a third is
not given’). The other rule was the
Principle of Non-Contradiction
(PNC): nothing can be both true
and false at the same time.
Writing in his Metaphysics,
Aristotle defended both of these
principles against transgressors
such as Heraklitus (nicknamed ‘the
Obscure’). Unfortunately,
Aristotle’s own arguments are
somewhat tortured – to put it
mildly – and modern scholars find
it difficult even to say what they
are supposed to be. Yet Aristotle
succeeded in locking the PEM and
the PNC into Western orthodoxy,
where they have remained ever
since. Only a few intrepid spirits,
most notably G W F Hegel in the
19th century, ever thought to
challenge them. And now many of
Aristotle’s intellectual descendants
find it very difficult to imagine life
without them.
That is why Western thinkers –
even those sympathetic to
Buddhist thought – have struggled
to grasp how something such as
the catuskoti might be possible.
Never mind a third not being
given, here was a fourth – and that
fourth was itself a contradiction.
How to make sense of that?
Well, contemporary developments
in mathematical logic show exactly
how to do it. In fact, it’s not hard
at all.
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At the core of the explanation, one
has to grasp a very basic
mathematical distinction. I speak
of the difference between
a relationand a function. A relation
is something that relates a certain
kind of object to some number of
others (zero, one, two, etc). A
function, on the other hand, is a
special kind of relation that links
each such object to exactly
one thing. Suppose we are talking
about people. Mother of and father
of are functions, because every
person has exactly one (biological)
mother and exactly one father.
But son of and daughter of are
relations, because parents might
have any number of sons and
daughters. Functions give a unique
output; relations can give any
number of outputs. Keep that
distinction in mind; we’ll come
back to it a lot.
Now, in logic, one is generally
interested in whether a given claim
is true or false. Logicians call true
and false truth values. Normally,
and following Aristotle, it is
assumed that ‘value of’ is a
function: the value of any given
assertion is exactly one
of true (or T), and false (or F). In
this way, the principles of
excluded middle (PEM) and non-
contradiction (PNC) are built into
the mathematics from the start. But
they needn’t be.
To get back to something that the
Buddha might recognise, all we
need to do is make value of into a
relation instead of a function.
Thus T might be a value of a
sentence, as can F, both, or neither.
We now have four possibilities:
{T}, {F}, {T,F} and { }. The curly
brackets, by the way, indicate that
we are dealing with sets of truth
values rather than individual ones,
as befits a relation rather than a
function. The last pair of brackets
denotes what mathematicians call
the empty set: it is a collection with
no members, like the set of
humans with 17 legs. It would be
conventional in mathematics to
represent our four values using
something called a Hasse diagram,
like so:
{T}
↗↖
{T, F} { }
↖↗
{F}
Thus the four kotis (corners) of
the catuskoti appear before us.
In case this all sounds rather
convenient for the purposes of
Buddhist apologism, I should
mention that the logic I have just
described is called First Degree
Entailment (FDE). It was
originally constructed in the 1960s
in an area called relevant logic.
Exactly what this is need not
concern us, but the US logician
Nuel Belnap argued that FDE was
a sensible system for databases
that might have been fed
inconsistent or incomplete
information. All of which is to say,
it had nothing to do with
Buddhism whatsoever.
Even so, you might be wondering
how on earth something could be
both true and false, or neither true
nor false. In fact, the idea that
some claims are neither true nor
false is a very old one in Western
philosophy. None other than
Aristotle himself argued for one
kind of example. In the somewhat
infamous Chapter 9 of De
Interpretatione, he claims that
contingent statements about the
future, such as ‘the first pope in the
22nd century will be African’, are
neither true nor false. The future is,
as yet, indeterminate. So much for
his arguments in the Metaphysics.
The notion that some things might
be both true and false is much
more unorthodox. But here, too,
we can find some plausible
examples. Take the notorious
‘paradoxes of self-reference’, the
oldest of which, reputedly
discovered by Eubulides in the
fourth century BCE, is called the
Liar Paradox. Here’s its
commonest expression:
This statement is false.
Where’s the paradox? If the
statement is true, then it is indeed
false. But if it is false, well, then it
is true. So it seems to be both true
and false.
Many similar puzzles turned up at
the end of the 19th century, to the
dismay of the scholars who were
then trying to place mathematics as
a whole on solid foundations. It
was the leader of these efforts,
Bertrand Russell, who in 1901
discovered the most famous such
paradox (hence its name, Russell’s
Paradox). And it goes like this:
Some sets are members of
themselves; the set of all sets, for
example, is a set, so it belongs to
itself. But some sets are not
members of themselves. The set of
cats, for example, is not a cat, so
it’s not a member of the set of cats.
But what about the set of all the
sets that are not members of
themselves? If it is a member of
itself, then it isn’t. But if it isn’t,
then it is. It seems that it both is
and isn’t. So, goodbye Principle of
Non-Contradiction.
The catuskotibeckons.
Here you might wish to pause for a
brief sanity check. Do scenarios
such as these really break the
chains of Aristotelian logic? Well,
an increasing number of logicians
are coming to think so – though
matters remain highly contentious.
Still, if nothing else, examples of
this kind might help to remove the
blinkers imposed by what
Wittgenstein called ‘a one-sided
diet’ of examples. We’ll need to
keep those blinkers off as we
return to those tricky questions that
the Buddha’s disciples asked him.
After all, what does happen to an
enlightened person after death?
Things are going to get only more
disconcerting from here on in.
The Buddha, in fact, refused to
answer such queries. In some
sutras, he just says that they are a
waste of time: you don’t need to
bother with them to achieve
enlightenment. But in other texts
there is a suggestion that
something more is going on.
Though the idea is never really
elaborated, there are hints that
none of the four possibilities in
the catuskoti ‘fits the case’.
For a long time, this riddle lay
dormant in Buddhist philosophy. It
was only around the second
century CE that it was taken up by
Nagarjuna, probably the most
important and influential Buddhist
philosopher after the Buddha
himself. Nagarjuna’s writings
defined the new version of
Buddhism that was emerging at the
time: Mahayana. Central to his
teachings is the view that things
are ‘empty’ (sunya). This does not
mean that they are non-existent;
only that they are what they are
because of how they relate to other
things. As the quotation at the
beginning of this essay explains,
their nature is to have no intrinsic
nature (and the task of making
precise logical sense of this claim I
leave for the reader to ponder;
suffice it to say, it can be done).
The most important of Nagarjuna’s
writings is
the Mulamadhyamakakarika, the
‘Fundamental Verses of the
Middle Way’. This is a profound
and cryptic book, whose principle
theme is precisely that everything
is empty. In the course of making
his arguments, Nagarjuna often
runs through the four cases of
the catuskoti. In some places,
moreover, he clearly states that
there are situations in which none
of the four applies. They don’t
cover the status of an enlightened
person after death, for example.
Why might that be? Nagarjuna’s
reasoning is somewhat opaque, but
essentially it seems to go
something like this. The language
we use frames our conventional
reality (our Lebenswelt, as it is
called in the German
phenomenological tradition).
Beneath that there is an ultimate
reality, such as the condition of the
enlightened dead person. One can
experience this directly in certain
meditative states, but one cannot
describe it. To say anything about
it would merely succeed in making
it part of our conventional reality;
it is, therefore, ineffable. In
particular, one cannot describe it
by using any of the four
possibilities furnished by
the catuskoti.
It is striking how useful his
invention proves in the context of
Buddhist metaphysics, though
Buddhism played no part in
inspiring it
We now have a fifth possibility.
Let us write the four original
possibilities, {T}, {F}, {T, F} and
{}, as t, f, b and n, respectively.
The way we set things up
earlier, value of was a relation and
the sets were the possibilities that
each statement might relate to. But
we could have taken value of as a
function and
allowed t, f, b and n to be the
values that the function can take.
And now there is a fifth possible
value – none of the above,
ineffable, that which lies beyond
language. Call it i. (Strictly
speaking, it is states of affairs that
are ineffable, not claims, so our
values have to be thought of as the
values of states of affairs; but let
us slide over this subtlety.)
If something is ineffable, i, it is
certainly neither true nor false. But
then how does i differ
from n, neither true nor false? If
we are looking at individual
propositions, it is indeed tricky to
discern any difference. However,
the contrast comes out quite
clearly when we try to join two
sentences together.
Look at the sentence ‘Crows can
fly and pigs can fly.’ You’ll notice
that it is made up of two distinct
claims, fused together by the word
‘and’. Expressions that are formed
in this way are called conjunctions,
and the individual claims that
make them up are known
as conjuncts. A conjunction is true
only if both conjuncts are true.
That means it is false if even one
conjunct is false. ‘Crows can fly
and pigs can fly’, for example, is
false as a whole because of the
falsity of the second conjunct
alone. Similarly, if p is any
sentence that is neither true nor
false, that means ‘p and pigs can
fly’ is false. By contrast, if p is
ineffable, then ‘p and pigs can fly’
is ineffable too. After all, if we
could express the conjunction, we
could express p as well – which we
can’t. So i and n behave differently
in
conjunctions: f trumps n and i trum
ps f.
What I have just described is an
example of a many-valued logic,
though not a common one. Such
logics were invented by the Polish
logician Jan Łukasiewicz in the
1920s. He was motivated, as it
happens, by Aristotle’s arguments
that contingent statements about
the future are neither true nor false.
In order to make sense of such
claims, Łukasiewicz came up with
a third truth value. It is indeed
striking how useful his invention
proves in the context of Buddhist
metaphysics, though once again,
Buddhism played no part in
inspiring it. His innovation is
entirely the product of the Western
philosophical tradition.
On the other hand, if
Łukasiewicz really wanted to get
to grips with Buddhist thought, he
shouldn’t have stopped with his
many-valued logics. Perhaps you
have already seen what’s coming
next…
Philosophers in the Mahayana
traditions hold some things to be
ineffable; but they also explain
why they are ineffable, in much
the way that I did. Now, you can’t
explain why something is ineffable
without talking about it. That’s a
plain contradiction: talking of the
ineffable.
Embarrassing as this predicament
might appear, Nagarjuna is far
from being the only one stuck in it.
The great lodestar of the German
Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant,
said that there are things one
cannot experience (noumena), and
that we cannot talk about such
things. He also explained why this
is so: our concepts apply only to
things we can experience. Clearly,
he is in the same fix as Nagarjuna.
So are two of the greatest 20th-
century Western philosophers.
Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that
many things can be shown but not
said, and wrote a whole book
(the Tractatus), explaining what
and why. Martin Heidegger made
himself famous by asking
what Being is, and then spent
much of the rest of his life
explaining why you can’t even ask
this question. Call it mysticism if
you want; the label has little
enough meaning. But whatever
you call it, it is rife in great
philosophy – Eastern and Western.
Anyway, what did Nagarjuna
make of this problem? Nothing
much. He didn’t even comment on
it. Perhaps that’s not so surprising:
after all, he thought that certain
things might be simultaneously
true and false. But later Buddhist
philosophers did try to wriggle out
of it, not least the influential 15th-
century Tibetan philosopher,
Gorampa.
Pardon? In explaining what they
do, are we not talking about them?
Well, yes, of course we are
Gorampa was troubled enough by
the situation that he attempted to
distinguish between two ultimate
realities: a real ultimate reality,
which is ineffable, and a ‘nominal’
ultimate reality, which is what we
end up talking about when we try
to talk about the real ultimate. But
wait a minute –
the nominal ultimate is obviously
effable: by definition, it is the
reality that we can talk about. In
that case, if we say that ultimate
reality is ineffable and we are
actually talking about the nominal
ultimate, what we are saying is
false. Thus Gorampa’s proposal
refutes itself.
Interestingly, Kant made a similar
move. He distinguished between
two notions of noumenon, the
realm beyond the senses: a positive
one and a negative one. According
to him, only the negative one is
legitimate. We cannot talk about
things of this kind; we just need to
be aware of them to mark the limit
of what we can talk about. Pardon?
In explaining what they do, are we
not talking about them? Well, yes,
of course we are.
The Gorampa/Kant predicament is,
in fact, inevitable. If one wishes to
explain why something is
ineffable, one must refer to it and
say something about it. To refer to
something else is just to change the
subject.
So we have now hit a new
problem: the contradiction
involved in talking of the ineffable.
In a sense, the possibility of a true
contradiction is already
accommodated by that both option
of the catuskoti. (Our Western
thinkers could not even say this
much.) Alas, our contradiction is
of a rather special kind. It requires
something to take both the
values true and ineffable, which,
on the understanding at hand, is
impossible. Yet the resources of
mathematical logic are not so
easily exhausted.
In fact, we have met something
like this before. We started with
two possible values, T and F. In
order to allow things to have both
of these values, we simply
took value of to be a relation, not a
function. Now we have five
possible values, t, f, b, n and i, and
we assumed that value of was a
function that took exactly one of
these values. Why not make it a
relation instead? That would allow
it to relate something to any
number of those five values
(giving us 32 possibilities, if you
count). In this construction,
something canrelate to both t and i:
and so one can say something true
about something ineffable after all.
The similarities between this and
our Buddhist paradox of
ineffability are, you must admit,
pretty unnerving
The technique we are using here is
called plurivalent logic, and it was
invented in the 1980s in
connection with the
aforementioned paradoxes of self-
reference. In fact, one of those
paradoxes is not a million miles
away from our ineffability
predicament. It is called König’s
paradox, after the Hungarian
mathematician Julius König who
wrote it up in 1905, and it
concerns ordinals.
Ordinals are numbers that extend
the familiar counting numbers, 0,
1, 2, etc, beyond the finite. After
we have been through all the finite
numbers (of which there is, of
course, an infinity), there is a next
number, ω, and then a next, ω+1,
and so on, forever. These ordinals
share an interesting property with
the counting numbers: for any set
of them, if there are any members
at all, there must be a least one.
How far, exactly, the ordinals go is
a vexed question both
mathematically and
philosophically. Nevertheless, one
fact is beyond dispute: there are
many more ordinals than can be
referred to using a noun phrase in a
language with a finite vocabulary,
such as English. This can be
shown by a perfectly rigorous
mathematical proof.
Now, if there are ordinals that
cannot be referred to in this way, it
follows that one of them must be
less than all the others, for that is
true of any collection of ordinals.
Consider the phrase ‘the least
ordinal that cannot be referred to’.
It obviously refers to the number in
question. This number, then, both
can and cannot be referred to.
That’s our paradox. And since it
cannot be referred to, one cannot
say anything about it. So the facts
about it are ineffable; but
we can say things about it, such as
that it is the least ordinal that can’t
be referred to. We have said
ineffable things.
The similarities between this and
our Buddhist paradox of
ineffability are, you must admit,
pretty unnerving. But those who
developed plurivalent logic were
entirely unaware of any Buddhist
connections. (I say this with
authority, since I was one of them.)
Once again, the strange claims of
our Buddhist philosophers fall into
precise mathematical place.
There is, of course, much more to
be said about all these matters. But
we have now seen something of
the lie of the land. So let me end
by stepping back and asking what
lessons are to be drawn from all
this.
One is a familiar one.
Mathematical techniques often
find unexpected applications.
Group theory was developed in the
19th century to chart the
commonality of various
mathematical structures. It found
an application in physics in the
20th century, notably in
connection with the Special
Theory of Relativity. Similarly,
those who developed the logical
techniques described above had no
idea of the Buddhist applications,
and would, I am sure, have been
very surprised by them.
The second lesson is quite
different and more striking.
Buddhist thought, and Asian
thought in general, has often been
written off by Western
philosophers. How can
contradictions be true? What’s all
this talk of ineffability? This is all
nonsense. The constructions I have
described show how to make
precise mathematical sense of the
Buddhist views. This does not, of
course, show that they are true.
That’s a different matter. But it
does show that these ideas can be
made as logically rigorous and
coherent as ideas can be. As the
Buddha may or may not have said
(or both, or neither): ‘There are
only two mistakes one can make
along the road to truth: not going
all the way, and not starting.’
When a bough breaks
Volcanic feelings of love and hate
are part of being a parent: it’s
dangerous to pretend otherwise
Hansel and Gretel – cast out by
their stepmother, but reunited with
their father after their ordeal in the
 woods. Illustration by Frank
Adams. Photo by Corbis
Edward Marriott
has written four books of non-
fiction, including Claude and
Madeleine: A True Story of War,
Espionage and Passion. He now
works as a psychotherapist.
3,300 words
Edited by Brigid Hains

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A suburban playground on a cold
winter’s day. A man in his early
30s, wearing a beanie, leather
jacket and scarf, pushes a toddler
on a swing, a dead look in his eyes.
On the climbing frame, twins are
jostling each other. Their mother
stands underneath, hopping from
foot to foot, her eyes darting from
one girl to the next, issuing
warnings, instructions; her voice
rises anxiously in pitch. Looking
around, I see only one adult
smiling, but then she’s talking to
her friend; their children are some
way off, fighting each other with
sticks.
There’s nothing particularly
striking here. It could be any day
of the week, in any town. And
there’s nothing revelatory about
the thought of parents secretly
wishing they were anywhere else
but the local playground, perhaps
envying their childless friends;
even wondering, during the
sleepless nights, or in the aftermath
of a fight with a recalcitrant
teenager, why they had children at
all. What is distinctive of our times
is how few parents — still, even in
our post-Freudian age — will
openly admit to feelings of
ambivalence towards their
children. In an age where very
little — from sex to money — is
left a mystery, parental
ambivalence remains one of the
last taboos.
And yet the fact of parental
ambivalence is a truth as old as
mythology itself. Think how many
fairytales begin with children
being cast out by parents, either, as
in the Brothers Grimm story
‘Brother and Sister’, being forced
to leave on their own; or, like
Hansel and Gretel, abandoned in a
place from where they cannot find
their way back. The fate reserved
for older children, often
adolescents, is usually more
severe: the jealous queen in ‘Snow
White’ orders her stepdaughter to
be killed; and, in ‘The Three
Languages’ by the Brothers
Grimm, the king, frustrated by an
adolescent son who persists in
going against his wishes,
eventually casts him out and orders
his servants to do away with him.
The narrative use of the wicked
stepmother is worth noting here:
it’s as if the child intuitively
understands that his mother (and
indeed father) can sometimes
harbour hostile feelings towards
him, but it’s safer to locate this
cruelty in the figure of the
stepmother, who can then be
dispatched to a bloody end.
When hostility is denied an outlet
in words, where else can it go but
outwards, in the form of some kind
of violence, or inwards as
depression?
Nursery rhymes similarly reassure
parents that there is nothing new
about sometimes feeling
murderous — rather than
perennially loving — towards their
children. And indeed what parent,
their sleep broken yet again by a
colicky baby, has not found some
relief in being able to gently sing
of the bough breaking and the
cradle falling to the ground at the
same time as they rock their baby
back to sleep? Or secretly enjoyed
the sadism meted out to the little
darlings — the dismembered
digits, the immolation, the
starvation — in Heinrich
Hoffmann’s 19th-century stories
about children behaving badly
in Der Struwwelpeter?
But first, some definitions. In
modern usage, ambivalence is
often taken to mean having mixed
feelings about something or
someone. This, though, is a
watering down of the concept. As
developed by psychoanalysis,
ambivalence refers to the fact that,
in a single impulse, we can feel
love and hate for the same person.
It’s a potent, unpalatable idea; and
in the grip of intense ambivalence
we can feel overwhelmed and
confused, as if a vicious civil war
is underway inside us: no wonder
we’d rather render it toothless.
And yet, as any honest parent will
tell you, this is often how it feels.
Speak of it, though — as Lionel
Shriver did in We Need to Talk
About Kevin (2003), where Eva,
the novel’s narrator, openly admits
to deeply ambivalent feelings
about her son Kevin — and you
will face criticism, even ostracism,
from those who would rather not
believe that parents can ever
harbour such feelings. The
problem with Eva, of course, was
not that she had ambivalent
feelings towards her son, but that
she dissembled throughout Kevin’s
upbringing, pretending, through all
her frantic biscuit-making, that all
she felt for her cold, unlikeable son
was love.
The question is why she, like so
many parents, found it so hard to
acknowledge her ambivalence,
even to herself. Part of the reason
must be that we all know — even
if we’re not abreast of current
statistics — that we live in a
society in which shockingly high
levels of violence are inflicted on
children. According to the
National Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children, one in four
young adults is ‘severely
maltreated’ during childhood,
whether in the form of sexual,
emotional, physical abuse or
neglect. It’s a startlingly high
figure, by anyone’s reckoning.
And, if we acknowledge that we,
too, sometimes have less than
loving feelings towards our
children; if we, too, sometimes
have the wish to hurt, even if we
are able to restrain ourselves, then
does this mean that we too could
be abusers? Every day, it seems,
brings a new story of parental
violence, neglect or abuse — a
father killing his children and
partner and burning down the
family home; a couple being
accused of murdering their toddler;
or the ‘feckless’ mother who
abandons her own daughter to take
a holiday. Who would not want to
put as much distance as they can
between such cases and their own
situation? Hence the attention
given to a novel such as The
Slap (2008) by Christos Tsiolkas,
where the inciting incident, and
cause of great parental angst, is a
grown man slapping a badly
behaved three-year-old boy (not
his own son) across the face.
Societal pressure exacerbates the
situation from the outset.
‘Congratulations!’ friends say, on
learning news of pregnancy. And
of course we might be pleased; but
we might also be anxious, dimly
aware of the pressure to be
unequivocally and everlastingly
grateful for our good fortune. The
greatest pressure, of course, is
placed on the mother, who is
expected to have an uncomplicated
and adoring relationship with her
baby; who is expected never to tire
of playing with Lego. For mothers,
the state of motherhood itself is
credited, in the words of the
psychotherapist Rozsika Parker,
author of Torn in Two: The
Experience of Maternal
Ambivalence (1995), with being
able to ‘satisfy a woman’s longing
for union’.
But what if, Parker writes, a
mother doesn’t ‘experience a
joyful sense of love and oneness’
immediately after giving birth?
‘Some do but many don’t,’ she
says:
… and warnings that it may not
happen tend to fall on deaf ears.
For women carry babies for nine
months within a culture which
represents the postnatal mother-
child social relationship as if it
represented the intrauterine state of
antenatal union. The 19th-century
tradition of presenting a new
mother with a pin cushion bearing
pins arranged to spell out the
words ‘Welcome Little Stranger’
was in many ways a more
appropriate representation of the
state of affairs.
Pins notwithstanding, consider
how much harder to admit to
ambivalence when you’ve been
through five cycles of IVF; or have
spent several years being grilled by
your local adoption agency before
being allowed to become a parent.
Whatever its constitutional
components, the current high
incidence of post-natal depression
in the UK, where some three out of
ten new mothers are said to be
afflicted, cannot be unrelated to the
pressure placed on mothers to deny
their ambivalence. Once hostility
is denied an outlet in words, where
can it go but outwards — in the
form of some kind of violence —
or inwards, as depression?
The paediatrician and
psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott,
who spent a lifetime working with
children and families, understood
why the scales of ambivalence
might tip more towards hate than
love. The baby, he wrote, ‘is a
danger to her body in pregnancy
and at birth’, he ‘is an interference
with her private life’ and he ‘is
ruthless, treats her as scum, an
unpaid servant, a slave’. He
‘shows disillusionment about her’,
he ‘refuses her good food… but
eats well with his aunt’; then,
having ‘got what he wants he
throws her away like orange peel’.
He ‘tries to hurt her’, and, ‘after an
awful morning with him she goes
out, and he smiles at a stranger,
who says: “Isn’t he sweet?”’
And then there is the effect of the
arrival of a third party — however
planned and wished for — on a
couple’s relationship. Nora
Ephron, who wrote When Harry
Met Sally… (1989), saw it
explosively: the birth of a baby,
she once said, was like ‘throwing a
hand grenade into a marriage’.
Lionel Shriver’s mother felt
similarly, warning the author, then
in her mid-30s and newly in love,
that, should she and her partner
decide to have a child, motherhood
would ‘completely transform’ their
relationship. ‘Though she did not
spell it out,’ Shriver has written,
‘there was no question that she
meant for the worse’. And yet
many couples, finding themselves
drifting apart, or fighting, opt to
have a baby (or another baby) in
the belief that this joint creation
will restore their lost unity.
Fortunately, societal expectations
are changing, albeit slowly. The
feminist movement of the 1960s
— typified by such books as Betty
Friedan’s The Feminine
Mystique (1963) — overturned
long-held received wisdoms that
designated motherhood (in the
words of the social researcher
Mary Georgina Boulton) as
‘intrinsically rewarding and not
problematic’ and refocused
attention on women’s actual
experience of motherhood. Even
so, Friedan set the blame for
maternal ambivalence at society’s
door, rather than acknowledging
that, like paternal ambivalence, the
very essence of the maternal role is
contradictory, and the feelings
roused in parents are equally
powerful and often confusing.
Even now, when 21st-century
mothers admit to ambivalence, as
Rachel Cusk bravely did in her
memoir A Life’s Work (2001), they
are attacked as irresponsible, even
unfit to be parents. And so we
continue to enter parenthood
blindly, relieved and proud that our
genes will survive, and oblivious
to the unrelenting demands ahead,
or that we have unwittingly signed
up for a job for life, with no
training, pay, prospect of
sabbatical leave, change of career
or get-out clause. It’s a job that
will require endless investment and
patience and, if all doesn’t go too
badly, one in which we are finally
made redundant. Of course there
are rewards, but these come fitfully
and often when we least expect
them.
Estela Welldon, author of the
acclaimed and influential
study Mother, Madonna, Whore:
The Idealisation and Denigration
of Motherhood (1988), says that
the trend to have children later in
life — and the consequent feeling
that having them involves
considerable sacrifice — can
trigger hostility towards children.
‘For people these days, having
children is a big investment,’ she
told me. ‘They often give up part
of their careers. Parents do so
much for their children that
sometimes I wonder if the parents
need the children more than the
other way around. The parents are
investing a lot, and they expect a
lot in return.’ If the return is not
forthcoming, hostility may not be
far away.
Before having children, and
provided we’ve moved on a little
from the maelstrom of
adolescence, it is possible to think
of ourselves as good people:
patient, kind, loving, tolerant
Hostility can also be triggered
when we are made to face things
we’d rather not. And few roles in
life do this with as much relentless
consistency as parenting. Before
having children, and provided
we’ve moved on a little from the
maelstrom of adolescence, it is
possible to think of ourselves as
good people: patient, kind, loving,
tolerant. A few years of
parenthood strips us of these
illusions and we see ourselves in
the raw: capable of fury, rage,
pettiness, jealousy — you name it.
For children confront us with the
infantile aspects of our own
personalities, the parts of ourselves
we’d most like to deny, and we can
hate them for it. Worse still, they
can thwart our wish, even our
need, to feel loving and effective.
When Mrs Morel, in DH
Lawrence’s Sons and
Lovers, acknowledges that she had
not wanted her son Paul because of
her relationship with her husband,
she looks at her child with fear:
‘Did it know all about her? When
it lay under her heart, had it been
listening then? Was there a
reproach in the look? She felt the
marrow melt in her bones, with
fear and pain.’ Aware of her
ambivalence, she resolves to love
him as passionately as she can. But
with other parents, it can swing the
other way: full of self-reproach for
feeling ambivalent, we can hate
ourselves — and then turn against
our children for ‘making’ us feel
this way.
The problem is not that we feel
ambivalent towards our children,
but that we try to deny it. If we do
this, then before long we cease to
know what is appropriate anger
towards our children, and what is
dangerous hostility. Through
anxiety and uncertainty, we try to
repress all our negativity — not
only in ourselves, but also in our
children. As Welldon cautions:
‘The important thing is that
children of whatever age feel they
have the right to express feelings
of hostility and anger. The more
they try to repress it, the more it
will explode into action.’ So: deny
ambivalence, in ourselves or in our
children, and you will find yourself
living at the volcano’s edge,
anxiously anticipating an eruption,
whether physical or verbal.
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What, then, can psychoanalysis
teach us? And how might therapy
help? Let me describe a
hypothetical patient, based on my
clinical experience. Sadie’s mother
died giving birth to her, and she
was raised by her father. In an
attempt to make her depressed and
lonely father happy, Sadie became
a perfect student. Whatever
negativity she felt, she repressed.
By the time she was a young adult,
she no longer knew what she felt.
When her boyfriend left her with
two young children, rather than
express her rage outwardly, she
made an attempt on her life. In
treatment, she found it hard,
especially in the early days, to
express any kind of hostile feeling
towards me. Whenever I drew
attention to her need to keep the
relationship with me calm and free
of conflict, she would agree, smile,
and change the subject.
Motherhood provoked great
anxiety, and Sadie found it very
difficult to tolerate any kind of
negativity from her children, aged
six and four. In therapy, though
she denied her own negativity
towards me, her actions revealed
other feelings: after holiday
breaks, she would routinely
‘forget’ to come to her session,
causing me to worry about her.
Only gradually, by acknowledging
the pain of her own losses and the
degree to which she repressed her
anger, did she begin to be more
overt in her hostility towards me.
In turn, as she discovered to her
astonishment that I could survive
her antagonism, she became more
assertive with her children, and
they began to calm down at home
and at school. Family life is still
very hard for her, but she is
starting to feel less anxious
whenever she feels negative
feelings rise up in her; less afraid
that, by voicing even the smallest
degree of negativity, she will
destroy everything.
Not all therapists would agree that
negativity must be voiced in order
to liberate the patient. There are
those who champion the concept
of the ‘corrective emotional
experience’, first propounded in
the 1940s by the psychoanalyst
Franz Alexander, which would, he
said, ‘repair’ the effect of previous
traumas. But Estela Welldon,
along with most psychoanalytic
practitioners, does not favour this
approach. ‘We are not therapists so
that people can love us. People
need to be able to not like us.
People slam doors at me, they
shout at me. I facilitate their
expression of their anger.’
Her point is well made, since once
words have been found for anger,
then the emotion is no longer
literally embodied. In ordinary
terms, once we have said how
angry we are, we are less likely to
hit or shout or do harm. Then, like
Sadie, we are more likely to be
able to draw appropriate
boundaries; to be able to say ‘no’
to our children; and to defend our
own interests in a way that is
neither selfish nor aggressive.
In one of his papers, Donald
Winnicott related a story that has
relevance to all parents struggling
with ambivalence. During the
Second World War, he and his
wife found themselves looking
after a nine-year-old boy with a
history of violence and truancy.
‘My wife very generously took
him in and kept him for three
months, three months of hell. He
was the most lovable and most
maddening of children, often stark
staring mad.’ When the boy
became violent, Winnicott said, he
‘engendered hate in me’. The fact
that Winnicott allowed himself to
acknowledge this meant that he
was able to contain his own
impulses to retaliate. ‘Did I hit
him? The answer is no, I never hit.
But I should have had to have done
so if I had not known all about my
hate and if I had not let him know
about it too.’
The sanction that Winnicott
devised for the boy might seem
somewhat Victorian, but it enabled
him to contain his own impulse to
hit the boy:
At crises I would take him by
bodily strength, and without anger
or blame, and put him outside the
front door, whatever the weather or
the time of day or night. There was
a special bell he could ring, and he
knew that if he rang it he would be
readmitted and no word said about
the past. He used this bell as soon
as he had recovered from his
maniacal attack… The important
thing is that each time, just as I put
him outside the door, I told him
something; I said that what had
happened had made me hate him.
This was easy because it was so
true.
Interestingly, Winnicott never had
his own children, which might
have facilitated his uninhibited
investigation of ambivalence, since
there were no offspring whom he
might have felt the need to
‘protect’ from reading his
thoughts.
Controversially perhaps, because it
implies that patients are not all that
different from children, Winnicott
claims that the analyst, just like the
mother, must be able to hate as
well as love his patients: ‘However
much he loves his patients he
cannot avoid hating them and
fearing them, and the better he
knows this the less will hate and
fear be the motives determining
what he does to his patients.’
If we deny our hate, and try to
suppress our ambivalence, then we
become risky to others. In this
state of denial, intent on seeing
only one side of our natures, we
are apt to demonise others, to
cheer tabloids when they ‘name
and shame’ paedophiles; to wallow
in the stories of Jimmy Savile’s
abuses at the same time as we turn
a blind eye to the moments when
we lash out at our own children, or
allow our own cruelty, rather than
appropriate discipline, to inform
our sanctions or punishments.
Becoming aware of our destructive
impulses is painful, and it can
bring on a degree of guilt-driven
depression. But guilt sometimes
has its uses. It can spur thought
about how to do better next time;
to repair what we might have
damaged. And in the end, our
children survive our hate, just as
they survive our love.
The Prophet of Envy
Robert Pogue Harrison
DECEMBER 20, 2018 ISSUE
Evolution of Desire: A Life of
René Girard
by Cynthia L. Haven
Michigan State University Press,
317 pp., $29.95 (paper)
Evolution and Conversion:
Dialogues on the Origins of
Culture
by René Girard, with Pierpaolo
Antonella and João Cesar de
Castro Rocha
Bloomsbury, 202 pp., $20.95
(paper)
Deceit, Desire, and the Novel
by René Girard, translated from
the French by Yvonne Freccero
Johns Hopkins University Press
(1965)
Violence and the Sacred
by René Girard, translated from
the French by Patrick Gregory
Johns Hopkins University Press
(1977)
Things Hidden Since the
Foundation of the World
by René Girard, translated from
the French by Stephen Bonn and
Michael Metteer
Stanford University Press (1987)
A Theater of Envy: William
Shakespeare
by René Girard
Oxford University Press (1991)
Battling to the End:
Conversations with Benoît
Chantre
by René Girard, translated from
the French by Mary Baker
Michigan State University Press
(2010)
Basso
Cannarsa/Opale/Leemage/Bridgem
an Images
René Girard, 2000
René Girard (1923–2015) was one
of the last of that race of Titans
who dominated the human
sciences in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries with their
grand, synthetic theories about
history, society, psychology, and
aesthetics. That race has since
given way to a more cautious
breed of “researchers” who prefer
to look at things up close, to see
their fine grain rather than their
larger patterns. Yet the times
certainly seem to attest to the
enduring relevance of Girard’s
thought to our social and political
realities. Not only are his ideas
about mimetic desire and human
violence as far-reaching as Marx’s
theories of political economy or
Freud’s claims about the Oedipus
complex, but the explosion of
social media, the resurgence of
populism, and the increasing
virulence of reciprocal violence all
suggest that the contemporary
world is becoming more and more
recognizably “Girardian” in its
behavior.
In Evolution of Desire: A Life of
René Girard, Cynthia Haven—a
literary journalist and the author of
books on Joseph Brodsky and
Czesław Miłosz—offers a lively,
well-documented, highly readable
account of how Girard built up his
grand “mimetic theory,” as it’s
sometimes called, over time. Her
decision to introduce his thought to
a broader public by way of an
intellectual biography was a good
one. Girard was not a man of
action—the most important events
of his life took place inside his
head—so for the most part she
follows the winding path of his
academic career, from its
beginnings in France, where he
studied medieval history at the
École des Chartes, to his migration
to the United States in 1947, to the
various American universities at
which he taught over the years:
Indiana, Duke, Bryn Mawr, Johns
Hopkins, SUNY Buffalo, and
finally Stanford, where he retired
in 1997.
Girard began and ended his career
as a professor of French and
comparative literature. That was as
it should have been. Although he
was never formally trained in
literary studies (he received a
Ph.D. in history from Indiana
University in 1950), he effectively
built his theory of mimetic desire,
in all its expansive anthropological
aspects, on literary foundations.
Somewhat like Heinrich
Schliemann, who discovered the
site of ancient Troy by assuming
that the Homeric epics contained a
substrate of historical truth, Girard
approached literary works as
coffers containing the most
fundamental truths about human
desire, conflict, and self-deception.
His first book, Deceit, Desire, and
the Novel, published in French in
1961 when he was a professor at
Johns Hopkins, treated the novels
of Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert,
Dostoevsky, and Proust as forensic
evidence of the essential structures
of desire, not just of literary
characters but of those who find
themselves reflected in them. The
prevailing modern belief that my
desires are my own, that they arise
from my autonomous inner self, is
a “Romantic” falsehood that the
novelistic tradition, according to
Girard, exposes as a delusion (I’m
echoing here the French title of the
book: Mensonge romantique et
vérité romanesque, literally
“Romantic falsehood and
novelistic truth”). Instead, he
argues, my desires are mimetic: I
want what others seem to want.
Whether I am conscious of it or
not (mostly not), I imitate their
desires to such a degree that the
object itself becomes secondary,
and in some cases superfluous, to
the rivalries that form around it.
Girard postulated that between a
desiring subject and its object there
is usually a “model” or “mediator,”
who can be either “external” or
“internal.” External mediators exist
outside of my time and place,
like Amadís de Gaule’s chivalric
heroes, who impel Don Quixote’s
desire to become a knight-errant;
or Lancelot and Guinevere, whose
adulterous kiss is imitated by
Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s
account in canto 5 of the Inferno;
or the celebrities whom advertisers
enlist to sell us products. The
external mediator often figures as a
hero or ego ideal, and there is
typically no rivalry involved.
With internal mediators, however,
we are in the realm of what Girard
calls “interdividuals,” or people
who interact with one another in
the same social world. The internal
mediator is my neighbor, so to
speak, and is often a rival who
arouses hatred or envy, or both at
once. In the novels Girard dealt
with, internal mediation often
involves “triangulated desire”
between three characters, two of
whom vie for the other: Mathilde
and Mme de Fervacques vying for
Julien in Stendhal’s The Red and
the Black, for instance, or Julien
and Valenod vying for Mme de
Rênal. Even when a character
views the mediator as an enemy,
the former often secretly envies
and idolizes the latter, as in the
case of Proust’s Mme Verdurin,
who loathed the Guermantes
family until she married into it.
A crucial concept in Deceit,
Desire, and the Novel is that of
“metaphysical desire,” a somewhat
misleading term for a common
sentiment. We tend to attribute to
the mediator a “fullness of being”
that he or she does not in fact
enjoy. For Girard there is no such
thing as fullness of being among
mortals. All of us—including the
rich, the famous, the powerful, and
the glamorous—have our mimetic
models and suffer from a
deficiency of being. That
deficiency nourishes our desires,
physical or metaphysical.
The English translation of Deceit,
Desire, and the Novel came out in
1965, two years before V.S.
Naipaul published The Mimic Men,
which seems like a ringing
endorsement of Girard’s claims
about deficiency. (I don’t know if
he ever read Girard.) In the novel
Naipaul probes the psychology of
elite ex-colonial “mimic men”
who, after decolonization, model
their desires on their former British
masters. The mimic man will never
enjoy the “fullness of being” he
ascribes to his model, who, in
Girard’s words, “shows the
disciple the gate of paradise and
forbids him to enter with one and
the same gesture.” Naipaul’s
narrator, Ralph Singh, knows this,
yet such knowledge does not
alleviate his unhappy
consciousness. “We become what
we see of ourselves in the eyes of
others,” he declares. Girard would
most likely deny Singh his one
consolation, namely his belief that
he is different from, and superior
to, the mimic men who lack his
own heightened self-awareness.
Girard might go even further and
ask whether Naipaul’s mimic men
in fact imitate one another more
than the British models they share.
The whole business gets altogether
murkier—and more Girardian—
when one considers that Naipaul
himself was the perfect expression
of the mimic man he defined and
despised. The writer’s bearing,
speech, racism, and invectives
betray an ex-colonial subject
mimicking the habits of his
masters and the class to which he
desperately wanted to belong. In
this Naipaul falls well short of the
novelists Girard dealt with
in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel,
all of whom, Girard claims, ended
up forswearing the mimetic
mechanisms they so insightfully
depicted in their work.
The common currency of mimetic
desire is envy. Envy is a form of
hostile worship. It turns admiration
into resentment. Dante considered
it radix malorum, the root of all
evil, and Girard agreed. He
claimed that envy is the one taboo
that is alive and well in
contemporary society—the vice
that few will ever talk about or
confess to:
Our supposedly insatiable appetite
for the forbidden stops short of
envy. Primitive cultures fear and
repress envy so much that they
have no word for it; we hardly use
the one we have, and this fact must
be significant. We no longer
prohibit many actions that generate
envy, but silently ostracize
whatever can remind us of its
presence in our midst. Psychic
phenomena, we are told, are
important in proportion to the
resistance they generate toward
revelation. If we apply this
yardstick to envy as well as to
what psychoanalysis designates as
repressed, which of the two will
make the more plausible candidate
for the role of best-defended
secret?
These sentences come from the
introduction to the only book that
Girard wrote in English, A Theater
of Envy: William
Shakespeare (1991), which is full
of insights into the envy and
imitative behavior of
Shakespeare’s characters.
Proceeding as incautiously as
Schliemann did in his excavations,
Girard bores through
Shakespeare’s corpus to arrive at
the substrate of mediated desire
that he believed lies at its
foundation. Girard plays by none
of the rules of the tradition of
commentary on Shakespeare, so it
is not surprising that the book
remains largely neglected, yet one
day A Theater of Envy will likely
be acknowledged as one of the
most original, illuminating books
on Shakespeare of its time, despite
its speculative recklessness and
relative ignorance of the vast body
of secondary literature on
Shakespeare’s works.
Speaking of “a theater of envy,”
in Evolution and Conversion (in
French, Les origines de la culture,
2004; the English translation was
recently republished by
Bloomsbury)—his conversations
with Pierpaolo Antonello and João
Cezar de Castro Rocha, which took
place a couple of years before
Facebook launched its website in
2004—Girard made some remarks
that seem particularly resonant
today:
In the affluent West, we live in a
world where there is less and less
need therefore and more and more
desire…. One has today real
possibilities of true autonomy, of
individual judgments. However,
those possibilities are more
commonly sold down the river in
favour of false individuality, of
negative mimesis…. The only way
modernity can be defined is the
universalization of internal
mediation, for one doesn’t have
areas of life that would keep
people apart from each other, and
that would mean that the
construction of our beliefs and
identity cannot but have strong
mimetic components.
Since then social media has
brought “the universalization of
internal mediation” to a new level,
while at the same time
dramatically narrowing the “areas
of life that would keep people
apart from each other.”
Social media is the miasma of
mimetic desire. If you post pictures
of your summer vacation in
Greece, you can expect your
“friends” to post pictures from
some other desirable destination.
The photos of your dinner party
will be matched or outmatched by
theirs. If you assure me through
social media that you love your
life, I will find a way to profess
how much I love mine. When I
post my pleasures, activities, and
family news on a Facebook page, I
am seeking to arouse my
mediators’ desires. In that sense
social media provides a hyperbolic
platform for the promiscuous
circulation of mediator-oriented
desire. As it burrows into every
aspect of everyday life, Facebook
insinuates itself precisely into
those areas of life that would keep
people apart.
Certainly the enormous market
potential of Facebook was not lost
on Girard’s student Peter Thiel, the
venture capitalist who studied with
him at Stanford in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. A devoted
Girardian who founded and funds
an institute called Imitatio, whose
goal is to “pursue research and
application of mimetic theory
across the social sciences and
critical areas of human behavior,”
Thiel was the first outside investor
in Facebook, selling most of his
shares in 2012 for over a billion
dollars (they cost him $500,000 in
2004). It took a highly intelligent
Girardian, well schooled in
mimetic theory, to intuit early on
that Facebook was about to open a
worldwide theater of imitative
desire on people’s personal
computers.
In 1972, eleven years after Deceit,
Desire, and the Novel appeared,
Girard published Violence and the
Sacred. It came as a shock to those
familiar with his previous work.
Here the literary critic assumed the
mantle of cultural anthropologist,
moving from the triangular desire
of fictional bourgeois characters to
the group behavior of primitive
societies. Having immersed
himself during the intervening
decade in the work of Alfred
Radcliffe-Brown, Bronisław
Malinowski, Claude Lévi-Strauss,
Émile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde,
and Walter Burkert, Girard offered
in Violence and the Sacred nothing
less than an anthropogenic theory
of mimetic violence.
I will not attempt to describe the
theory in all its speculative
complexity. Suffice it to say that
the only thing more contagious
than desire is violence. Girard
postulates that, prior to the
establishment of laws,
prohibitions, and taboos,
prehistoric societies would
periodically succumb to “mimetic
crises.” Usually brought on by a
destabilizing event—be it drought,
pestilence, or some other
adversity—mimetic crises amount
to mass panics in which
communities become unnerved,
impassioned, and crazed, as people
imitate one another’s violence and
hysteria rather than responding
directly to the event itself.
Distinctions disappear, members of
the group become identical to one
another in their vehemence, and a
mob psychology takes over. In
such moments the community’s
very survival is threated by
internecine strife and a Hobbesian
war of all against all.
Girard interpreted archaic rituals,
sacrifices, and myth as the
symbolic traces or aftermath of
prehistoric traumas brought on by
mimetic crises. Those societies
that saved themselves from self-
immolation did so through what he
called the scapegoat mechanism.
Scapegoating begins with
accusation and ends in collective
murder. Singling out a random
individual or subgroup of
individuals as being responsible
for the crisis, the community turns
against the “guilty” victim (guilty
in the eyes of the persecutors, that
is, since according to Girard the
victim is in fact innocent and
chosen quite at random, although
is frequently slightly different or
distinct in some regard). A
unanimous act of violence against
the scapegoat miraculously
restores peace and social cohesion
(unum pro multis, “one for the
sake of many,” as the Roman
saying puts it).
The scapegoat’s murder has such
healing power over the community
that the victim retroactively
assumes an aura of sacredness, and
is sometimes even deified. Behind
the practice of sacrifice in ancient
societies Girard saw the
spasmodic, scapegoat-directed
violence of communities in the
throes of mimetic crises—a primal
murder, as it were, for which there
exists no hard evidence but plenty
of indirect evidence in ancient
sacrificial practices, which he
viewed as ritualized reenactments
of the scapegoat mechanism that
everywhere founded the archaic
religions of humanity. (“Every
observation suggests that, in
human culture, sacrificial rites and
the immolation of victims come
first.”)
Violence and the Sacred deals
almost exclusively with archaic
religion. Its argument is more
hypothetical and abstract, more
remote and less intuitive, than
what Girard put forward in Deceit,
Desire, and the Novel. The same
can be said for the main claims of
his next major book, Things
Hidden Since the Foundation of
the World (1978; the title comes
from Matthew 13:35). There he
argued that the Hebrew Scriptures
and the Christian Gospels expose
the “scandal” of the violent
foundations of archaic religions.
By revealing the inherent
innocence of the victim—Jesus—
as well as the inherent guilt of
those who persecute and put him to
death, “Christianity truly
demystifies religion because it
points out the error on which
archaic religion is based.”*
Girard’s anthropological
interpretation of Christianity
in Things Hidden is as original as
it is unorthodox. It views the
Crucifixion as a revelation in the
profane sense, namely a bringing
to light of the arbitrary nature of
the scapegoat mechanism that
underlies sacrificial religions.
After publishing Things Hidden,
Girard gained a devoted following
among various Christian scholars,
some of whom lobbied him hard to
open his theory to a more
traditional theological
interpretation of the Cross as the
crux of man’s deliverance from
sin. Girard eventually (and
somewhat reluctantly) made room
for a redemptive understanding of
the Crucifixion, yet in principle his
theory posits only its revelatory,
demystifying, and scandalous
aspect.
Orthodox Girardians insist that his
corpus—from Deceit, Desire, and
the Novel to his last works—forms
a coherent, integrated system that
must be accepted or rejected as a
whole. In my view, that is far from
the case. One need not buy into the
entire système Girard to recognize
that his most fundamental insights
can stand on their own.
Some of Girard’s most acute ideas
come from his psychology of
accusation. He championed legal
systems that protect the rights of
the accused because he believed
that impassioned accusation,
especially when it gains
momentum by wrapping itself in
the mantle of indignation, has a
potential for mimetic diffusion that
disregards any considered
distinction between guilt and
innocence. The word “Satan” in
Hebrew means “adversary” or
“accuser,” and Girard insisted in
his later work that there is a
distinctly satanic element at work
in the zeal for accusation and
prosecution.
Girard’s most valuable insight is
that rivalry and violence arise from
sameness rather than difference.
Where conflicts erupt between
neighbors or ethnic groups, or even
among nations, more often than
not it’s because of what they have
in common rather than what
distinguishes them. In Girard’s
words: “The error is always to
reason within categories of
‘difference’ when the root of all
conflicts is rather ‘competition,’
mimetic rivalry between persons,
countries, cultures.” Often we fight
or go to war to prove our
difference from an enemy who in
fact resembles us in ways we are
all too eager to deny.
A related insight of equal
importance concerns the deadly
cycles of revenge and reciprocal
violence. Girard taught that
retaliation hardly ever limits itself
to “an eye for an eye” but almost
always escalates the level of
violence. Every escalation is
imitated in turn by the other party:
Clausewitz sees very clearly
that modern wars are as violent as
they are only because they are
“reciprocal”: mobilization
involves more and more people
until it is “total,” as Ernst Junger
wrote of the 1914 war…. It was
because he was “responding” to
the humiliations inflicted by the
Treaty of Versailles and the
occupation of the Rhineland that
Hitler was able to mobilize a
whole people. Likewise, it was
because he was “responding” to
the German invasion that Stalin
achieved a decisive victory over
Hitler. It was because he was
“responding” to the United States
that Bin Laden planned 9/11….
The one who believes he can
control violence by setting up
defenses is in fact controlled by
violence.
Those remarks come from the last
book Girard wrote, Battling to the
End (2010). It is in many ways one
of his most interesting, for here he
leaves behind speculations about
archaic origins and turns his
attention to modern history. The
book’s conversations with Benoît
Chantre, an eminent French
Girardian, feature a major
discussion of the war theorist Carl
von Clausewitz (1780–1831),
whose ideas about the “escalation
to extremes” in modern warfare
converge uncannily with Girard’s
ideas about the acceleration of
mimetic violence.
Toward the end of his life, Girard
did not harbor much hope for
history in the short term. In the
past, politics was able to restrain
mass violence and prevent its
tendency to escalate to extremes,
but in our time, he believed,
politics had lost its power of
containment. “Violence is a
terrible adversary,” he wrote
in Battling to the End, “especially
since it always wins.” Yet it is
necessary to battle violence with a
new “heroic attitude,” for “it alone
can link violence and
reconciliation…[and] make
tangible both the possibility of the
end of the world and reconciliation
among all members of humanity.”
To that statement he felt compelled
to add: “More than ever, I am
convinced that history has
meaning, and that its meaning is
terrifying.” That meaning has to do
with the primacy of violence in
human relations. And to that
statement, in turn, he added some
verses of Friedrich Hölderlin: “But
where danger threatens/that which
saves from it also grows.”
România Mare, o scurtă istorie
cu ocazia Centenarului
Nicolas Trifon
Pentru mulţi europeeni, mai ales
aici în Franţa, pe 11 noiembrie e
comemorat Armistiţiul care a pus
capăt unui adevărat coşmar care s-
a soldat cu milioane de morţi,
mutilaţi, traumatizaţi. La români,
în schimb, această zi are mai
degrabă un gust de victorie, pentru
că anunţă ceea ce multe alte ţări şi-
ar fi dorit : « România Mare ».
Noţiune polemică, « România
Mare » poate fi definită ca expresia
dorinţei de a reuni în acelaşi stat-
naţiune cât mai multe persoane
care în principiu aparţin naţiunii în
cauză, chit că aceasta se va trezi in
fine cu minorităţi substanţiale.
După primul război mondial,
suprafaţa şi populaţia statului
modern român, format în 1859, se
vor dubla, iar minoritarii vor
reprezenta aproape o treime din
total. Iată principalele momente
care au jalonat scurta istorie a
victoriei sărbatorită anul acesta în
cadrul Centenarului.
Mult timp neutră, România a intrat
în război în august 1916 de partea
forţelor Aliaţilor. După câteva
scurte victorii tactice în
Transilvania, armata română, slab
pregătită, prost echipată, a fost
respinsă de trupele austro-ungare
dincolo de Carpaţii meridionali. În
acelaşi timp, pe Dunăre, la
Turtucaia, ea a suferit o ruşinoasă
înfrângere care a permis Bulgariei
să ocupe Dobrogea şi să-şi ia
revanşa faţă de umilinţa suferită la
sfârşitul celui de-al doilea război
balcanic când a trebuit să cedeze
sudul acestei regiuni. Astfel, şase
luni mai târziu, la sfârşitul anului
1916, trupele Puterilor centrale
controlau două treimi din
România.
1918 : UNA CALDĂ, UNA
RECE : UNIREA CU
BASARABIA ŞI PACEA DE LA
BUCURŞTI
În prima parte a anului 1917, pe
teritoriul rămas liber, în Moldova,
armata română se reorganizează cu
ajutorul misiunii franceze condusă
de generalul Berthelot. În iulie, ea
atacă la rândul ei şi, în bătălia de la
Mărăşeşti, respinge cu succes
atacurile germane vizând teritoriul
rămas liber şi, mai apoi, Odesa. Ea
este însă oprită din elanul ei de
deruta trupelor ruseşti. Lucrurile se
complică odată cu luarea puterii de
către bolşevici la Petrograd pe 7
noiembrie şi mai ales cu pacea
semnată anul următor cu Puterile
Centrale la Brest-Litovsk pe 3
martie care pune capăt luptelor pe
frontul de est. Neputând să mai
conteze pe aliatul său rus, România
e obligată să accepte condiţiile
draconice impuse de tratatul de
pace de la Buftea-Bucureşti semnat
pe 7 mai cu Germania, Austro-
Ungaria, Bulgaria şi Turcia.

Puţin înainte, pe 27 martie 1918,

fosta Basarabie, independentă de
pe 24 ianuarie sub numele de
Republica democratică Moldova,
proclama unirea cu România.
Acest succes, oarecum neaşteptat,
nu avea însă cum să schimbe
situaţia dezastroasă în care se
găsea România, supusă
exacţiunilor perpetuate de
ocupanţii germani de-a lungul
lunilor care au urmat. România era
la pământ.
9 NOIEMBRIE 1918 :
ROMÂNIA DECLARĂ RĂZBOI
PUTERILOR CENTRALE
O speranţă a început să se schiţeze
după ce ofensiva trupelor aliate din
sud, sub conducerea generalului
Franchet d’Espèrey, a spart frontul
bulgar în Macedonia impunând
armistiţiul de la Salonic pe 29
septembrie. Totuşi doar pe 9
noiembrie, atunci când trupele
germane se retrăgeau, România va
declara din nou război Puterilor
centrale, argumentând că regele
Ferdinand nu parafase tratatul de
pace semnat cu şase luni înainte la
Bucureşti de prim-ministru
Alexandru Marghiloman şi
ratificat de Parlament. Două zile
mai târziu, armistiţiul de pe 11
noiembrie punea capăt războiului.
Din acel moment lucrurile se vor
accelera.

Consiliul naţional central român,

format în octombrie la Budapesta
de către reprezentanţii Partidului
naţional român și ai mișcării
social-democrate, ia controlul
Transilvaniei, organizează timp de
două săptămâni alegeri și convoacă
adunarea naţională de la Alba Iulia
unde, pe 1 decembrie, este votată
rezoluţia unirii românilor
transilvăneni, crișeni, bănățeni și
maramureșeni cu Regatul român.
Cu câteva zile înainte, pe 28
noiembrie, Congresul general al
Bucovinei proclama la rândul lui
unirea cu România. Principalul
fusese făcut, am putea spune, chiar
dacă doar mai târziu tratatele de
pace de la Versailles și Trianon
(iunie 1920) vor recunoaște noile
hotare.
« ROMÂNIA MARE »,
« UNGARIA MARE » ŞI
BOLŞEVISMUL
În lunile care au urmat votul de la
Alba Iulia, trupele române vor fi
confruntate în Transilvania
începând cu aprilie 1919 cu
tentativele noului guvern format la
Budapesta de bolșevici sub
conducerea lui Bela Kun de a
recupera teritoriile pierdute.
Armata română se va impune și va
intra victorioasă pe 4 august la
Budapesta de unde se va retrage
câteva luni mai târziu. Intervenţia
sa nu se va limita însă la
zădărnicirea planurilor de
reconstituire a « Ungariei Mari » în
detrimentul românilor, slovacilor
sau sârbilor care tocmai îşi
aleseseră un alt destin naţional. Ea
a participat direct la înnăbuşirea
revoluţiei maghiare şi, mai ales,
alături de trupele franco-sârbești și
cehoslovace, a împiedicat
joncţiunea între Ungaria lui Bela
Kun și Rusia lui Lenin stopând
extensiunea revoluţiei bolșevice în
această parte a Europei, ceea ce nu
putea să displacă marilor puteri.
De unde și reputaţia de un gust
dubios câștigată de « România
mare » pe plan internaţional la
această dată, mai ales dacă ne
gândim și la faptul că armata
română a fost cea care a deschis
calea terorii albe exersate de Horty
în Ungaria.
STÂNGA, PRINCIPALA
VICTIMĂ A « ROMÂNIEI
MARI »
Dificultăţile întâmpinate ulterior în
gestiunea noilor teritorii câștigate
și în eforturile de consolidare a
fragilei construcţii naţionale
românești au provocat şi întreţinut
un climat patriotard deleter în viaţa
politică a României interbelice,
favorizând tendinţele
conservatoare și autoritare de
dreapta şi derivele cu caracter
fascist care au culminat cu
fărădelegile mișcării legionare.
Stânga este aceea care a avut cel
mai mult de suferit de pe urma
acestei evoluţii. Chiar dacă
influenţa sa era limitată, ea era
prezentă şi activă în ţările şi
provincile care vor forma
« România mare » : în Transilvania
şi în Banat membrii secţiei române
a Partidului social-democrat din
Ungaria au jucat un rol
semnificativ în dinamica unionistă,
mai ales în prima fază, în timp ce
mulţi dintre liderii unionişti
basarabeni aveau convingeri
socialiste dobândite în contextul
Rusiei ţariste. Social-democraţii
moldoveni şi munteni din Vechiul
Regat, în jurul unui personaj
precum Cristian Racovski, nu erau
absenţi din dezbaterile publice şi
nici din protestele şi luptele
dinaintea războiului. Pe 6-8 iulie
1915 ei organizează spre exemplu
la Bucureşti a doua Conferinţă
socialistă inter-balcanică care se
termină printr-o condamnare fermă
a războiului. Situaţia se va schima
radical după război, mai ales
datorată anticomunismului tot mai
virulent alimentat de vecinătatea
cu Uniunea sovietică şi de
provocările acesteia.
Curiosul destin al Partidului
comunist român merită reamintit.
Fondat în 1921, interzis trei ani
mai târziu, el va fi victima nu
numai a noului climat anticomunist
dar şi al consemnelor
Cominternului care o obligau să
combată « România mare » de aşa
manieră încât el va trece drept
antinaţional în ochii multora şi va
sfârşi prin a recruta cadrele sale
cele mai determinate printre
minorităţile naţionale. Instalaţi la
putere de Armata roşie după al
doilea război mondial,
conducătorii PCR nu vor întârzia
să înţeleagă profitul pe care puteau
să şi-l atragă reânondând cu o
anumită tradiţie naţională.
Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej a operat
schimbarea la începutul anilor ‘60,
succesorul lui a cultivat-o cu brioul
pe care îl ştim.

Nu avem deci de ce să ne mirăm

de mândria cu care nostalgicii atât
ai dreptei intebelice cât şi ai
naţional-comunismului ceauşist
evocă astăzi spectacolul oferit de
intrarea triumfală la Budapesta pe
4 august 1919 a armatei române în
fruntea căreia se afla, printre alţii,
un anume locotenent-colonel Ion
Antonescu, viitorul conducător
pronazi al României.
A Philosophy of Magic:
Memphis’s Newest Conjuror
Has a Mission
A Conversation With Lawrence
Hass
POSTED BY CHRIS
DAVIS ON FRI, NOV 30,
2018 AT 8:53 AM
click to enlarge
• Lawrence Hass
"Let me tell you, it almost never
goes up the sleeve." Veteran
educator and practicing sleight-of-
hand artist Lawrence Hass drops
some information on the audience
in a TEDx talk. The PhD and
former professor is working
toward a philosophical
understanding of stage magic. He
wonders how magic performance
can be so ancient and universal
without having ever been seriously
addressed by Western philosophy.

Hass was professor of humanities

at Austin College before moving to
Memphis with his wife, Rhodes
College President Dr. Marjorie
Hass. In addition to academic
duties, he's been known to teach
magic to magicians at Jeff
McBride's Magic & Mystery
School in Las Vegas. In his TED
talk, he works toward a sturdy
definition that separates magic
from the the idea of "tricks." He
asks if techniques developed by
magicians are somehow more
manipulative, deceptive, or
dishonest than any other kind of art
or stagecraft. Magic, he ultimately
determines, is "The artful
performance of impossible things
that generates energy, delight, and
wonder."

For Hass, who makes his Memphis

debut at Beth Sholom Synagogue
Saturday, December 1st, the live
performance of stage magic
constitutes a message of hope and
transcendence. "As we live our
lives, we constantly confront
limits," he says, listing the usual
suspects: sickness, loss, death, and
transition — things we want but
can't have, and things we wish
were true but aren't.

Then performers like Harry

Houdini come along and show us
we can escape. Illusionists like
David Copperfield defy gravity
and levitate. Magicians get their
audience thinking big while
working on a smaller scale. Hass is
a prestidigitator, a card
manipulator, and a conjurer, able
to bring inanimate objects to life in
his hand.

Impossible, you say? That's the

point. "When everybody wins in
the world, that's real magic," Hass
concludes, after one of his online
card tricks. It's a good line. It also
seems to be a reasonable
summation of this newly minted
Memphian's performance
philosophy.

Intermission
Impossible: Memphis is still
relatively new for you. How are
you adjusting?
Lawrence Hass: We really love it.
We came to Memphis because
Marjorie was hired as the new
president at Rhodes College. We
came in June of 2017. Since then
we've really settled in — both into
Memphis, the larger community,
and also the Rhodes College
Community. We've been very
warmly welcomed and just love
the city. There's so much energy
and culture and art. Memphis is on
the rise, and we're really happy to
be a part of it.
Magic — It's not just fine, it's
great. It's energy. It’s delight
and wonderclick to tweet
I was surprised to discover you
didn’t take up magic until you
were an adult with a PhD. And
children of your own. There’s so
much manipulation— so much
manual dexterity required. I think
of it like violin: Most of the folks
who practice magic started
training when they were very
young.

That question’s very perceptive

actually. You understand there's
this whole physical level to magic.
And it has to work at a very high
level. I sometimes think of myself,
as being like an athlete, or a
musician in terms of, there's all
this body work going on. And you
have to stay after it pretty much
every day. So when I came to
magic, I was 34 years old. That's
older than most people, as you
say.
I learned over time that, I think I
have uncommon coordination. At
first I had no perception of it. But
as I started teaching magic to
others, I realized that I could very
intuitively and quickly do things
with my hands that other people ...
they just didn't have the same
facility for. The other part of it, I
was a musician back in the 1970s.
I played guitar and piano, so
obviously that was part of the
picture too. I understood practice
and rehearsal. Also, I came to
magic as a philosopher. I studied
art and aesthetics. So already, I
was ahead of the game. I had the
dedication and discipline to really
keep after it, and I also had a
vision, or sense of what artistry
was. From the very beginning I
wanted my magic not to be
commonplace, but artistic.

In the TEDx you're obviously

connecting your ideas with
narrative. But I also saw a lot of
storytelling in your online videos.
Is this exclusive to teaching magic
or teaching people about magic,
or is storytelling a regular part of
the act?
It's a part of the act. Some
magicians that we see, it's all about
the props. Here's the cup and here's
the ball and now the ball is gone
from the cup, and so on and so on.
And I find that tedious. It's all
purely visual and, “Fooled you!
Made you look!” From the very
beginning I wanted my magic to be
about things that matter to people.
In the show I’ll be performing
Saturday night, I will have two
“Once Upon a Time” kinds of
stories that are Illustrated with
magic. But even when it’s not
about stories, what I do hopefully
inspires or affirms the ways in
which everyone is a magician.
When I watched your TEDx, I
was reminded of directing Ubu
Roi at Rhodes several years ago,
which is an unrealistic piece. I
bring it up because students
would sometimes fall into traps of
“naturalism” and I’d find myself
asking, “Why lie to the audience?
Do you really think they believe
you are this character? That this
crazy stuff is really happening?"
The challenge to forego pretense
gave actors access to problem-
solving tools they didn’t have
before. And one of your main
points is all about breaking down
pretense — magic isn’t about
lying to the audience, or tricking
them — It's not suspending
disbelief, but engaging
imagination. I love this,
obviously.

One of the things that hangs up

contemporary magic is the notion
that it's about tricking people or
fooling them.

Theater too, I think.

This is a very old, long association

about magic, often from religious
authorities and philosophical
authorities who were trying to
denigrate magic. When we shift to
the recognition that magic is a
theatrical art, and is engaged in
creating astonishment, not lying to
people or tricking them, everything
about this changes. Because just
like the actor isn't lying to people,
the magician isn't either. What
we're doing is using techniques to
create an entire experience — a
theatrical experience. I think what
happens, both magicians and non-
magicians confuse the con artist
with the theatrical artist. So, when
I teach magicians, this is one of the
things I say: ‘You are a theater
artist, not a con artist. If you want
to be a con artist go out and play
three card Monte in the street. But
if you want to perform theatrical
acts of magic, you need the skills
that come along with the theater.’

Right. And obviously performers

like Harry Anderson, who built so
much of his act around classic
geek shows and cons, instinctively
get this.

Yes. The 'street thing' is the

character. And Harry was so smart
about that. Penn and Teller are the
same way. Their show is about the
con games and the fun of the con.
But I happen to know Penn and
Teller, and they are very smart,
dedicated theatrical artists. That's
just part of their presentation. I
admire it greatly. My presentation
is about helping people connect
with magic as an affirmation.

Was that approach something you

knew you wanted to do from the
beginning, or was it something
that evolved as magic came into
contact with your other life in
philosophy.

I believe the answer is, as a

philosopher, I was always
concerned with truth-seeking. I
didn't always get there But I was
always concerned with revealing
more or less true things about the
world and how we might live in it.
So I never would have gone into
magic if it was all about lying to
people to take advantage of them. I
have zero interest in that. But once
I understood that magic wasn't
about truth or lying, it was about
creating a rich theatrical
experience, then I realized those
theatrical experiences could be
inspirational and affirmational
rather than, ‘made you look!’ And
I realized that 'made you look,'
aspect of it, which some magicians
do, was really not essential to
magic. It was a choice they made.
So this grew out of my deep
commitments as a philosopher.
And just like Harry Anderson
performed as a con artist, I
performed as the philosopher
magician. So it's a very different
show from what other people do,
because there really is no other
philosopher magician.

I was also surprised by your

discussion that, as ancient and
universal as stage magic is, it's
been so widely ignored by
philosophy and academics.

It's such a fascinating part of the

story. When you study the history
of magic and how we got into this
place where there is no academic
department of magic, anywhere in
the world, that is itself a mystery.
Because, as you say, magic is an
ancient and universal art form. It's
very primordial in our psychology
to conceal things — to make them
hide and make them appear. Every
infant plays peek-a-boo. Magic is
primordial and yet somehow, it's
absent. The story of that, I believe,
is the story of authorities not liking
the energy and delight, and
astonishment that magic creates.
Religious authorities, scientific
authorities, philosophical
authorities, political authorities ...
and when we look back through
the history all the way back to the
Greeks, and even earlier than the
Greeks, you can see magicians are
distrusted. Magicians are held out
as ‘the other,’ or the thing we don't
want to be. There are some
unbelievable tracts in the history of
religion, and the history of science,
and history of philosophy, that are
polemics against magic. So the
modern-day magician has a lot of
historical baggage to overcome, to
help people appreciate this
primordial art form. I'll be very
honest, it's part of my vision. It’s
part of why I do what I do.
Because magic — It's not just fine,
it's great. It's energy. It’s delight
and wonder.

Nașterea ideii ortodoxe

Petre GURAN

Distribuie cu:
•

Aparut in Dilema veche, nr. 768,

8-15 noiembrie 2018
O caracteristică surprinzătoare a
ideii ortodoxe, din punctul de
vedere al unei teleologii hegeliene,
este separarea sferei politicului de
sfera spiritualului, care a condus la
o precoce desacralizare a
monarhiei. Această separare este
un proces inițiat în ultimele două
secole ale Bizanțului și continuat
în perioada post-bizantină.
Transformările sociale din
structura de putere bizantină care
au permis o scădere a autorității
centrale în favoare unor elite
locale, combinate cu expansiunea
occidentală sub haină cruciată sau
sub forma republicilor comerciale,
au produs în cele din urmă
fărîmițarea teritorială a Imperiului
Bizantin. Astfel, în secolul al XIII-
lea, singurul element de unitate pe
ceea ce fusese încă teritoriul
Imperiului în secolul al XII lea a
fost Biserica. Prin coagularea ei
instituțională în cursul deceniilor
trei și patru ale secolului al XIII-
lea, ea a căpătat un aspect pe care
l-am putea numi pan-bizantin.
Aceasta a trebuit însă să se
adapteze noilor puteri teritoriale,
fie cruciate, genoveze sau
venețiene, fie musulmane. Biserica
ortodoxă a supraviețuit în toate
aceste teritorii, chiar și acolo unde
uniatismul de primă generație a
produs un puternic concurent. În a
doua jumătate a secolului al XIII-
lea se suie pe tronul patriarhal
Grigore, un localnic din Ciprul
ocupat deja de un secol de către
familia cruciată Lusignan. Din
acest exemplu și din traiectoria
altor intelectuali bizantini
provenind din fostele provincii
bizantine înțelegem puterea de
atracție pe care începe să o exercite
Constantinopolul recucerit de către
Imperiul de la Niceea, dar mai ales
rolul de rețea socială și politică al
Bisericii pan-bizantine, care
reușește să mențină solidaritatea
corpului social format de Biserică
în teritoriile desprinse de imperiu.
Cauza cea mai puternică însă a
despărțirii politico-ideologice
dintre imperiul constantinopolitan
și Biserica pan-bizantină o
reprezintă tema uniatismului
utilizată ca instrument politic de
către împăratul Mihail al VIII-lea
Paleologul. Utilizarea cinică a
„schismei“ de către occidentali,
papalitatea în conjuncție cu
puterile cruciate, pentru a justifica
acțiunile militare împotriva
Imperiului Bizantin, apoi
uniatismele fragmentare din
teritoriile ocupate de cruciați sau
desprinse din Imperiul Bizantin cu
susținere cruciată, cum ar fi statul
vlaho-bulgar al Asăneștilor, regatul
armean al Ciliciei, regatul sîrbilor,
au transformat prin reacție ideea
reunirii Bisericilor occidentală și
orientală într-un instrument politic
și în mîna împăraților de la
Constantinopol. Începînd cu
sinodul de la Lyon din 1274, tema
unirii Bisericilor a devenit
principalul instrument al politicii
externe bizantine, „unirea“ fiind
prețul cu care împăratul bizantin
intervenea în jocul dintre papalitate
și puterile cruciate, obținînd
succesul diplomatic denumit de
Steven Runciman „vecerniile
siciliene“, adică acțiunea
papalității pentru delegitimarea
cruciadelor antischismatice. Într-o
fază ulterioară, unirea a devenit
prețul pentru ajutorul militar al
papalității și aliaților ei împotriva
otomanilor. Consecința acestei
politici externe este transformarea
uniatismului în cel mai fierbinte
subiect de politică internă. Totuși,
simultan cu acest uniatism politic
apare și o dezbatere teologică
autentică despre cauzele schismei
și modalitățile de depășire
teologică a acesteia. Cel mai
important pas din acest proces a
fost contactul intelectual și
cunoașterea reciprocă, formulată
inițial prin așa numitele liste ale
diferențelor dintre creștinismul
oriental și cel occidental.
Distanța crescîndă dintre imperiu
și Biserică capătă însă note tragice
prin disputa isihastă. Susținerea pe
care văduva împăratului Andronic
al III-lea, Anna de Savoia
(1341 1347 – regentă pentru fiul ei
minor Ioan), a acordat-o
Varlaamiților (discipoli și
continuatori ai criticii anti-isihaste
formulate de călugărul Varlaam
din Calabria) în disputa isihastă,
continuînd cu uniatismul politic
practicat de Ioan al V-lea
Paleologul, a produs de-a dreptul o
ruptură între curtea imperială și
instituția patriarhală. Această
ruptură, care a atins cote maxime
în perioada 1367 1380 prin
ștergerea numelui împăratului din
dipticele Marii Biserici de la
Constantinopol, este la originea
unei noi doctrine despre libertatea
Bisericii, pe care o regăsim în
actele patriarhale și sinodale din
vremea patriarhului Filotei
Kokkinos. Acesta redefinește
canonic Biserica anulînd tradiția
milenară a ceea ce istoricii
contemporani au numit „simfonia
bizantină“ și proclamînd că
patriarhul de Constantiopol este de
acum căpetenia creștinătății
orientale. Imperiul îmbracă forma
unei instituții subordonate
obiectivelor Bisericii și legitimă
numai în măsura în care vine în
întîmpinarea acestora. Uniatismul
politic este astfel păcatul de moarte
al imperiului. Ioan al V-lea,
constatînd că nu ar putea
constrînge Biserica nici măcar cît
străbunicul său Mihail al VIII-lea,
recurge la convertirea personală la
catolicism în 1369 la Roma.
Aceasta însă nu a produs nici un
beneficiu politic. Dimpotrivă,
pentru a se putea întoarce la
Constantinopol, se vede nevoit să-
și amaneteze coroana imperială
către Veneția în schimbul unei
corabii și al altor cheltuieli. Ioan al
V-lea se va despărți el însuși în
mod tacit de acest uniatism atît de
păgubos pe plan intern și ineficace
în plan extern. Moartea
patriarhului Filotei, apoi experiența
amară a uzurpării tronului
constantinopolitan de către fiul cel
mare al lui Ioan al V-lea, Andronic
al IV-lea (1376-1379), care și-a
arestat întreaga familie, inclusiv pe
bătrînul bunic imperial Ioan al VI-
lea Cantacuzino, deschide o epocă
nouă în relația dintre împărat și
Biserică. Experiența tiraniei lui
Andronic al IV-lea semnalează
necesitatea unei colaborări între
Biserică și imperiu, și astfel,
printr-un document al sinodului
permanent al patriarhiei
ecumenice, este consfințită
revenirea lui Ioan al V-lea pe tron
ca împărat ortodox, și sînt definiți
termenii colaborării. Rezultatul
constă în reducerea rolului
tradițional al împăratului în
Biserică la cîteva prerogative
ceremoniale și administrative.
Astfel, limitele puterii imperiale
sînt de acum dictate de Biserică.
Din acest context politic și
ideologic își trage seva teoria celei
de a treia Rome. Este expresia unui
nou aranjament între Biserică și
stat. Roma nu mai este simbolul
unui centru al puterii lumești, ci
este un principiu de fidelitate față
de adevărata credință, ortodoxia.
Episodul unirii eșuate de la
Ferrara-Florența se înscrie și el pe
această linie. Căderea celor două
Rome se referă la căderea în
schismă și erezie, nu la pierderea
unor bătălii și cucerirea unor
ziduri. Puterea lumească are doar
misiunea de a sluji Bisericii.
Această nouă teologie politică se
exprimă și în scrisoarea
patriarhului Antonie al IV-lea către
marele cneaz al Moscovei Vasile I,
din 1393. Imperiul există atîta timp
cît este învestit de Biserică cu
slujirea aceasteia. Neacceptarea
acestui rol subaltern este în sine un
act de erezie.
Pe această linie de interpretare se
înscriu Relatarea lui Nestor
Iskander despre căderea
Constantinopolului, Scrierile lui
Ivan Peresvetov și, în cele din
urmă, Scrisorile lui Filotei din
Pskov. Relatarea lui Nestor
Iskander, care a circulat atît sub
acest nume de autor poate
imaginar, cît și ca o cronică
anonimă, atașată și de
Peresvetov Scrierilor sale, despre
cucerirea Constantinopolului, în
limba slavonă, iar de la mijlocul
secolului al XVII-lea și într-o
traducere românească, ne pune în
fața unui paradox istoriografic din
punctul de vedere al unui istoric
creștin: cucerirea nu este văzută ca
un dezastru, intrarea sultanului
Mohamed în Constantinopol este
triumfală, mărinimia sa este
lăudată, rezultatul se datorează
proniei divine. Pentru Nestor
Iskander și pentru cititorii săi din
secolul al XVI-lea, printre care se
numără și voievodul moldovean
Petru Rareș, Țarigradul este un
ideal mistic, la care se ajunge prin
credință, nu prin acțiuni militare.
Игумен Петр Мещеринов:
«Жажда жить в раю в человеке
неискоренима»
О мистике, христианской
морали, антисемитизме
Достоевского и Лютера, язвах
Иова
Фото: Виктория Одиссонова,
специально для «Новой»
Этот материал вышел в № 75 от
13 июля 2016ЧИТАТЬ
НОМЕР
КУЛЬТУРА06:54 13 июля 2016
 Анастасия
Егоровакорреспондент отдела
политики
13 279
•

Отец Петр Мещеринов,

богослов, музыковед,
переводчик, настоятель церкви
иконы Божией Матери
«Знамение» в селе Долматово,
подворья Московского
Данилова монастыря, — один из
самых известных церковных
писателей и мыслителей нашего
времени. Его речь сложна, и я ее
стараюсь не сглаживать —
потому что в разговоре с ним
чувствуешь, как рождается и
формулируется трудная мысль.

— Вы в последнее время
много переводите
христианских мистиков, в
частности Арндта. А
христианство — оно вообще
как относится к мистике?
Вроде бы не одобряет. Я
понимаю, что это неофитский
вопрос, но многие именно на
оккультизме сходят с ума — и
полагают себя
воцерковленными…
— Здесь нужно определить
понятия. Термин «мистика»
имеет три значения: мистика в
бытовом смысле — всякая
метафизическая загадочность,
упомянутый вами оккультизм и
т.п. Есть собственно
религиозное значение слова
«мистика», и оно двояко:
первое — соединение человека с
божеством, например в
индуистских религиях. Это
растворение личности в
безличном Абсолюте. А есть
христианская мистика —
соединение личности человека с
Личностью Бога. И на самом
деле именно это всегда было
центром жизни церкви. Вообще,
рассуждая об этих вещах, нужно
постоянно держать во внимании,
что есть то, что называется
жизнью в Боге и является
истинной мистикой, а есть
периферийные вещи. «Клевать»
на них нельзя.
— Нынешняя мода на
гностицизм, как вы к этому
относитесь? Для многих это
очень соблазнительная вещь,
но чем она плоха — я себе
объяснить не могу.
— Когда действительность
скучна, отвратительна и
невыносима, тогда, естественно,
человека тянет в метафизику.
Скажем так: избыток
метафизики возникает именно
от недостатка физики. Если
человек захочет прийти в
христианство, то он столкнется
там с одним сюрпризом:
евангельское христианство —
настоящее, которое заключается
в повседневной, ежеминутной
жизни с Богом, — на самом деле
довольно скучное. Оно требует
трезвости, ровности, оно в
общем-то не приветствует
какие-то особенные «высокие»
или «глубокие» состояния. И это
человеку не всегда нравится.
Посмотрите даже в церковной
жизни: многие считают, что ее
неотъемлемой частью являются
паломничества, поездки,
получение каких-то особых
впечатлений от этого… или
старцев каких-нибудь
«сильных» найти, если
требуется острота внутренней
жизни. А просто жить по
Евангелию в повседневности, в
«нормальности» — скучно,
нудно, неприметно. Вот и тянет
людей на «экстрим».
— Знаете, что меня сейчас
пугает? То, что многие
находят источник
вдохновения в падении, в
бездне. Мол, пока не
упадешь… Это такая
достоевщина. Иногда —
заведомое вранье, иногда —
доносительство, иногда —
национализм… Почему это
вдруг стало каким-то
массовым явлением?
— Любые духовные события
имеют свою логику. Например,
машинка нагнетания глупости
или агрессии — для того, чтобы
эту машинку остановить или
развернуть, нужно прилагать
усилия, или она сработает, как
запущена. Вот она и
срабатывает.
— Что вы думаете про людей,
которые поехали в Донецк?
— У меня есть несколько
рабочих при храме, где я служу,
которые туда ездили. Просто вот
им скучно, хочется подраться,
оружие в руках подержать.
— Вы благословляли их на
это?
— Они меня спрашивали, я,
естественно, в благословении
отказал. Они ведь едут туда
убивать… Говорить в
оправдание этого можно все, что
угодно, но это так.
— Не могу не спросить, как
вы относитесь к
Достоевскому, ведь фигура
страшно соблазнительная,
опасная, а на него сейчас мода,
как была на Ильина.
— Я больше люблю Толстого,
честно говоря.
— Анафематствованного
церковью?
— Подождите-подождите.
Никакой анафемы не было. Это
расхожий штамп, «ввинченный»
в сознание интеллигентного
человека Куприным в его
знаменитом рассказе. Даже и
отлучения как такового не было.
Синод издал постановление,
согласно которому «Лев
Николаевич Толстой своими
писаниями поставил себя вне
церкви, что церковь с
превеликим сожалением
констатирует и ожидает его
покаяния и возвращения в ее
лоно». Даже сегодня, когда вся
информация доступна,
документа этого никто не знает,
а про «анафему» знают все. Что
касается Достоевского, то я для
себя разделяю Достоевского-
художника и Достоевского-
публициста. Как художник
Достоевский, конечно,
гениальный писатель. Как
публицист, как общественно-
религиозный мыслитель — как
бы это сказать, чтобы никого не
обидеть… ну, в общем, лучше,
если бы он только романы
писал.
— А как вы относитесь к
Иоанну Кронштадтскому?
— Очень люблю.
— И черносотенство его
любите?
— Здесь та же история, что с
Федором Михайловичем. Об
Иоанне Кронштадтском нужно
судить не по этой стороне его
общественной жизни, и не по
рассказу Лескова
«Полунощники». Иоанн
Кронштадтский всю жизнь вел
личный дневник. Это
потрясающий документ. Здесь
нет никакого сладкого сиропа,
который потом обычно
возникает в «житиях святых».
Это предельно честный перед
самим собой и перед Богом
самоанализ, который он вел до
последних дней. Вот он пишет,
что борется с гневливостью,
молится Богу, но у него никак не
получается… и так годами!
Скажем, в дневнике последнего
года мы читаем, что во время
службы у него закоптилась
митра (это такой праздничный
головной убор у
священнослужителя), и он
разозлился на служителя,
который свечку не убрал. А
потом он пишет: «Да что же это
такое! Я ведь уже старик, у меня
этих митр 80 штук, мне уже
скоро умирать, да что же это
такое со мной делается?!» И
именно за эту предельную
честность я его очень люблю.
Есть и другая сторона его
жизни — ему несомненно был
дан дар прозорливости,
чудотворения и исцеления
людей. Это факт, тысячекратно
задокументированный, его не
оспоришь. Но третье, конечно,
что под конец жизни, когда
мысли его уходили уже в другие
плоскости, Иоанном
Кронштадтским стали
пользоваться черносотенцы. Эта
сторона его жизни мне не
нравится. Но для меня все
перевешивает его внутренняя
жизнь.
— Мне в последнее время все
более симпатична довольно
старая мысль, что нужно
создавать среды. Допускаете
ли вы, что такую среду можно
создать в Сети? Допустим,
христианские социальные
группы?
— Я, честно говоря, плохо себе
представляю, как это будет
работать — соберутся люди… и
будут обсуждать что? Есть
христианские группы в
Facebook, но там, например,
священники обсуждают детали
богослужения. Много
благотворительных групп. А
выше таких внешних вопросов
общение христиан как-то не
идет или скатывается, как это у
нас принято, во взаимную
ругань. Я сам себе задаю вопрос:
почему это в Сети не работает?
Мне кажется, что просто есть
темы, которые не вызывают
интереса. Вот если бы Сталина
обсуждать, был ли он
православным, или что-нибудь в
этом роде, — тут набежит толпа
народу, неделю будут
обсуждать, потом, глядишь, и
начальство отреагирует… а
христианская жизнь? Я по
своему опыту знаю: ну будет
пара откликов, ну еще придет
кто-нибудь, скажет: «Да ты
еретик»… да и все.
— Правомерно ли
рассматривать Библию как
литературный текст?
— Для христианина Новый
Завет — это литература в
последнюю очередь.
— Если бы это не была
литература, то кто бы его
читал? Это хорошо
написанная литература.
— Но не только. Это скорее
инструктаж. Есть, например,
инструкция от стиральной
машины, и Евангелие — это в
некотором смысле инструкция.
Очень сложная и, конечно,
написанная с эстетической
точки зрения гениально — иначе
она не завораживала бы
человечество больше 2 тысяч
лет. Воспринимать этот текст
«впрямую», не делая скидку на
то, что это «литература», —
трудно, почти неисполнимо, но
тем не менее... «Подставь
другую щеку» — не ирония, как
пишут иногда, не метафора, —
это именно инструкция.
— Постойте, но ведь
Священное Писание не дает
прямых советов, оно вводит в
состояние, разве нет?
— Отчасти. Но оно дает и
прямые рекомендации —
заповеди. Не убей, не укради —
что это, если не самые прямые
советы? И это не регламентация
в законническом смысле, а
именно инструктаж. Конечно,
это не единственный аспект
Писания, но тем не менее.
— Но вы же понимаете, что
чтение Евангелия возможно не
во всяком состоянии. Когда
человек начинает его читать
именно как инструкцию?
— Немецкие мистики говорят о
двух Словах, которые Бог дал
человеку: Слово Божие,
Священное Писание, — и Слово
внутреннее. Это и есть то самое
мистическое зерно, которое
влечет душу к соединению с
Богом. Вот когда эти два слова в
человеке совпадают, — то есть
когда внутреннее слово человека
совпадает с Евангелием, а
Евангелие описывает то, что
происходит внутри человека, —
вот тогда уже человек
обращается к нему как к
инструкции.
— Что должно случиться,
чтобы они совпали?
Некоторые говорят, что это
стадия отчаяния. Другие —
что ситуация травли.
— Отчаяние — это верно. Если
брать того же Лютера, то у него
все его озарения о спасении
верой произошли после того, как
он дошел до отчаяния. Лютер
был образцовым монахом, он,
используя весь тот
инструментарий, который
предлагался ему церковью,
пытался исторгнуть из себя
греховное начало — но у него
ничего не получалось. Он
пришел от этого в отчаяние — и,
углубляясь именно в этом
состоянии в Священное
Писание, понял, почувствовал,
что Бог оправдывает человека не
внешними церковными делами,
а требует только веры, живой
настоящей веры. И таким
образом этот основной принцип
Лютера «спасение только верой»
возник из опыта монашеского
отчаяния. Так родился
протестантизм.
— Как именно?
— Лютер хотел обогатить этим
новым опытом свою церковь
(католичество) и через этот
новый опыт исправить
недостатки церковной жизни. И
первое время он этим и
занимался — переводил
Библию, критиковал те или
иные частности в жизни церкви,
возвещал людям христианскую
свободу, евангельские истины,
не имея в виду реформировать
церковь как институт. Но весь
этот идеализм продолжался до
тех пор, пока не начались
крестьянские восстания под
предводительством Томаса
Мюнцера. Чернь, воспользуемся
тут пушкинским словом,
восприняла лютеровские
высокие и тонкие истины по-
своему: «Ах, у нас теперь
свобода — ну тогда пошли
громить все, и церковь тоже».
Лютер этого испугался, и на
этом мистический период у него
закончился. Тогда он уже начал
заниматься строительством
параллельной
институциональной церкви, и
дальше все, в общем, пошло, как
это и полагается на падшей
земле.
— А антисемитизм Лютера —
это миф или реальность?
— Лютер вообще был больше
человек слова, а не дела — в
отличие от Кальвина, который
лично подписал 58 смертных
приговоров. Лютер говорил, что
об истинной вере можно
спорить сколь угодно крепкими
словами, но насилием она
доказываться ни в коем случае
не должна. Так что в этом
смысле он гораздо симпатичнее
Кальвина. А с евреями у него
было так: он ждал, что евреи,
которым будет возвещена
истинная церковность, тут же
признают истинного Мессию и
валом повалят в его, Лютера,
церковь. И в начальный период
своей реформаторской
деятельности он был к евреям
очень расположен. А потом,
когда этого не случилось, он,
как человек сильных страстей,
стал евреев клясть как только
можно. То есть у этой ненависти
была религиозная подоплека,
это не бытовой антисемитизм.
Евреи просто не оправдали его
надежд, Лютер на них обиделся.
— Вы говорите, что Бах влиял
на вас в том числе и в
религиозном смысле: как это
возможно?
— Музыка Баха — это
своеобразная вселенная. От нее
можно легко прийти к
философии, можно прийти и к
математике. Но для этого нужно
воспринимать ее не только
слухом, но и интеллектом. Когда
его только слушаешь, это всего
20%. И даже эти 20% человека
насыщают, вызывают в нем
эстетический восторг. Но есть
еще 80%, которые Бах
«зашивал» в свою музыку. Это
ведь другая эпоха, когда музыка
не ограничивалась только
звучанием. Были еще
«сверхсмыслы», которые
вплетались в музыкальную
ткань. Вся музыка Баха
пронизана тем, что называется
«риторическими фигурами» —
то есть определенными
сочетаниями нот, которые
отсылают сознание слушателя к
тем или иным религиозным или
философским смыслам. Есть
символы страдания, радости,
креста — всем этим Бах
оперирует с удивительным
искусством. Сами музыкальные
формы того времени могли
нести религиозное содержание.
Например, фуга, которая
основана на совместном
звучании нескольких голосов,
совершенно равноправных, а
вместе они складываются в
удивительную гармонию. Фуга,
написанная на три голоса,
символизирует тайну жизни
Святой Троицы,
четырехголосная фуга — как
жизнь человека сочетается с
жизнью Триединого Бога, и так
далее. Конечно, многие такие
вещи не слышны
непосредственно, их нужно
«вычитывать» в нотах — но так
Бах открывает людям своей
эпохи вещи более глубокие, чем
просто звучание музыки. Бах
много работал и с математикой,
он, например, высчитывал
количество тактов в своих
произведениях, чтобы они
соответствовали цифровой
символике той эпохи. Например,
если сложить цифровое
значение его инициалов и
фамилии, то получится число 41,
а если сложить цифровое
значение букв фамилии,
получится число 14. И вот он все
время эти числа как-то
обыгрывает, например, пишет
что-то в 14-м или 41-м такте,
или на пересечении 14-го такта с
начала одной страницы и 41-го
такта с конца другой «зашивает»
что-то в музыку, что не слышно,
но в нотной записи видно.
— Мне иногда кажется, что
если мораль заменить числом,
то можно было бы добиться от
человека хотя бы
последовательности. То есть
если бы человек действовал в
соответствии с логикой
числа…
— Ну, ХХ век
проэкспериментировал с
заменой морали на логику…
Живую, разнообразную, плохо
управляемую человеческую
мораль попытались подменить
«рацио»… Нет, все же лучше
мораль.
— Существует ли
христианская мораль?
— Конечно, но здесь нужно
договориться о понятиях. Что
мы подразумеваем под словом
«мораль»? Это некие
внутренние самоограничения
человека, которые налагаются на
него чем-то внешним. И очень
важно, в чем это внешнее
заключается, из чего мораль
исходит. Если, скажем, из
общественного мнения, то
включи телевизор — и через два
годика мораль будет уже другая,
она изменится под влиянием
пропаганды. Но есть и более
глубокие основания морали.
Христианская мораль
основывается вот на чем:
человек, будучи изгнан из рая и
являясь падшим существом, все
равно сохраняет в себе
стремление жить в раю.
Находясь в раю, он жил
практически без правил — за
исключением «не ешь от
древа», — и жизнь была
счастливая и гармоничная.
Человек в этом не удержался и
из рая был изгнан — но желание
и жажда жить в раю из него
неискоренима. И вот мне
кажется, что организация в
обществе морали и
нравственности объясняется
коренным стремлением человека
жить в мире, в порядке, в
гармонии, как бы
восстанавливая тот рай, для
которого человек и
предназначен.
— Это в человеке есть,
безусловно. Но есть же Книга
Иова, где он пытается
задавать человеческие
вопросы Богу. И оказывается,
что у человека и Бога
практически несовместимые
системы отсчета…
— Там совсем другая
проблематика, Иов сталкивается
с религиозной вещью в
чистейшем виде. Бог взял и,
образно выражаясь, как бы
шарахнул его молотком по
голове. И вот Иов, помимо того,
что он потерял имущество,
семью, детей, лишился и Божьей
благодати. Тут приходят к нему
друзья, благочестивые,
нравственные, но которые не
прошли через эти предельные
религиозные состояния. Они
начинают советовать ему
правильные вещи — но Иов
отвечает им, что, только если бы
они были на его месте, они
смогли бы понять, что с ним
происходит. А происходит с ним
то, что в своем предельном
страдании он предъявляет Богу
страшные претензии и доходит
почти до хулы. А затем
происходит самое интересное.
Иову является Бог и начинает
говорить ему то же самое, что и
его друзья, — «…кто ты такой,
чтобы предъявлять Мне
претензии». Но при этом
друзьям Иова Он говорит:
«Горит гнев Мой на вас за то,
что вы говорили обо Мне не так
правильно, как раб Мой Иов.
Пусть он за вас помолится, тогда
Я вас прощу». Ничего же себе —
«не так правильно»! Иов Бога
хулил, а друзья Иова излагали
учебник по нравственному
богословию! И здесь мы видим
разницу между моралью и
религиозностью. Мораль —
нечто среднее, принадлежность
упорядоченной жизни.
Религиозность — это уже другие
сферы…
— Вот и получается, что
жизнь с Богом не заключается
в моральном поведении.
—…но жизнь с Богом и не
разрешает аморальности. Просто
это разные сферы и разные
ступени. И это не
«несовместимые системы
отсчета», а «иерархия систем
отсчета», я бы так сказал.
— Вы ведь читали переписку
Матери Терезы, где она
сообщает духовнику, что
иногда не видит Бога, не
чувствует Его?
— Как раз об этом пишет
Арндт — отнятие благодати,
потеря человеком Бога.
— Но ведь она продолжает
обслуживать прокаженных и
не верит при этом!
— Арндт очень хорошо об этом
пишет: не то чтобы не верит, а
вера уходит на уровень, который
не ощущается человеком. В
ультразвук, если можно так
выразиться. И здесь нужно
смотреть уже не на то, что
человек говорит, а на то, как он
живет и что делает.
«Практика — критерий
истины», как нас учили в
советской школе. Это и
получается, как у Иова: он сидит
на своем гноище, ругает Бога, но
никуда со своего гноища не
убегает и в глубине души
продолжает уповать на Него…

How Plato Foresaw Facebook’s

Folly
Technology promises to make easy
things that, by their intrinsic
nature, have to be hard.
 By Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist
• Nov. 16, 2018
•

o 633
Mark Zuckerberg testifies before
the House Energy and Commerce
Committee in Washington in
April.CreditChip
Somodevilla/Getty Images
Image
Mark Zuckerberg testifies before
the House Energy and Commerce
Committee in Washington in
April.CreditCreditChip
Somodevilla/Getty Images
In ancient Egypt there lived a wise
king named Thamus. One day he
was visited by a clever god called
Theuth.
Theuth was an inventor of many
useful things: arithmetic and
geometry; astronomy and dice. But
his greatest discovery, so he
believed, “was the use of letters.”
And it was this invention that
Theuth was most eager to share
with King Thamus.
The art of writing, Theuth said,
“will make the Egyptians wiser
and give them better memories; it
is a specific both for the memory
and for the wit.”
But Thamus rebuffed him. “O
most ingenious Theuth,” he said,
“the parent or inventor of an art is
not always the best judge of the
utility or inutility of his own
inventions to the users of them.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The king continued: “For this
discovery of yours will create
forgetfulness in the learners’ souls,
because they will not use their
memories; they will trust to the
external written characters and not
remember themselves.”
Written words, Thamus concluded,
“give your disciples not truth, but
only the semblance of truth; they
will be hearers of many things but
will have learned nothing; they
will appear to be omniscient and
will generally know nothing; they
will be tiresome company, having
the show of wisdom without the
reality.”
Welcome to Facebook.
The tale I’m citing here comes
from Plato’s “Phaedrus”; the
words, attributed to Socrates, are
about 2,400 years old. They are
apposite again this week thanks
to a lengthy investigation by The
Times into Facebook’s cynical and
self-serving calculations as it tried
to brazen its way through a year of
serial P.R.
disasters: Russian dezinformatsiya,
Cambridge Analytica, and a
gargantuan security breach.
Now we learn that the company
also sought to cover up the extent
of Russian meddling on its
platform — while quietly seeding
invidious stories against its
business rivals and critics like
George Soros. Facebook disputes
some of the claims made by The
Times, but it’s fair to say the
company’s reputation currently
stands somewhere between that of
Philip Morris and Purdue Pharma
in the public toxicity department.
To which one can only say: About
time.
The story of the wildly
exaggerated promises and
damaging unintended
consequences of technology isn’t
exactly a new one. The real marvel
is that it constantly seems to
surprise us. Why?
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Part of the reason is that we tend to
forget that technology is only as
good as the people who use it. We
want it to elevate us; we tend to
degrade it. In a better world,
Twitter might have been a digital
billboard of ideas and conversation
ennobling the public square.
We’ve turned it into the open
cesspool of the American mind.
Facebook was supposed to serve as
a platform for enhanced human
interaction, not atool for the
lonely to burrow more deeply into
their own isolation.
It’s also true that Facebook and
other Silicon Valley giants have
sold themselves not so much as
profit-seeking companies but as
ideal-pursuing movements.
Facebook’s mission is “to make
the world more open and
connected.” Tesla’s goal is “to
accelerate the world’s transition to
sustainable energy.” Google’s
mantra was “Don’t Be Evil,” at
least until it quietly dropped the
slogan earlier this year.
But the deeper reason that
technology so often disappoints
and betrays us is that it promises to
make easy things that, by their
intrinsic nature, have to be hard.
Tweeting and trolling are easy.
Mastering the arts of conversation
and measured debate is hard.
Texting is easy. Writing a proper
letter is hard. Looking stuff up on
Google is easy. Knowing what to
search for in the first place is hard.
Having a thousand friends on
Facebook is easy. Maintaining six
or seven close adult friendships
over the space of many years is
hard. Swiping right on Tinder is
easy. Finding love — and staying
in it — is hard.
That’s what Socrates (or Thamus)
means when he deprecates the
written word: It gives us an out. It
creates the illusion that we can
remain informed, and connected,
even as we are spared the burdens
of attentiveness, presence of mind
and memory. That may seem
quaint today. But how many of our
personal, professional or national
problems might be solved if we
desisted from depending on
shortcuts?
To read The Times’s account of
how Facebook dealt with its
problems is to be struck by how
desperately Mark Zuckerberg and
Sheryl Sandberg sought to
massage and finesse — with
consultants, lobbyists and
technological patches — what
amounted to a daunting if simple
crisis of trust. As with love and
grammar, acquiring and
maintaining trust is hard. There are
no workarounds.
Start over, Facebook. Do the
basics. Stop pretending that you’re
about transforming the state of the
world. Work harder to operate
ethically, openly and responsibly.
Accept that the work will take
time. Log off Facebook for a
weekend. Read an ancient book
instead.

Please stop telling me to leave my

comfort zone
Our comfort zones are there to
protect us, even if productivity
specialists say otherwise
• Support Anxy Magazine’s next
issue here
Melody Wilding for Anxy
Magazine
Sat 17 Nov 2018 06.00 GMTLast
modified on Sat 17 Nov
2018 15.57 GMT
•

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 When I pushed my comfort zone
relentlessly, as the leadership
experts advise, it led me straight
into burnout. Photograph: Daniel
Lint
Raise your hand if you’re sick of
hearing that life begins at the edge
of your comfort zone. I know I am.
It is impossible to escape the gurus
and influencers on social media
who preach that choosing safety is
self-sabotage. That without getting
uncomfortable on a daily basis, I’ll
never get anywhere in life, my lack
of courage realized. “It’s never as
scary as it looks,” the Stanford
grad student Yubing Zhang chants
in a widely viewed TEDx talk,
Life Begins at the End of Your
Comfort Zone – one of several
talks on this theme that the
influential conference has given a
platform to. When you stay in your
comfort zone, “you maintain
flawed beliefs about yourself or
you hold on to guilt and self-
doubt”, the bestselling leadership
writer and motivational speaker
Jack Canfield says. “A comfort
zone is a beautiful place, but
nothing grows there” is a popular
graphic post on Instagram. And
Eleanor Roosevelt’s most-touted
quote, “Do one thing every day
that scares you”, adorns everything
from office coffee mugs to
wallpaper.
I believed these quotes once. My
experience, however, taught me
something different. When I
pushed my comfort zone
relentlessly, as the leadership
experts advise, it led me straight
into burnout. I learned the hard
way to define – and, more
importantly, to honor – the
boundaries of my comfort zone.
Since then, it has been a huge asset
that has helped me make big
strides.
By pushing myself in the name of
getting uncomfortable, I had
self-sacrificed to the point of
exhaustion
Rewind just a few years and you’d
find me crammed on a bus heading
out of New York City, at the
height of rush hour, with a two-
hour commute ahead. On most
mornings, stress-induced cortisol
was the only thing keeping me
from collapsing in exhaustion. Up
to this point in my life, I had been
driven by a mentality of pushing
harder: straight As in school, top
of my class in college, and now a
demanding job in Manhattan. On
the outside, everything looked
peachy – as if I were a picture of
success. On the inside, I was
feeling defeated and helpless. In
accordance with the self-
improvement mindset, I
rationalized these feelings as
stemming from my own
inadequacy. If I felt I was juggling
more than I possibly could, I
clearly had to hustle more. “I just
need to work harder,” I told
myself. “I’m out of my comfort
zone. It’ll get better. I’ll adjust.”
Creating a home we can thrive in
But as the months went on, my
sense of dread grew. Every day
was a cocktail of fear. What crisis
would crop up? What new project
would be dropped into my lap this
morning? My health was
crumbling. Facing my fear should
have allowed me to grow, as I
understood the motivational
slogans. Instead, in my mid-
twenties, I found myself laid up in
bed, so tired I could barely move,
and suffering from heart
palpitations and nightmares. By
pushing myself in the name of
getting uncomfortable, I had self-
sacrificed to the point of
exhaustion. In the end, I left the
job and accepted that my
boundaries were there to keep me
safe.
FacebookTwitterPinterest
Anxy’s next issue focuses on
masculinity. Support
the Kickstarter here. Photograph:
Anxy Magazine
Advertisement
Literally, the comfort zone refers
to an optimal temperature. But
psychologically speaking, it is a
state where a person feels at ease
and in control of their
environment. How overcoming
this state became the obsession of
the self-optimization movement is
curious. An early reference was
made in a 1907 research paper by
the American psychologist Robert
Mearns Yerkes, who found that in
mice, “anxiety improves
performance until a certain
optimum level of arousal has been
reached”. (Yerkes was also a
proponent of eugenics and his
work is considered to be tainted by
a racialist bias.)
The idea of using anxiety to
enhance performance gained
traction in the face of the economic
deregulation of the 1990s and the
resulting competitive pressures. In
2009, the well-known British
management theorist Alasdair
White repeated established
wisdom when he wrote that “in
understanding and managing
performance, the key is the
management of the stress” and
described anxiety as a tool to assist
in performance management. Yet a
2017 paper at the University of
Leicester found that there was no
empirical evidence to support this
idea. “Nevertheless,” the author
wrote, “despite all the evidence to
the contrary, the notion that stress
is ‘good’ for performance is still
being peddled by management
textbooks”.
Contrast all this with what the
early 20th-century developmental
psychologist Lev Vygotsky calls
the “zone of proximal
development”. This conceptual
space, which is near the comfort
zone, allows for healthy and
gradual growth, the way children
naturally learn new skills. To me,
it means taking on challenges
deliberately, but only after having
thought long and hard about my
qualifications and carefully laying
out each step. It means playing to
my strengths.
What it’s like when Ice detains
you: 'They own you. You're
impotent'

Read more
Having pushed myself to the point
of illness, I now know what I’m no
longer willing to tolerate. By
recognizing and respecting my
comfort zone, I can identify when
a situation threatens my wellbeing.
And by asserting my boundaries, I
can get back from anxiety to a
place where I feel psychologically
safe and secure.
In a world of increasing demands
on our time and attention, our
comfort zones act as predictable
spaces of mastery where we can
seek refuge when the stress
becomes too much. They act as
containers to shore up confidence,
gain momentum, and think clearly.
When we spend less time
grappling with discomfort, we can
focus more on what matters most.
If the people who routinely push
themselves past their comfort
zones are metaphorically
skydiving out of airplanes, those of
us who choose to operate
from within our comfort zones are
serenely laying bricks, creating a
home we can thrive in.
• Melody Wilding is a coach,
professor, and writer who helps
high-achievers manage the
emotional aspects of their
careers. She is a licensed social
worker and teaches human
behavior at Hunter College in
New York City.
Why the Enlightenment was not
the age of reason
n either side of the Atlantic, groups
of public intellectuals have issued
a call to arms. The besieged citadel
in need of defending, they say, is
the one that safeguards science,
facts and evidence-based policy.
These white knights of progress –
such as the psychologist Steven
Pinker and the neuroscientist Sam
Harris – condemn the apparent
resurgence of passion, emotion and
superstition in politics. The
bedrock of modernity, they tell us,
is the human capacity to curb
disruptive forces with cool-headed
reason. What we need is a reboot
of the Enlightenment, now.
Strikingly, this rosy picture of the
so-called ‘age of reason’ is weirdly
similar to the image advanced by
its naive detractors. The pejorative
view of the Enlightenment flows
from the philosophy of G W F
Hegel right through to the critical
theory of the mid-20th-century
Frankfurt School. These writers
identify a pathology in Western
thought that equates rationality
with positivist science, capitalist
exploitation, the domination of
nature – even, in the case of Max
Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,
with Nazism and the Holocaust.
But in holding that the
Enlightenment was a movement of
reason opposed to the passions,
apologists and critics are two sides
of the same coin. Their collective
error is what makes the cliché of
the ‘age of reason’ so powerful.
The passions – embodied affects,
desires, appetites – were
forerunners to the modern
understanding of emotion. Since
the ancient Stoics, philosophy has
generally looked on the passions as
threats to liberty: the weak are
slaves to them; the strong assert
their reason and will, and so
remain free. The Enlightenment’s
contribution was to add science to
this picture of reason, and religious
superstition to the notion of
passionate enslavement.
However, to say that the
Enlightenment was a movement of
rationalism against passion, of
science against superstition, of
progressive politics against
conservative tribalism is to be
deeply mistaken. These claims
don’t reflect the rich texture of the
Enlightenment itself, which placed
a remarkably high value on the
role of sensibility, feeling and
desire.
The Enlightenment began with the
scientific revolution in the mid-
17th century, and culminated in the
French Revolution at the end of the
18th. Hegel, in the early 1800s,
was one of the first to go on the
offensive. He said that the rational
subject conceived by Immanuel
Kant – the Enlightenment
philosopher par excellence –
produced citizens who were
alienated, dispassionate and
estranged from nature, with the
murderous rationalism of the
French Terror the logical outcome.
However, the Enlightenment was a
diverse phenomenon; most of its
philosophy stood far apart from
Kantianism, let alone from Hegel’s
version of Kant. The truth is that
Hegel and the 19th-century
Romantics, who believed they
were moved by a new spirit of
beauty and feeling, summoned up
the ‘age of reason’ to serve as a
foil for their own self-conception.
Their Kantian subject was a straw
man, as was the dogmatic
rationalism of their Enlightenment.
In France, the philosophes were
surprisingly enthusiastic about the
passions, and deeply suspicious
about abstractions. Rather than
holding that reason was the only
means of battling error and
ignorance, the French
Enlightenment
emphasised sensation. Many
Enlightenment thinkers advocated
a polyvocal and playful version of
rationality, one that was
continuous with the particularities
of sensation, imagination and
embodiment. Against the
inwardness of speculative
philosophy – René Descartes and
his followers were often the target
of choice – the philosophesturned
outward, and brought to the fore
the body as the point of passionate
engagement with the world. You
might even go so far as to say that
the French Enlightenment tried to
produce a
philosophy without reason.
For the philosopher Étienne
Bonnot de Condillac, for example,
it didn’t make sense to talk about
reason as a ‘faculty’. All aspects of
human thought grew from our
senses, he said – specifically, the
ability to be drawn towards
pleasant sensations and driven
away from painful ones. These
urges gave rise to passions and
desires, then to the development of
languages, and on to the full
flourishing of the mind.
To avoid falling into a trap of false
articulacy, and to keep as close as
possible to sensuous experience,
Condillac was a fan of ‘primitive’
languages in preference to those
that relied on abstract ideas. For
Condillac, proper rationality
required societies to develop more
‘natural’ ways of communicating.
That meant rationality was
necessarily plural: it varied from
place to place, rather than existing
as an undifferentiated universal.
Another totemic figure of the
French Enlightenment was Denis
Diderot. Most widely known as the
editor of the massively
ambitious Encyclopédie(1751-72),
Diderot wrote many of its
subversive and ironic articles
himself – a strategy designed, in
part, to avoid the French censors.
Diderot did not write down his
philosophy in the form of abstract
treatises: along with Voltaire,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the
Marquis de Sade, Diderot was a
master of the philosophical novel
(as well as experimental and
pornographic fiction, satire and art
criticism). A century and a half
before René Magritte wrote the
iconic line ‘This Is Not a Pipe’
under his painting The Treachery
of Images (1928-9), Diderot wrote
a short story called ‘This Is Not a
Story’ (Ceci n’est pas un conte).
Diderot did believe in the utility of
reason in the pursuit of truth – but
he had an acute enthusiasm for the
passions, particularly when it came
to morality and aesthetics. With
many of the key figures in the
Scottish Enlightenment, such
as David Hume, he believed that
morality was grounded in sense-
experience. Ethical judgment was
closely aligned with, even
indistinguishable from, aesthetic
judgments, he claimed. We judge
the beauty of a painting, a
landscape or our lover’s face just
as we judge the morality of a
character in a novel, a play or our
own lives – that is, we judge the
good and the beautiful directly and
without the need of reason. For
Diderot, then, eliminating the
passions could produce only an
abomination. A person without the
ability to be affected, either
because of the absence of passions
or the absence of senses, would be
morally monstrous.
That the Enlightenment celebrated
sensibility and feeling didn’t entail
a rejection of science, however.
Quite the opposite: the most
sensitive individual – the person
with the greatest sensibility – was
considered to be the most acute
observer of nature. The
archetypical example here was a
doctor, attuned to the bodily
rhythms of patients and their
particular symptoms. Instead, it
was the speculative system-builder
who was the enemy of scientific
progress – the Cartesian physician
who saw the body as a mere
machine, or those who learned
medicine by reading Aristotle but
not by observing the ill. So the
philosophical suspicion of reason
was not a rejection of
rationality per se; it was only a
rejection of reason
in isolation from the senses, and
alienated from the impassioned
body. In this, the philosopheswere
in fact more closely aligned with
the Romantics than the latter liked
to believe.
Generalising about intellectual
movements is always a dangerous
business. The Enlightenment did
have distinct national
characteristics, and even within a
single nation it was not monolithic.
Some thinkers did invoke a strict
dichotomy of reason and the
passions, and privilege the a
priori over sensation – Kant, most
famously. But in this respect Kant
was isolated from many, if not
most, of his era’s major themes.
Particularly in France, rationality
was not opposed to sensibility but
was predicated on and continuous
with it. Romanticism was largely a
continuation of Enlightenment
themes, not a break or rupture
from them.
If we are to heal the divides of the
contemporary historical moment,
we should give away the fiction
that reason alone has ever held the
day. The present warrants
criticism, but it will do no good if
it’s based on a myth about some
glorious, dispassionate past that
never was.
Jacques Derrida: The problems of
presence
Derek Attridge
explores différance,
deconstruction and the role of
the impossible in the work of the
divisive philosopher
DEREK ATTRIDGE
Footnotes to Plato is a TLS Online
series appraising the works and
legacies of the great thinkers and
philosophers
Jacques Derrida is widely regarded
as the most important French
philosopher of the late twentieth
century. Yet when his name was
put forward for an honorary degree
at Cambridge University in 1992, a
significant portion of the Anglo-
American philosophical
establishment was outraged.
Eighteen philosophers from nine
countries signed a letter
to The Times opposing the award
on the grounds that Derrida’s work
consisted of “tricks and gimmicks
similar to those of the Dadaists or
of the concrete poets” and
amounted to “little more than
semi-intelligible attacks upon the
values of reason, truth, and
scholarship”. Understanding
Derrida’s legacy, then, must also
involve understanding why he
should have been the target of such
vitriol.
Born into a Jewish family in
Algeria in 1930, Derrida learned at
an early age about the damage
caused by the imposition of fixed
categories on human diversity: in
1942 the Vichy regime lowered the
percentage of Jewish students
allowed in schools, resulting in his
expulsion and a period of
somewhat haphazard education. In
1949 he moved to metropolitan
France for further study, and in
1956, having written a dissertation
on the German philosopher
Edmund Husserl, passed
the agrégation examination that
qualified him as a teacher. In 1964,
after two years of military service
in Algeria, he began teaching at
the École Normale Supérieure in
Paris, where he remained for
twenty years, giving a weekly
seminar – on a fresh topic every
year – that became a magnet for
the intellectually curious.
In 1962 Derrida published a book-
length introduction to his
translation of Husserl’s short
work The Origin of Geometry in
which the seeds of his later
thinking were already evident, but
it was in 1967 that he truly made
his mark on the French
philosophical scene. In that year he
published no fewer than three
books, and in so doing displayed
the startling originality and
productiveness that was to
characterize his career until his
death from pancreatic cancer in
2004: L’écriture et la difference,
La voix et le phénomène and De la
grammatologie. Five years later,
another trio of books appeared,
cementing Derrida’s position at the
forefront of what became known in
the English-speaking world as
“post-structuralism”: La
Dissemination, Marges de la
philosophie and Positions. There
followed a steady stream of
publications; a recent posthumous
volume produced by his favourite
French publisher, Galilée, lists
fifty-seven books from their own
house and another thirty-one from
other publishers – and this list
includes only the first two volumes
in the planned series of hitherto
unpublished seminars delivered
over more than forty years.
Derrida’s range was extraordinary:
he wrote analyses of the works of a
host of philosophers from Plato
and Aristotle to his contemporaries
and engaged with the poetry,
fiction and drama of numerous
French, English and German
writers. His commentaries on the
visual arts are among his most
challenging publications, and he
made telling contributions to
current political concerns. His
influence has been felt across an
even wider range of disciplines
and institutions, political
movements and creative practices.
Such a productive and
comprehensive intellect would be
difficult to summarize briefly, but
we may draw out some of the
central strands of Derrida’s
thinking. The set of assumptions at
which much of his work takes aim
– assumptions at the heart of both
the Western philosophical tradition
and of what goes for “common
sense” – can be labelled presence.
When I reflect on my own
consciousness what I experience is
self-presence: there seems to be no
intervening medium between my
sense of myself and that self.
Similarly, the world I see and hear
is present to me without mediation.
The meanings I constantly
encounter seem immediately
present; it’s hard to see how the
apparently simple (spatial) here
and (temporal) now of being in the
world could be divided or
complicated.
Presence is implicit in Western
philosophy’s reliance on reason,
which distinguishes sharply
between what is present (now,
here) and what is absent (past or
future, somewhere else), and
searches for a pure origin and
secure ground for thought,
summed up in the Greek
word logos – hence Derrida’s
name for this way of
thinking, logocentrism. If presence
is fundamental and inalienable,
anything that threatens to
complicate or sully it must be
regarded as secondary, derivative
and regrettable. For presence is a
value; it is what is proper, proper
to meaning, to consciousness, to
existence, but also good and
correct (the French proprecarries a
suggestion of cleanliness and
purity). Derrida defines the
“metaphysics of presence” as “the
enterprise of returning
‘strategically’, ‘ideally’, to an
origin or to a priority thought to be
simple, intact, normal, pure,
standard, self-identical, in order
then to think in terms of
derivation, complication,
deterioration, accident, etc”.
But what if presence were a
fantasy, a product of our desires
rather than the way things are? In
his early works, Derrida analysed a
number of philosophical,
linguistic, autobiographical and
anthropological texts to show how,
again and again, attempts to keep
at bay the impurities that threaten
presence succeed only in proving
that those apparently secondary
properties are in fact primary. The
best-known instance in these early
studies is the relationship between
speech and writing, the subject
of Of Grammatology and of part
of Dissemination. In the history of
Western thought, Derrida argues,
there is an assumption that speech
is primary and self-sufficient while
writing is a secondary system by
which speech is transcribed. In all
the thinkers he examines, writing
is found wanting in comparison to
speech because it is cut off from its
source, open to corruption, a set of
dead symbols rather than the lively
expression of a self, and thus of
presence.
But Derrida doesn’t simply point
out this continuing prejudice; by
means of careful reading, he shows
how the very properties for which
writing is repeatedly found
wanting by thinkers from Plato to
Jean-Jacques Rousseau to
Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude
Lévi-Strauss are what make speech
possible. Speech too, no matter
how immediate it feels to speaker
and hearer, is mediated by the
system of language and by the
cultural context of speaker and
hearer, and can always be falsified
or misunderstood. Language, in
any form, is a kind of writing
(Derrida calls this generalized
sense “arche-writing”); it is never
a pure manifestation of presence –
and only because this is so can it
function at all. This is the insight
that the thinkers under
consideration have to resist, often
quite vehemently, in order to
preserve the illusion of the purity
and simplicity of presence.
The point of this demonstration,
which Derrida carried out over
hundreds of pages of close analysis
of works such as Plato’s Phaedrus,
Rousseau’s Confessions,
Saussure’s Course in General
Linguistics and Lévi-
Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, is not
simply to correct a mistaken view
of the way language works; for
Derrida it is the sign of a larger
problem at the core of Western
thought, one that underlies not
only philosophical treatments of
meaning, subjectivity and
communication, but which also has
profound ethical implications.
Much of Derrida’s energy in the
later part of his career went into
developing these ethical
consequences.
Of the many terms Derrida
invented to label his philosophical
practice, the one that stuck was
“deconstruction”, a word that has
now become part of many
languages. The term is useful in at
least two ways. First, it refers to a
mode of reading rather than of
pure philosophical argumentation,
reflecting Derrida’s favoured
method. It should already be clear
why pure argumentation is not the
best way to show the impossibility
of presence: such an approach
would assume the unproblematic
nature of the very thing being
challenged, the traditional
procedures of reason. We can’t
escape the assumption of presence
(or self-presence), but we can find
indications of its limits in our most
astute thinkers. Second, as an
expansion of destruction through
the addition of a more positive
prefix, “con”, it suggests that this
kind of reading is not merely
negative. Derrida frequently
insisted on the affirmative nature
of deconstruction.
If the bedrock of meaning and
existence is not presence, what is?
Because language and argument
are so dependent on assumptions
of presence, Derrida has to use
somewhat devious means to
articulate the alternative he is
proposing; it’s not something one
can simply name or look in the
face. One term he employs, as
we’ve seen, is “writing”, but this
strategy is open to
misunderstanding. Derrida
therefore creates a word not in the
French lexicon: différance, which
carries connotations both
of “difference” and “deferral”.
Whether the origin of meaning is
spatial (differences among co-
existing entities) or temporal
(deferrals from past to future)
is undecidable, to use another key
Derridean term.
Another Derridean term will help
to clarify this view of the impurity
of origins: “trace”. A simple
illustration comes from linguistic
theory. Saussure famously
demonstrated that language (or any
system of signs) works not in
terms of material substances but
formal differences. The sound /b/
in the word bat functions
successfully not because there is
anything inherently appropriate
about a voiced bilabial plosive in
this position but because it is
different from the other phonemes
that could have occurred here, such
as /m/ or /s/. Its ability to
participate in the creation of
meaning, therefore, depends as
much on what it is not as on what
it is. It thus bears the trace of other
possibilities and is not entirely
present to itself. Presence and
absence are not mutually exclusive
opposites; Saussure’s differences,
which underlie all meaning,
are différances.
Derrida’s painstaking readings of
philosophical texts are dedicated to
revealing how they rely on such
non-rational structures even while
they apparently sustain the
conventions of Aristotelian logic.
His readings of literary texts, by
contrast, usually have the aim of
bringing out the works’ own
challenge to those conventions by
offering what he calls a “counter-
signature” to the work’s, and its
author’s, signature, their unique
handling of the general laws of
language. Shakespeare, James
Joyce, Franz Kafka, Paul Celan,
Jean Genet and many others
receive this kind of attention, in
essays written not as philosophical
deconstructions but as attempts to
bring out the ways in which
literary works, each in its own
singular way, probe the limits of
rational thought.
If one were to select a key term in
Derrida’s ethical outlook, it might
be hospitality. He was active in
promoting the rights of the sans-
papiers in France and in
championing cities of refuge, and
his whole cast of thought rests on a
willingness to welcome what is
outside the accepted norms of the
academic disciplines and of culture
more widely. The very motor of
human and social existence at its
fullest is openness to what may
come, and this openness is directly
related to the absence of a fixed
ground: arche-writing, différance,
the trace-structure – these
alternatives to presence all imply
the inevitability of change, the
healthy contamination of the inside
by the outside, the dominant by the
excluded, the possible by the
impossible.
This last pair may seem a mere
rhetorical flourish, but Derrida in
fact took the question of
impossibility very seriously.
Hospitality is impossible, he tells
us. To be truly hospitable would be
to wholly surrender one’s control
over one’s property in order to
allow the guest complete freedom,
with disastrous results (perhaps for
the guest as well). So we
necessarily hedge our hospitality
around with conditions and limits;
but we can’t even call it hospitality
unless it is underwritten by that
impulse of unconditional welcome.
The same goes for giving,
forgiving, loving, mourning,
justice: all are impossible, but their
impossibility is what makes them
the ethical values they are.
Why, then, did Derrida’s work
provoke not just disagreement but
hostility and venom from so many
parts of the philosophical
establishment (with occasional
journalistic encouragement)? One
reason, clearly, is Derrida’s style.
The nature of his engagement with
the tradition required something
other than straightforward
argument, and he never shied away
from stylistic devices more
associated with literature, those
“tricks and gimmicks” so
distasteful to the writers of the
letter in The Times. (By the same
token, Derrida’s work was hugely
influential in literature
departments.) But more significant
is the fact that Derrida’s account of
the fundamentals of thought
constitutes a challenge to the
philosophical enterprise as
founded by Plato and Aristotle and
carried through to this day –
though it is far from the caricature
his critics propagate. What these
detractors overlook is the degree to
which Derrida, throughout his
career, evinced the prime
philosophical virtues of rigorous
analysis, precise expression, broad
knowledge and a willingness to
think the unthinkable. If his
writing stretches the mind beyond
what is comfortable, it is only
doing what philosophy at its best
has always done.
 Как бороться со стереотипами
о философии и объяснять
сложные идеи простым языком
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Год назад студентка
и исследовательница
Анастасия Бабаш завела
Telegram-канал, где
публиковала интересные
моменты с лекций
по философии и старалась
доступным языком объяснять
сложные идеи и концепции.
Специально для
рубрики «Посты
и каналы» она рассказала,
почему философы избегают
простых объяснений и что
с этим не так, а также
как канал стал ее
профессиональным
портфолио.

Анастасия Бабаш
создательница
просветительского Telegram-
канала «Настя про философию»
/ @nastya_philosophy
Я завела канал в конце ноября
2017 года, оканчивая вторую
магистратуру по философии
в Университете Тарту. С тех пор
изменилось не так уж много:
в июне я защитилась, поступила
в аспирантуру все в том же
Тарту и планирую заниматься
наукой дальше.
Тест: какой вы древнегреческий
философ?
Тогда я совсем не знала, что
выйдет из этой затеи. Мне
просто хотелось делиться
любовью к философии
и разрушать стереотипы,
которые сложились у многих
после обязательного курса
в университете. Что она очень
сложная и непонятная,
полностью оторвана от жизни,
а все преподаватели
философии — странные
и скучные, ходят на лекции
в разных носках, говорят ерунду
и не хотят ставить зачет.
Я влюбилась в философию
с первого взгляда восемь лет
назад. Тогда я училась
в бакалавриате по философии
в КНУ им. Тараса Шевченко,
куда поступила просто потому,
что хотела изучать что-нибудь
гуманитарное. На самой первой
лекции преподаватель спросил:
«Что такое стол?» — и мы,
первокурсники, взахлеб
принялись отвечать. Мы
проспорили с ним всю пару, так
и не найдя правильного ответа.
Конечно, мы все знали, что
такое стол, но преподаватель
попытался научить нас главному
навыку философа — ставить под
сомнение даже очевидные вещи.
Почему-то многие
академические философы
считают, что чем сложнее, тем
лучше, — часто в их текстах
и лекциях приходится
продираться сквозь мудреные
термины и метафоры, а говорить
так, чтобы понимали далекие
от философии люди, считается
стыдным и ненаучным. Мне же
всегда казалось, что высший
пилотаж — это простота.
Если бабушка поймет этику
Канта после моих объяснений,
значит, я на верном пути.
Я очень хочу помогать моим
читателям научиться
формировать собственные
взгляды. Поэтому стараюсь
писать про самые разные
философские школы
и проблемы, объяснять, что меня
в них зацепило, но обязательно
подчеркивая, что это всего лишь
одна из возможных точек
зрения.
Я всегда рада получать вопросы
и уточнения в личные
сообщения, слышать другую
позицию и аргументированно
спорить, ведь истина может
родиться только в постоянном
диалоге. Иногда мне присылают
ссылки на статьи, видео или
книги — я благодарна моим
читателям за это и, конечно,
делюсь в блоге. Вообще,
я всегда рада новым
знакомствам, просто иногда
не хватает времени ответить,
и я прошу моих читателей
не обижаться на молчание.
Благодаря каналу я нашла
несколько хороших друзей.
 Киногид философа: что
смотреть о главных мыслителях
ХХ века
Раньше пыталась следить
за повесткой и писать о вещах,
которые, как мне казалось,
важны для всех, но потом
сдалась и поняла, что лучшая
стратегия — это честность.
Я стараюсь быть собой и пишу
только о том, что волнует меня
в данный момент, о чем не могу
промолчать. Иногда страшно так
раскрываться: кажется, что
обрушится критика (и такое
случается) и все отпишутся,
но оттого вдвойне приятно
находить единомышленников
и слышать слова поддержки.
Для оформления постов
и публикации их в определенное
время использую ControllerBot.
Бывает, что пишу текст поздней
ночью или рано утром и не хочу
беспокоить своих читателей, так
что ставлю его на удобное
время. По моим ощущениям,
на сам пост я трачу примерно
час, но перед этим всегда много
читаю по теме, и бывает, что это
растягивается на несколько
дней. У меня есть файл, куда
я скидываю идеи, собираю
цитаты и ссылки, пишу
черновики постов. Когда
появляется время, я его
открываю и, если нет больше
актуальных идей, выбираю тему
оттуда.
Мой канал не приносит вообще
никакого дохода, и я не хочу его
монетизировать. Он и так мне
очень помог: я нашла классных
людей и интересные блоги,
начала писать статьи в «Нож»,
он стал моим
профессиональным портфолио.
Когда-нибудь мне бы хотелось
написать полноценную нон-
фикшн-книгу по философии
и вести лекции, но это только
мечты, а пока буду и дальше
писать в канал.

СТРАННЫЕ ОТНОШЕНИЯ
Философ и некропсихотерапевт
Жюли Реше рассуждает о
сексуальном номадизме и том,
почему современная близость
это стресс
Новая эра, в которой мы
обнаруживаем себя в условиях
глобализирующегося мира и
становления информационного
общества – это эра цифровых
номадов. Технически термин
«цифровой номад» (или
«цифровой кочевник»)
первоначально означал
категорию людей, которые
работают удаленно, используя
цифровые технологии, и ведут
мобильный образ жизни.
Но цифровые номады – уже
давно не отдельная
маргинальная группа людей, а
преобладающий способ жизни.
Теперь это каждый с доступом в
интернет, то есть с
возможностью общаться и
сотрудничать с множеством
людей, находящихся в разных
частях планеты, формировать
рассеянные виртуальные связи
и свою виртуальную
репрезентацию.
С философской точки зрения,
человек современности
представляет собой
номадический субъект.
Сегодняшний номад, то есть ты
и я, не обязательно все время
перемещается, меняя страны, он
скорее перемещается по
отношению к устоявшейся
мыслительной и поведенческой
системе координат (хотя это
часто включает и физическое
перемещение).
Современный странник живет в
движении, формируется,
подвергая себя влиянию разных
информационных сфер, не
ограничиваясь рамками
определенного коллектива
людей и территории, на которой
он родился или которую он раз
и навсегда для себя избрал.
Поэтому в противоположность
человеку из прежнего
традиционного
дономадического мира, он в
гораздо в меньшей степени
определён традициями, языком,
способом мышления и
способами взаимоотношений,
общепринятыми в его исходной
социальной среде.
Мир номадизма пришел на
смену традиционному миру, с
его стабильной фиксированной
и поэтому более понятной
картиной мира. В традиционном
мире человек был вынужден
исполнять заранее приписанные
ему роли, принимать
навязанную ему идентичность,
наследовать традиции и
жизненный уклад предыдущих
поколений – выраженный,
например, в
последовательности учиться-
работать-жениться.
Возможностей выйти за рамки
этой системы было немного и
они были чреваты социальными
гонениями.
Крах традиционного уклада
связан с разоблачением его
относительности – того, что
«как положено» на самом деле
не существует, что
общепринятый жизненный
уклад навязан традицией и
обществом, а значит все может
быть по-другому, то есть
человек и межличностные
отношения могут быть
перепридуманы.
Теряя определенность, человек
обретает нечто неизменно
большее – то, что он не смог бы
обрести меньшей ценой.
Номад непрестанно
странствует, уходя от
фиксированных рамок и
идентичности – он
беспризорник и отщепенец по
отношению к приписываемой
ему среде и судьбе. Он обладает
квир-идентичностью, находясь
в состоянии преобразования и
поиска себя, при этом никогда
окончательно себя не находя.
Психика человека
тысячелетиями формировалась
в условиях оседлости и
малоподвижных традиций.
Вследствие этого современный
человек все еще сохраняет
потребность в определенности
координат. Вместе с крахом
традиционного общества, мы
потеряли привычное счастье
стабильности и понятности.
Человек действительно был
более счастлив (в привычном
смысле этого слова) в
традиционном обществе.
Потребность в стабильности
наилучшим образом
удовлетворяет религия –
наиболее неизменная
традиционная структура –
предоставляя иллюзию
существования вечных
моральных догм и
соответствующих им идеальных
форм поведения.
Счастье определенности
достигается ценой ограничения
свободы перемещения
относительно стабильной
системы координат и
возможности преобразования
идентичности. Для того, чтобы
его достичь, следует выбрать (а
еще лучше принять навязанный
выбор) и оставаться верным –
одной стране, одной профессии,
одному партнеру, одной
идентичности. Поэтому счастье
определенности с
необходимостью
сопровождается несчастьем
удушливости и отсутствия
свободы.
Современная эпидемия
депрессии во многом
обусловлена тем, что уровень
доступной сегодня свободы
предполагает
неопределенность. Свобода
изматывает и вызывает
ностальгию по старому укладу,
отменяющему свободу.
Современный мир все еще
полон ностальгии по
традиционным формам
отношений, несмотря на то, что
они предполагали, к примеру,
патриархат – одну из форм
жесткого ограничения свободы.
Существует миф, что можно
возвратиться к старым формам,
при этом избавив их от всего,
что лишало свободы. В
основании этого мифа лежит
непонимание, что отсутствие
свободы и было результатом
существования этих форм.
Обнаружив, что практика
свободы, свежесть и
неукорененность даются
болезненной ценой, многие
современные мыслители вроде
Жижека исходят в своем
размышлениях и взывают к
чувству ностальгии, клеймя мир
непрестанных изменений
происками капитализма –
призывая либо вернуться к
существовавшим ранее в
истории элементам порядка,
либо сформировать новые
неизменные традиции, что
неизбежно повлечет за собой
(об этом обычно не
упоминается) отказ от
доступного сегодня уровня
свободы.
Стоит ли идти на поводу у этой
ностальгии? Свобода
предполагает потерянность,
беспризорность,
заброшенность, не-
принадлежность. Все
перечисленное ощущается как
несчастье отсутствия
определенности. Но при этом,
теряя определенность, человек
обретает нечто неизменно
большее – то, что он не смог бы
обрести меньшей ценой.
Болезненная радость свободы –
это радость изобретателя,
игрока, экспериментатора и
странника. Вместо того, чтобы
бояться и убегать от нее, можно,
наоборот, окунуться в нее с
головой чтобы открыться
неизвестному.
Сегодняшние мы уже
почувствовали вкус свободы и
теперь, несмотря на всю ее
невыносимость, болезненность
и соблазны ностальгии, больше
не сможем от нее отказаться.
Любой шаг назад будет
сопровождаться горьким
привкусом самопредательства.
Мы только начинаем
осваиваться в новом мире.
Постепенно, через боль
отсутствия стабильности, мы
учимся жить другим чувством –
вместо счастья замирания
героической радостью свободы
и приключений. Болезненная
радость свободы – это радость
изобретателя, игрока,
экспериментатора и странника.
Вместо того, чтобы бояться и
убегать от нее, можно,
наоборот, окунуться в нее с
головой чтобы открыться
неизвестному.
Традиционные отношения
больше невозможны, ведь они
предполагали искреннюю веру
в их обязательный и
неизменный характер.
Малейшее сомнение в этом
разрушает их суть – сегодня мы
можем до бесконечности
проигрывать элементы
традиционных отношений, но
мы обречены только лишь
имитировать уже мертвую
форму прошлого.
Такая имитация часто является
формой убегания от свободы и
обусловлена сохранившийся в
нас ностальгией по
определенности. Идя на поводу
у ностальгии, мы убегаем от
возможностей, которые
открывает это сомнение.
Усомниться – значит
обнаружить в основании
устоявшихся форм отношений
пустоту, то есть отсутствие их
неизменного основания. Такая
пустота плодотворна, она
открывает пространство для
создания новых форм – если
оказалось, что нет обязательных
форм отношений, значит можно
придумывать новые.
Спонтанный секс с
неожиданными людьми
YES, PLEASE
Современный номадический
мир часто критикуют за
отсутствие в нем
межличностной близости,
ошибочно принимая за близость
находящиеся в состоянии
отмены традиционные формы
отношений. Так, считается, что
упадок института брака
означает утрату близости, а
опосредованная цифровыми
технологиями коммуникация
вытесняет «подлинное»
общение. Но возможен ли
вообще человек вне
межчеловеческой близости?
Недавние открытия социальной
когнитивной нейронауки
совершили переворот в
понимании человека. Если
традиционно было принято
считать, что личность (то есть
отсоединенность от других)
предшествует социальности
(включенности в социум), то
сейчас стало понятно, что всё
радикальным образом наоборот.
Исходное базовое состояние
человека – как раз отсутствие
его как личности,
неотделенность и слитность с
другими.
Социальный режим нашего
мозга является базовым (когда
мы «ни о чем не думаем», мы
думаем о других), что позволяет
считать мозг человека
инстанцией связи с другими, а
не обособленным
мыслительным аппаратом,
социализирующимся лишь
впоследствии.
Так как потребность человека в
близости других – базовая, ее
неудовлетворение наиболее
невыносимо для человека, оно
сопровождается эмоциональной
болью сродни физической.
Социальность настолько
определяющая для человека,
что возникает вопрос можно ли
ее сводить к потребности. Ведь
слово «потребность» указывает
на первичность ее носителя –
индивида. Потребность – это
всего лишь атрибут индивида,
который может существовать не
удовлетворив свою
потребность. Сводя
социальность к потребности
личности, мы вписываем
понимание человека в прежнюю
схему понимания, где
первичной является личность, а
социальность носит по
отношению к ней
атрибутивный, то есть
вторичный характер.
Мы представляем собой
первичную неразделенность –
оргию слитности, где каждое
тело проникает и переплетается
с каждым другим.
В действительности,
социальность – и есть мы, в то
время как личность, то есть
отдельность от социума,
вторична. Она возникает как
отклонение или поломка
изначальной связанности.
Первичность социальности
означает, что на внутреннем
уровне – на изнанке нашей
разъединенности – мы все
взаимосвязаны. Мы
представляем собой первичную
неразделенность – оргию
слитности, где каждое тело
проникает и переплетается с
каждым другим.
Разъединенность и
существование личности –
вторичное и производное
явление по отношению к
неискоренимому имманентному
плану.
Жажда свободы, которая также
присуща человеку, идет вразрез
с его базовой потребностью в
слитности с другими. Свобода
возможна при условии
определенной степени
отсоедененности от
сплоченности социального тела.
Личности присущи свой
собственный взгляд и цели,
отличные от взглядов и целей
других. Она не является точной
копией других, не подчиняет
себя всецело их мыслям и
намерениям, она утверждает
своё отдельное от других
существование, оставаясь при
этом частью социального тела.
Противоречивость
человеческих интенций
(стремление к свободе и базовая
социальность) становится
заметна в самом раннем
возрасте – когда ребенок
одновременно нуждается в том,
кто его опекает, и вопреки
этому жаждет отсоединения,
самостоятельности и свободы.
Взрослея, человек на уходит от
этого внутреннего
противоречия. Мы навсегда
сохраняем слитность с другими,
но при этом хотим быть
свободными.
Традиционные модели
романтичных отношений
ориентированы в основном на
сохранение изначальной
слитности человека с другими,
которая достигается за счет
ущемления возможностей
личностной свободы.
Общепринятое представление о
романтической связи
воспроизводит идеал
безвременной соединенности –
растворения во
взаимообладании друг другом.
Традиционный брак – это
формальная фиксация статуса
безвременной
нерасчлененности супругов.
Традиционные отношения
закрепляют человека за
определенной «территорией»
социальных связей, за рамки
которой ему не позволено
выходить.
Следует указать, что
общепринятое определение
личности предполагает некий
закрепленный комплекс
характеристик, в то время, как
номадическая личность –
самоустраняющаяся (квир-
идентичность). Номад не
определяет себя до конца, его
личность находится в
постоянном процессе
самотрансформации, иными
словами, он не перестает
расширять рамки своей свободы
по отношению к другим и
прежнему себе.
Номадическая личность
смещает акценты – она
нацелена на реализацию
потребности в свободе, принося
в жертву состояние
соединенности с другими.
Номадические отношения – это
отношения в которых сводится
к минимуму уровень
статичности, они более
подвижны, и позволяют
большую степень разнообразия
их форм. Номадические
отношения отличаются от
традиционных тем, что в них
внесена странность,
позволяющая им отстраниться
от привычных форм отношений.
Внутренний оргистический
план остается в основании, ведь
вместе с его устранением
исчезает и человек, но
плотность этого пространства
облегчается большим
количеством воздуха –
лакунами пустоты,
необходимыми для
маневренности и свободы
действий.
Номадические отношения – это
бесконечное странствие,
воплощающееся в театре, игре и
эксперименте, в которых мы
одновременно актеры, соавторы
и соучастники.
Для рассуждений о
номадических отношениях не
годится привычный фреймворк
сексуальности, который мы
обычно применяем рассуждая
об интимных отношениях. Если
вдуматься, сексуальность –
почти настолько же
традиционное понятие, как и
понятие брака. Оба
предполагают
гетеросексуальные отношения в
качестве базовых, сводя весь
спектр разнообразия тел к
половой дифференциации (то
есть разделения на мужской и
женский пол). Не стоит
обманываться понятиями гомо-
и бисексуальности, они
сохраняют половую
дифференциацию в качестве
базовой, лишь переставляя
изначальные составные (вместо
женщина/мужчина:
женщина/женщина и
мужчинаа/мужчина) не отменяя
их, а лишь маскируя
гетеросексуальность, которая
сохраняется и даже утверждает
таким образом своё
центральное место. Возможно,
концепты гендера и
негетеросексуальных типов
ориентаций – важный шаг
привнесения странности в
традиционную форму
отношений, но все же это
довольно безопасная для них
странность.
Чтобы вести речь об интимной
стороне номадических
отношениях следует скорее
использовать концепт
телесности, а не сексуальности.
Такие отношения начинаются с
феноменологического приема
эпохе – приостановки,
вынесения за скобки всего,
кроме чистой фактической
данности тел номадических
субъектов – очищенных от их
историй и составных их
идентичности (в том числе
половой). Этот прием позволяет
разорвать порочный круг
повторения идентичности и
привычных форм отношений и
проиграть новые. Эпохе не
отменяет всего того, что
вынесено за скобки,
необходимые элементы
идентичностей и истории
субъектов включается в
разыгрываемых отношения, но
уже лишь в качестве условных,
то есть таких, которые сведены
к статусу материала для игры –
из них убрана их серьезность и
«правдивость».
Именно задействование
принципа эпохе отличает
повседневную жизнь от
искусства. Повседневная жизнь
– это проигрывание
устоявшийся или
существующих по умолчанию
идентичностей и не-странных
форм отношений. Театральная
постановка отличается тем, что
участвующие в ней –
сценаристы, режиссёры и
актёры – вовлечены в активное
формирование канвы
повествования. Именно
благодаря тому, что подлинных
их нет – их будничные истории
и идентичности вынесены за
скобки – становится возможным
произведение искусства. Они
могут использовать часть
своего жизненного опыта, но
ровно в той степени, в которой
они необходимы для
постановочных целей.
Номадические отношения – это
бесконечное странствие,
воплощающееся в театре, игре и
эксперименте, в которых мы
одновременно актеры, соавторы
и соучастники. Вовлечь себя в
такие отношения – значит
погрузиться в коллективный
перформанс, материалом для
которого служат наши тела,
время и пространство наших
жизней – волосы, осень, чат,
гениталии, мысли, окно,
мизинец, полчаса, улыбка...
«Ничтожества с татуировками»:
дерзкая статья о молодых людях
с татуировками
7196
Когда я вижу сегодня
молодого человека
с татуировками, то ясно
понимаю, что передо мной
ничтожество.
Бармены, официанты, брадобреи
в барбершопах нынче все
исколоты дурацкими надписями
и орнаментами.
Представители
низкоквалифицированного
физического труда сделали
татуировки отличительным
знаком своей касты. Иными
словами, татуировка сейчас
является маркером социальной
второсортности. В свою очередь
чистая кожа без наколок теперь
— это шик, пропускной билет
в высшее общество и признак
интеллектуального
превосходства.
Особенно смешны и жалки те,
кто любит рассуждать
о значении собственных
татуировок (имя любимой
девушки, день рождения сына).
На самом деле смысл всех
современных татуировок один:
их носитель — безликая серость
и ничтожество, порождённое
глобализацией и обществом
потребления.
Десять лет назад я работал
инженером на железной дороге
и принимал отчёты у дорожных
бригадиров. Раз в месяц ко мне
с папочками приходили матёрые
дядьки, неоднократно мотавшие
срок на зоне. Наколки
на их пальцах имели смысл —
я проверял отчёты, а в это время
бригадир рассказывал мне
о своих судимостях
и татуировках. Они объясняли,
кому положено бить звёзды,
купола и кресты, а кому нельзя.
А нынче купола и кресты
набивают себе сопливые
десятиклассники, которые
не бывали даже в кабинете
участкового милиционера,
не говоря уже о более серьёзных
пенитенциарных учреждениях.
Замначальника и главный
инженер по традиции каждый
день на обед распивали на двоих
бутылку водки, потому что были
крепкими мужиками,
но татуировок у них не было.
А сейчас в наколках одни
доходяги и хлюпики,
обедающие рукколой со смузи
и не способные выпить залпом
сто грамм беленькой. Общество
стремительно хилеет, мельчает
и становится более
женственным.
Кажется, одной из главных
причин является отмирание
института воинской повинности.
Сначала служили два года,
потом полтора, затем год,
а со временем все стали массово
косить и уклоняться под
любыми предлогами. Армия
делала из мальчиков мужчин.
Общество потребления
превращает мальчиков
в малышей горшкового возраста,
вечно гоняющихся за новыми
игрушками (айфонами, вейпами,
гироскутерами — нужное
подчеркнуть).
Летом я каждое утро бегал
кроссы по стадиону, тренируя
силу духа. На соседних
дорожках активно изображала
здоровый образ жизни
«продвинутая молодежь» —
девки с татуировками и парни
с японскими сумоистскими
косичками на затылке.
Складывалось впечатление, что
они ходят покрасоваться,
а не заниматься спортом — все
с фитнесс-трекерами,
пристегивающимися к руке
чехлами-кармашками для
смартфонов, беспроводными
наушниками, солнцезащитными
очками популярных фирм.
В этих легкоатлетических
позёров мне даже плевать
не хотелось — слюну жалко
тратить на них. И почти у всех
из них были татуировки как
эмблема принадлежности к миру
пустышек. Я старался поскорее
пробегать мимо татуированных
айтишников и бренд-
менеджеров — какие же они
всё-таки убогие и никчёмные!
Полвека назад французские
философы описали
недолговечный мир будущего.
Товары, готовые служить
десятилетиями, невыгодны
глобальной экономике.
Корпорациям нужны
скоропортящиеся телевизоры,
холодильники и стиральные
машинки. «Чем быстрее
сломается кухонный комбайн,
тем скорее обыватель побежит
покупать новый, и это выгодно
для нас!» — размышляют
воротилы капитализма.
Но самое страшное, что вслед
за непрочными товарами
расплодились и непрочные
бесхребетные люди. Какая-то
голливудская мадам решила, что
татуировка — это прикольно,
и они, как обезьяны, слепо
и бездумно начали
ей подражать.
Я же в свои тридцать три года,
видимо, слишком стар и застал
тот ещё прочный мир:
холодильник «ЗИЛ» надежно
проработал на кухне у моей
бабушки больше сорока лет,
произведенная в послевоенные
годы мебель отлично
сохранилась и по сей день.
Я запомнил строительство
основательных домов
из четырех слоев красного
кирпича и возведение блочных
гаражей с фундаментом.
А теперь рассмотрим мир
современных девочек
с татуировками. Они вскладчину
снимают квартиру
в новостройке с газобетонными
стенами (ударишь разок
хорошенько — стена
развалится).

Им не хочется жить с парнями,

потому что мужчину надо
обкармливать и обстирывать,
а они заточены только
на индивидуальные развлечения.
Они не задумываются о своём
жилье, а зациклены
на сиюминутных удовольствиях.
Им важнее увидеть фонтан
Треви в Риме и дом Гауди
в Барселоне, чем обзавестись
собственностью. Только они
не понимают, что дико
однообразны в своих
устремлениях и селфи возле
фонтана Треви уже выкладывала
в Инстаграме добрая половина
офисных идиоток. Они ездят
на кредитных корейских
машинках, гоняются за новыми
айфонами, но всё равно
тотально несчастливы. Они
просто белочки, несущиеся
внутри колеса общества
потребления. В этой гонке нет
призов и нет победителей. Они
перманентно фрустрированы
и ходят к психологам, пытаясь
решить накопившиеся
проблемы. Хотя вся
их проблематика
на поверхности — она лежит
в их легковесно-туристическом
образе жизни.
Я не садист, но есть жестокие
моменты, доставляющие мне
истинное удовольствие.
Купившая права татуированная
девочка едет на легкосплавной
корейской машинке и вдруг
врезается в старый чешский
трамвай «Tatra» (или
в «Победу», или в «Волгу»,
на которой ездил Олег Ефремов
в фильме «Три тополя
на Плющихе»). В одночасье весь
няшно-розовый мирок
татуированной девочки
разбивается вдребезги. А всё
потому, что тот старый мир
до Бодрияра был прочнее,
мощнее, устойчивее,
стабильнее и, самое главное,
честнее.
«Вы все фейк!» — написала
в предсмеpтной записке Оксана
Шачко, и это лучшее
высказывание о современном
мире. Люди превратились
в симулякры. Дашь щелбан
татуированному вегану, и он
моментально превратится
в пыль. В коворкингах сидят те,
кто не способен трудиться
в коровниках.
Каждому делающему нынче
татуировку надо прямо на лбу
ставить тавро
«НИЧТОЖЕСТВО», чтобы
окружающие представляли его
образовательный уровень.
Пятнадцать лет назад
в колледже, увидев татуировку
на икроножной мышце
у преподавательницы,
мы с приятелями считали это
признаком крутизны. А сейчас
подобное нательное рисование
— это пошлость, глупость
и косность. Ко всем обладателям
татуировок у меня всегда есть
вопрос: «Вы платите деньги
за то, чтобы вам испортили
кожу. Давайте тогда
вы заплатите мне деньги, а я вам
выбью зуб или выколю глаз?».
Татуировка — это же латентный
мазохизм. Скарификация
за деньги. Показные увечья.
Станьте сначала рок-звездами,
сочините великие музыкальные
композиции, а потом уже
набивайте себе партаки.
А то двух слов связать не могут,
но зато все исколоты.
Я люблю себе представлять
картину, как татуированный
хипстер попадает в тюрьму,
заходит в хату, а у него наколок
в десять раз больше, чем
у смотрящего. Естественно,
с хипстера спросят за наколки.
Дальше, думаю, ему будет
невесело сидеть — особенно,
если брови в барбершопе
фигурно ощипаны и ухожены.
«От сумы и от тюрьмы
не зарекайся». Забыли эту
мудрость айфонные сосунки.
Я, наверное, сделан из того
толстого слоя стали, что
и трамвай «Tatra». Мне
не нужны внешние атрибуты
характера. Татуировки, бороды,
сумоистские косички,
айфоны — это всё для
поверхностной накипи
и бабочек-однодневок,
не задумывающихся о вечности.
Ничтожества с татуировками —
вот самое ёмкое описание
современных тридцатилетних.
Они столь же хрупкие
и недолговечные, как
и бумажные стаканчики,
из которых хипстеры пьют свой
гадкий кофе.
Пройдет время, сменятся
тренды, татуировки выйдут
из моды, и тогда хипстеры
поймут, что их цинично кинули,
испортив кожу за их же деньги.
Белоснежная кожа — как и век
назад, это признак аристократии
и принадлежности к мыслящей
публике. У Ломоносова не было
ни фитнес-трекера, ни айфона
с Google Maps, а он зимой
добрался своим ходом
из Архангельска в Москву. Это
говорит о том, что сила воли
важнее, чем научно-технический
прогресс и его производные.
Why the long face?
S Comment pensaient les nazis ?
[samedi 03 novembre 2018]

Une analyse accessible des grands

aspects du nazisme par son
spécialiste français, Johann
Chapoutot, à partir du recueil de
plusieurs interventions dans les
médias.
Nicolas CHARLES
Comprendre le nazisme est un
livre d'entretiens regroupés par
Johann Chapoutot. Il propose ainsi
au lecteur, dans de courts articles,
des éclairages vifs et précis sur des
aspects spécifiques du régime nazi
et de son idéologie. Cet ouvrage
n'est donc pas construit comme un
livre à part entière, mais comme
une juxtaposition d'articles. Il n'y a
toutefois pas de manque d'unité car
la production de Chapoutot sur le
sujet est relativement
importante. Comprendre le
nazisme ne doit pas être vu comme
une « somme » complète et
définitive sur l'étude de ce
phénomène qui toucha l'Allemagne
et l'Europe dans les années 1930-
1940. Il s'agit ici plutôt d'aborder
cette question complexe par le
biais d'articles, de retranscriptions
d'interviews ou d'émissions radio.
Le fait qu'il n'y ait pas continuité
entre les articles, même s'ils sont
regroupés par thèmes, permet au
lecteur de lire l'ouvrage en
accédant directement à l'item
choisit, sans besoin d'avoir tout lu
auparavant. Cette sorte de «
zapping » éditorial donne une
certaine vivacité à l'ouvrage dont
les contenus sont ainsi plus
dynamiques et ne souffrent pas de
longueurs. La diversité des articles
retranscrits permet au lecteur
d'aborder le nazisme par de
nombreux biais : l'idéologie mais
aussi les hommes eux-mêmes et
leurs actes. Voir les nazis à travers
les sources issues de leurs victimes
ou de ceux qui leur ont résisté est
aussi un choix fort de Chapoutot.
Comprendre le nazisme est donc
un ouvrage grand public qui
permet de rentrer dans l'étude de
l'idéologie nazie, à l'image de la
biographie d'Hitler qu'il vient de
réaliser avec Christian Ingrao aux
PUF et qui a été, en septembre
2018, au cœur d'une polémique
dans le Monde des livres à la suite
d'une critique assez acérée d'André
Loez.

Étudier le nazisme sur la longue

durée
L'une des spécialités de Chapoutot,
c'est d'étudier l'utilisation dans la
pensée nazie d'aspects historiques
anciens, tel qu'il a pu le faire dans
sa thèse sur les rapports entretenus
par cette idéologie avec
l'Antiquité. Cette thématique,
centrale dans ses travaux, est ici en
partie résumée à travers un
entretien avec Philippe Douroux
dans Libération en 2015 intitulé «
Les nazis, les Allemands et les
Grecs » et la retranscription de
l'émission radio de France Culture
« Concordance des temps » avec
Jean-Noël Jeanneney intitulée «
L'Allemagne et la Grèce ».
Cette étude du nazisme sur le
temps long a aussi une nécessité
épistémologique : il s'agit pour
Chapoutot de comprendre quelle
est la vision de l'Histoire et du
monde des nazis. L'historien essaie
de montrer comment ceux-ci ont
instrumentalisé l'Histoire pour
servir leur pensée politique,
comme il le met en avant dans la
retranscription de l'émission radio
« La Marche de l'Histoire »
intitulée « De la Fable à la norme :
réécriture de l'histoire et
"révolution culturelle" ». Il
démontre bien qu'en s'intéressant à
certains aspects précis de l'histoire
antique, qu'ils déforment (à l'image
du mythe des « barbares ») les
nazis servent avant tout leur
politique contemporaine. L'étude
de la longue durée est donc
intéressante et abordée par
plusieurs biais de l'antiquité gréco-
romaine.
Dans une autre partie
de Comprendre le nazisme,
Chapoutot a regroupé des articles
qui étudient l'évolution de la
mémoire du nazisme des années
1930 jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Il pose
ici des questions pertinentes en
proie avec l'actualité et la montée
des extrémismes dans différents
pays européens, dont l'Allemagne
avec l'AFD. Ainsi, à travers «
Vivons nous un retour des années
1930 » ou « Fallait-il rééditer Mein
Kampf », l'historien vient nourrir le
débat public. D'autres débats plus
épistémologiques sont aussi
abordés comme « Historien ou
apologète, le cas Nolte » ou «
Après le nazisme : temporalité du
chercheur, historicité de la
recherche ». Ces articles sont brefs
(entre trois et cinq pages) mais
proposent un point précis sur le
sujet.

Le nazisme en miroir :
bourreaux, victimes et résistants
Un des choix fort de Johann
Chapoutot dans Comprendre le
nazisme est d'avoir mis dans une
même partie l'étude des nazis à
travers leurs sources, mais aussi
via le regard de leurs victimes ou
des ceux qui ont résisté. «
Comment peut-on être nazi ? »,
question délicate et présentée ici
en finesse par Chapoutot dans une
conférence donnée au musée de la
Shoah. « Devenir Hitler » ou «
Henrich Himmler, le crime et
l'intimité », l'historien cherche ici,
par la présentation de ces nazis et
de leur parcours à comprendre les
mécanismes qui ont fait que ces
derniers ont pu mettre en place leur
idéologie raciste et antisémite puis
de prendre le pouvoir. Une
démarche à rapprocher de celle
de Nicolas Patin dans Kruger, un
bourreau ordinaire. Les
spécialistes actuels du nazisme
cherchent donc à mettre en avant
les mécanismes socio-politiques
qui ont fait basculer ces hommes
dans l'horreur et innommable
durant la Seconde Guerre
mondiale.
Chapoutot montre dans la même
partie que rien n'était écrit avant la
crise des années 1930. Il met
l'accent sur Weimar qui, malgré
ses handicaps liminaires (guerre
civile contre les communistes,
troubles à l'ordre public par les
corps-francs, signature du traité de
Versailles largement perçu outre-
Rhin comme un diktat) a su
redresser la barre dans les années
1920 mais s'est heurtée à la crise
économique qui l'a finalement
emportée. Les nazis ont donc
bénéficié du contexte pour arriver
au pouvoir plus que de leurs
qualités politiques. Cette analyse
n'est pas nouvelle mais elle est
rappelée fort à propos par
Chapoutot. Il en va de même en ce
qui concerne la résistance
allemande au nazisme qui est
simplement présentée. L'intérêt est
ici de montrer que derrière la Rose
Blanche de Hans et Sophie Scholl,
il y eut finalement beaucoup
d'Allemands qui ont essayé de
s'opposer à Hitler. Il présente
d'ailleurs ici un aspect plus
méconnu : la concurrence des
mémoires entre les résistants de
gauche, plutôt mis en avant après-
guerre dans la RDA et celle
davantage chrétienne (comme la
Rose Blanche) en RFA.
Nazisme : normes et actes
Cette partie n'est pas la plus
novatrice, mais elle est sans doute
la plus importante du livre car elle
permet de comprendre comment
les nazis se sont servis de leur
discours pour en venir aux actes,
c'est à dire de voir comment ils ont
pu commettre autant de massacres
de leur arrivée au pouvoir à 1945.
Elle est importante car Chapoutot
prend soin d'y présenter au public,
à travers des articles comme «
Oradour et les chiens de l'enfer »,
« L'avenir appartient à celui qui
contrôle la jeunesse » ou «
L'antisémitisme et la “Solution
finale” », comment les nazis ont
pu, au nom de leur idéologie,
massacrer autant de civils durant la
Seconde Guerre mondiale. Rien de
neuf donc, mais une analyse
historienne de Chapoutot qui
présente les faits et questionne à
travers eux son public actuel.
« Peut-on faire l'histoire du
nazisme ? » se demande-t-il. Il ne
s'agit pas ici d'une question de
rhétorique mais d'une vraie
interrogation qui taraude et hante
l'historien depuis longtemps.
Chapoutot avoue être aujourd'hui «
touché » après autant d'années de
recherches à travers de nombreux
fonds d'archives où il a traqué le
nazisme pour le comprendre et
l'expliquer avec l'appareil
scientifique et les méthodes dont
dispose l'historien. Il écrit aussi
vouloir prendre du recul sur son
travail.

Comprendre le nazisme est donc

une synthèse de ses recherches,
publications et interventions
marquantes dans les médias. D'une
lecture aisée, cet ouvrage permet
une meilleure compréhension du
nazisme mais il n'est pas suffisant.
Il est une entrée dans l'étude
scientifique de cette idéologie qu'il
conviendra de compléter par de
nombreuses lectures annexes
(Kershaw, Wachsmann, Sallée,
Ingrao...). Comprendre le
nazisme est une étude synthétique,
mais non exhaustive, sur cette
idéologie violente et radicale où
Chapoutot fait œuvre de pédagogie
pour expliquer ce qui est parfois
innommable. Un vrai travail
d'historien et de professeur à
destination du plus grand nombre.
Is economics corrupting our idea
of human worth?
Unthinkable: Pro-choice author
Chris Kaposy warns of
‘elimination of people with Down
syndrome’
Tue, Oct 30, 2018,
05:00 Updated: Tue, Oct 30, 2018,
10:33

Joe Humphreys
3

‘My position is to recommend that

people consider parenting a child
with Down syndrome, if given the
opportunity’. Photograph: iStock
Share to FacebookShare
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to

After more than 30 years of

contentious abortion referendums,
Irish people may wish never to
debate abortion again. However,
the repeal of the Eighth
Amendment – signed into law last
month – doesn’t end the
discussion. Instead, it moves it on
to new ground – raising ethical
questions that are more to do with
individual conscience and personal
morality than criminality.
Choice creates new moral
dilemmas, and one of these is: To
what extent should parents be
influenced by prenatal testing?
Across Europe and North America,
the rate at which parents choose to
terminate a pregnancy when
prenatal tests indicate that the
foetus has Down syndrome ranges
between 60 per cent and over 90
per cent. There is “something
morally disquieting” about these
figures, says Chris Kaposy, a
Canadian professor of bioethics,
who has written sensitively about
the “burden” of parental decision-
making in a new book Choosing
Down Syndrome: Ethics and New
Prenatal Testing
Technologies (MIT Press).
Kaposy, who is the father of a
child with Down syndrome, is
concerned about the aggressive
marketing of prenatal testing to
pregnant women alongside a
narrative about disability that is
based on “mistaken assumptions,
biases” and “unexamined
stereotypes”.
Prenatal testing decisions are often
motivated by economic concerns.
Writing from a pro-choice
perspective, he says “I agree that
pregnant women are the only
people who have the morally
legitimate authority to exercise
control over their bodies”.
However, “there is nothing
untoward about offering respectful
and rational arguments in favour of
one choice – bringing a child with
Down syndrome into the world –
over other choices, such as
selective termination”.
 Kaposy is this week’s Unthinkable
guest.
Is it ethical to abort a foetus
because it has Down syndrome?
Chris Kaposy: “I tend not to frame
my discussion of this issue in
terms of a binary of ‘ethical’
versus ‘unethical’. I start from a
pro-choice position with regard to
abortion. So by recognising the
overall ethical importance of
having access to abortion, it would
risk inconsistency to argue that
some abortion choices are
unethical, or that these choices
should be taken out of the hands of
pregnant individuals.
• Don't stop asking questions
• Is it time to cut back on criticism?
• What will replace ‘western
civilisation’?
“Instead, my position is to
recommend that people consider
parenting a child with Down
syndrome, if given the opportunity.
I ask people to examine their
beliefs about children with Down
syndrome, about the nature of
parenting, and about what it means
to be part of a family. From there, I
argue that since many prospective
parents have ideas about the kind
of parents they want to be that
includes values like unconditional
love towards their children, it
makes sense to choose to bring a
child with Down syndrome into
the world.”
You write in your book that the
challenge of parenting a child
with Down syndrome is
overstated. How so?
“Parenting a child with Down
syndrome is very much like
parenting a child who doesn’t have
a disability. People commonly
make the assumption that if the
child has a disability, then
parenting must be harder. There
may be ways that it is harder, but
the experience of parenting a child
with Down syndrome does not
translate into lower familial or
parental well-being. So the
challenges are not overwhelming.
The challenges are not
commensurate with the widespread
avoidance of parenting a child with
Down syndrome that we see
facilitated by prenatal testing and
selective abortion in many
countries.
“I present two types of evidence to
support my claims: memoirs and
commentaries authored by parents
of children with Down syndrome,
and social science research
studying the various dimensions of
family functioning. There is
abundant evidence that families
that include children with Down
syndrome function, on average, as
well as families that have only
nondisabled children.”
Should people – and particularly
liberals – be wary of the spread
of prenatal testing in
reproductive healthcare?
“Conservatives have ideological
reasons to oppose abortion of any
kind, so it is probably liberal-
leaning folks who tend to choose
selective abortion. Like a lot of
things, decisions about prenatal
testing provide a window into
questions about what kind of
society we want to live in.
“The widespread elimination of
people with Down syndrome from
our communities through prenatal
testing and selective abortion
proceeds from and enables the
domination of values that many
liberals would oppose if only they
recognised this domination.
“In my book, I conclude that
prenatal testing decisions are often
motivated by economic concerns.
People with Down syndrome tend
to live good lives, and their
families tend to flourish. But
prospective parents avoid children
with Down syndrome because they
perceive that such children will not
grow up to proceed through the
standard narrative arc of middle-
class success – which includes
things like having a prestigious
career, getting married, and buying
a big house.
“Other economic considerations
come into play as well. I think
liberals are not ultimately
committed to the idea that our
human worth can be measured by
our ability to realise these
standards of success.”
Is western society moving in the
right direction in terms of
supporting the parents of
children with Down syndrome?
“If you look at the past 50 years or
so, yes, western society is moving
in the right direction. There was
virtually no support for parents of
children with disabilities 50 years
ago, during the era of
institutionalisation. But these days,
every time a government gets
elected on a platform of ‘smaller
government’, or fiscal austerity, or
‘running the government like a
business’, families that include
people with disabilities invariably
suffer.
“People with cognitive disabilities
need good publicly-funded
education, healthcare, housing
assistance, and employment
assistance, among other supports.
In a practical sense, fiscal austerity
or ‘neoliberalism’ means cutting
funding for programmes like these.
“So there are some encouraging
signs when looking at the history
of people with disabilities in
western society. But there are also
frequent troubling developments.
“I should mention as well that the
publicly-funded programs that
people with disabilities need also
benefit those of us who are
currently nondisabled. As we age,
many of us will develop cognitive
disabilities like dementia. Our
bodies fall apart and many of us
become physically disabled.
People with disabilities are not a
different class of people separate
from the rest of us. Most of us will
come to rely on supports like
these.”
adness makes us seem nobler,
more elegant, more adult. Which is
pretty weird, when you think about
it
 Chatterton by Henry Wallis 1856,
Tate Britain. Photo courtesy
Wikimedia
Adam Roberts
is a professor of English literature
at Royal Holloway University and
a science fiction author. His latest
book is Twenty Trillion Leagues
Under the Sea (2014). He lives
near London.
1,500 words
Edited by Ed Lake

SYNDICATE THIS ESSAY

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I was listening to Paul
Simon’s Hearts and Bones album
recently, for the first time in many
years – the first time, really, since I
was a young teenager. I bought it
when it came out in 1983 and
listened to it over and over. But
hearing it again, and particularly
listening to the title track, I was
struck by a question: how did
I take this back then? What did it
mean to me, and why did it mean
so much?
So: the title song is a beautifully
worn-down response to a
relationship at its end, a mix of
nostalgic glimpses of happier times
and a weary, bruised sense of life
in the aftermath of some cathartic
break-up. Listening to it as a
young teenager, still a virgin and
almost wholly inexperienced in
such emotions, I wonder if I didn’t
think this is how I want to feel. I
wanted the happiness, but in a
retrospective way (because then
it’s done and dusted and safe); and
I wanted the melancholy because it
just seemed so grown-up and
sophisticated and suave. I wanted,
as an old joke has it, to skip the
marriage and go straight to the
divorce. After all – and I am hardly
the first person to point this out –
there is a complex sort of joy in
sadness.
But can this be right? Surely what
people want is to be happy. Whole
philosophies (I’m looking at you,
utilitarianism) rest on the premise
that more happiness is always and
everywhere a good thing. There is
a Global Happiness Index,
measuring how happy people are
(Denmark tops the league). Bhutan
even has a Gross National
Happiness Commission, with the
power to review government
policy decisions and allocate
resources.
It’s good to be happy sometimes,
of course. Yet the strange truth is
that we don’t wish to be happy all
the time. If we did, more of us
would be happy – it’s not as if we
in the affluent West lack tools or
means to gratify ourselves.
Sometimes we are sad because we
have cause, and sometimes we are
sad because – consciously or
unconsciously – we want to be.
Perhaps there’s a sense in which
emotional variety is better than
monotony, even if the monotone is
a happy one. But there’s more to it
than that, I think. We value
sadness in ways that make
happiness look a bit simple-
minded.
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Sadness inspires great art in a way
that grinningly eating ice cream in
your underpants cannot. In his
essay ‘Atrabilious Reflections
upon Melancholy’ (1823), Hartley
Coleridge (son of Samuel Taylor)
praised melancholy as a more
refined state of mind than
happiness. ‘Melancholy can scarce
exist in an undegraded spirit – it
cannot exist in a mere animal’ is
how he put it:
Melancholy is the only Muse. She
is Thalia and Melpomene. She
inspired Milton and Michael
Angelo, and Swift and Hogarth.
All men of genius are melancholy
– and none more so than those
whose genius is comic. Men (those
I mean who are not mere animals)
may be divided, according to the
kind of their melancholy, into three
great classes. Those who seek for
the infinite, in contradistinction to
the finite – those who seek for the
infinite in the finite – and those
who seek to degrade the finite by a
comparison with the infinite. The
first class comprehends
philosophers and religionists; the
second, poets, lovers, conquerors,
misers, stockjobbers, & c.; and the
third comprises satirists,
comedians, jokers of all kinds,
man-haters, and womanhaters,
Epicures, and bon-vivants in
general.
Melancholy, Coleridge is arguing,
is more dignified than happiness. I
suspect this is a sense that most
people have – that joy is, at root, a
kind of idiot pleasure, the idiom of
the lobotomy, a balloon just
waiting to be popped. Sorrow is
somehow more grown-up, because
less illusioned. It feels more
sincere, more authentic. As she
prepared to write Adam
Bede (1859), George Eliot copied
the following from Thomas
Carlyle’s Life of Oliver Cromwell
into her notebook: ‘The quantity of
sorrow he has, does it not mean
withal the quantity of sympathy he
has, the quantity of faculty and
victory he shall yet have? Our
sorrow is the inverted image of our
nobleness.’
Because it has some of the
colouring of nobility, sadness is
also, perhaps, more beautiful than
happiness. Philip Larkin’s
‘Money’ (1973) ends:
I listen to money singing. It’s like
looking down
From long French windows at a
provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches
ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely
sad.
It Is Intensely Sad would be a
pretty good title for a study of
Larkin’s verse as a whole. Of
course, one reaction to this poem
would be to say: ‘Wait just a
minute, Phil: you don’t actually
mean “it is intensely sad”. You
mean “I am intensely sad”. The
street, the church, the whole
provincial town is doing just fine,
thank you, and has no
responsibility for your
mournfulness, looking down from
your long French windows.’ Such
a reaction would not diminish
Larkin’s achievement, either, for
this is indeed the whole point of
his poetry: to write, not about the
slums, the canal or the church, but
about the elegance of melancholy.
Why on earth should melancholy
be elegant – or attractive in any
other way? On the face of it, it
ought to be precisely the sort of
thing that evolution breeds out of
the race, a prime target for sexual
deselection. What female would
want to mate with a miserable
partner when she could have a
happy, smiling one instead? Put
like that, of course, the question
looks a little ridiculous; as if we’d
really prefer to pair off with
SpongeBob SquarePants instead of
Morrissey. But why? Why would
you rather spend time with the
latter than the former?
If depression is a foul miasma
wreathing the brain, elegant
sadness is more like a peacock’s
tail, coloured in blue-gentian and
rich marine greens
It was Charles Darwin, in The
Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals(1872), who noted that
sadness manifested the same way
in all cultures. For something so
ubiquitous, it is tempting to
venture an evolutionary
explanation. Alas, the
anthropological and evolutionary
work in this area has focused
almost entirely upon depression,
which is not quite what we are
talking about here. I can tell you
with rather grim authority that the
difference between elegant ennui
and the black dog is like the
difference between pleasant
intoxication and typhus. Many
evolutionary theories have been
proposed for depression’s adaptive
value, but no one has, so far as I
am aware, tried to claim that it is
enjoyable.
If depression is a foul miasma
wreathing the brain, elegant
sadness is more like a peacock’s
tail, coloured in blue-gentian and
rich marine greens. Is it also
universal? To this question,
anthropology offers no definitive
answer. Yet the condition certainly
manifests itself in a suggestive
array of cultures. It is the sadness
to which the Japanese phrase mono
no aware gestures (物の哀れ,
literally ‘the beautiful sorrow of
things’). It is the haunted
simplicity of those musical
traditions that spread from Africa
into the New World as the Blues.
It’s the mixture of strength,
energy, pity and melancholy that
Claude Lévi-Strauss found in
Brazil, encapsulated in the title of
his book about his travels
there Tristes Tropiques (1955). It’s
the insight of Vergil’s Aeneas, as
he looks back over his troubled life
and forward to troubles yet to
some: sunt lacrimae rerum; there
are tears in everything, said not
mournfully nor hopelessly but as a
paradoxical statement about the
beauty of the world (Aeneid
1:462).
It would be possible, of course, to
construct a ‘cost benefit analysis’
of the sorts of sadness I am
describing here. We might suggest
that it is a signal that the individual
in question has the strength, leisure
and sensitivity to indulge in being
sad. Saying so invokes what
evolutionary scientists call ‘the
handicap principle’, a hypothesis
first framed by the Israeli
evolutionary biologist Amotz
Zahavi in 1975. The idea is that
extravagant traits such as the
highland deer’s massive antlers or
the peacock’s tail are useful
because they are so ostentatiously
expensive, manifestly
inconveniencing the owner. They
are a way of saying: I’m so strong,
my genes are so desirable, that I
can afford to schlep about with this
manifest – and, by the way,
beautiful – disadvantage attached
to my body.
Sadness, according to this model,
is a kind of conspicuous
consumption. It takes more
muscles to frown than smile, and
maybe that’s the point. It signals
ones capacity to squander a
resource precisely by squandering
it. Any fool can live and be happy.
It takes greater strength to live and
be sad.
All the same, this analysis loses
the most important aspect of this
emotion; not that it costs, but that
it is beautiful. Happy can be pretty,
but some species of sad have
access to beauties that happy can
never know.
Witches and Class Struggle
BY
SILVIA FEDERICI
In sixteenth-century Europe,
witch-hunting was class war by the
elite.

The Witches' Kitchen by Frans

Francken the Younger, 1606.
Hermitage Museum / Wikimedia
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Labour Has A Plan
Peter Gowan
Emperor Musk
Meagan Day
Sorry Trump, Medicare for All Is
Great
Matt Bruenig
A Blueprint for Universal
Childhood
Megan Erickson
Excerpted from Caliban and the
Witch (2004, Autonomedia).
The witch hunt rarely appears in
the history of the proletariat. To
this day, it remains one the most
understudied phenomena in
European history, or rather, world
history, if we consider that the
charge of devil worshipping was
carried by missionaries and
conquistadors to the “New World”
as a tool for the subjugation of the
local populations.
That the victims, in Europe, were
mostly peasant women may
account for the historians’ past
indifference towards this genocide,
an indifference that has bordered
on complicity, since the
elimination of the witches from the
pages of history has contributed to
trivializing their physical
elimination at the stake, suggesting
that it was a phenomenon of minor
significance, if not a matter of
folklore.
Even those who have studied the
witch hunt (in the past almost
exclusively men) were often
worthy heirs of the sixteenth-
century demonologists. While
deploring the extermination of the
witches, many have insisted on
portraying them as wretched fools
afflicted by hallucinations, so that
their persecution could be
explained as a process of “social
therapy,” serving to reinforce
neighborly cohesion, or could be
described in medical terms as a
“panic,” a “craze,” an “epidemic,”
all characterizations that exculpate
the witch hunters and depoliticize
their crimes.
Feminists were quick to recognize
that hundreds of thousands of
women could not have been
massacred and subjected to the
cruelest tortures unless they posed
a challenge to the power structure.
They also realized that such a war
against women, carried out over a
period of at least two centuries,
was a turning point in the history
of women in Europe, the “original
sin” in the process of social
degradation that women suffered
with the advent of capitalism, and
a phenomenon, therefore, to which
we must continually return if we
are to understand the misogyny
that still characterizes institutional
practice and male-female relations.
Marxist historians, by contrast,
even when studying the “transition
to capitalism,” with very few
exceptions, have consigned the
witch hunt to oblivion, as if it were
irrelevant to the history of the class
struggle. Yet, the dimensions of
the massacre should have raised
some suspicions. as hundreds of
thousands of women were burned,
hanged, and tortured in less than
two centuries.
It should also have seemed
significant that the witch hunt
occurred simultaneously with the
colonization and extermination of
the populations of the New World,
the English enclosures, the
beginning of the slave trade, the
enactment of “bloody laws”
against vagabonds and beggars and
it climaxed in the interregnum
between the end of feudalism and
the capitalist “take off” when the
peasantry in Europe reached the
peak of its power but, in time, also
consummated its historic defeat.
So far, however, this aspect of
primitive accumulation has truly
remained a secret.
Witch-Burning Times and the
State Initiative
What has not been recognized is
that the witch hunt was one of the
most important events in the
development of capitalist society
and the formation of the modern
proletariat. For the unleashing of a
campaign of terror against women,
unmatched by any other
persecution, weakened the
resistance of the European
peasantry to the assault launched
against it by the gentry and the
state, at a time when the peasant
community was already
disintegrating under the combined
impact of land privatization,
increased taxation, and the
extension of state control over
every aspect of social life.
The witch hunt deepened the
divisions between women and
men, teaching men to fear the
power of women, and destroyed a
universe of practices, beliefs, and
social subjects whose existence
was incompatible with the
capitalist work discipline, thus
redefining the main elements of
social reproduction. Contrary to
the view propagated by the
Enlightenment, the witch hunt was
not the last spark of a dying feudal
world. Witch-hunting reached its
peak between 1580 and 1630, in a
period, that is, when feudal
relations were already giving way
to the economic and political
institutions typical of mercantile
capitalism. It was in this long “Iron
Century” that, almost by a tacit
agreement, in countries often at
war against each other, the stakes
multiplied, and the state started
denouncing the existence of
witches and taking the initiative of
the persecution.
Before neighbor accused neighbor,
or entire communities were seized
by a “panic,” a steady
indoctrination took place, with the
authorities publicly expressing
anxiety about the spreading of
witches, and travelling from
village to village in order to teach
people how to recognize them, in
some cases carrying with them
lists with the names of suspected
witches and threatening to punish
those who hid them or came to
their assistance.
But it was the jurists, the
magistrates, and the
demonologists, often embodied by
the same person, who most
contributed to the persecution.
They were the ones who
systematized the arguments,
answered the critics, and perfected
a legal machine that, by the end of
the sixteenth century, gave a
standardized, almost bureaucratic
format to the trials, accounting for
the similarities of the confessions
across national boundaries. In their
work, the men of the law could
count on the cooperation of the
most reputed intellectuals of the
time, including philosophers and
scientists who are still praised as
the fathers of modern rationalism.
There can be no doubt, then, that
the witch hunt was a
major politicalinitiative. The
political nature of the witch hunt is
further demonstrated by the fact
that both Catholic and Protestant
nations, at war against each other
in every other respect, joined arms
and shared arguments to persecute
witches. Thus, it is no
exaggeration to claim that the
witch hunt was the first unifying
terrain in the politics of the new
European nation-states, the first
example, after the schism brought
about by the Reformation, of a
European unification.
Devil Beliefs and Changes in the
Mode of Production
A first insight into the meaning of
the European witch hunt can be
found in the thesis proposed by
Michael Taussig in his classic
work The Devil and Commodity
Fetishism in South
America (1980), where the author
maintains that devil-beliefs arise in
those historical periods when one
mode of production is being
supplanted by another. In such
periods not only are the material
conditions of life radically
transformed, but so are the
metaphysical underpinnings of the
social order — for instance, the
conception of how value is created,
what generates life and growth,
what is “natural” and what is
antagonistic to the established
customs and social relations.
Taussig developed his theory by
studying the beliefs of Colombian
agricultural laborers and Bolivian
tin miners at a time when, in both
countries, monetary relations were
taking root that in peoples’ eyes
seemed deadly and even
diabolical, compared with the
older and still-surviving forms of
subsistence-oriented production.
Thus, in the cases Taussig studied,
it was the poor who suspected the
better-off of devil worship. Still,
his association between the devil
and the commodity form reminds
us that also in the background of
the witch hunt there was the
expansion of rural capitalism,
which involved the abolition of
customary rights, and the first
inflationary wave in modern
Europe.
These phenomena only led to the
growth of poverty, hunger, and
social dislocation, they also
transferred power into the hands of
a new class of “modernizers” who
looked with fear and repulsion at
the communal forms of life that
had been typical of pre-capitalist
Europe. It was by the initiative of
this proto-capitalist class that the
witch hunt took off, as a weapon
by which resistance to social and
economic restructuring could be
defeated.
That the spread of rural capitalism,
with all its consequences (land
expropriation, the deepening of
social distances, the breakdown of
collective relations) was a decisive
factor in the background of the
witch hunt is also proven by the
fact that the majority of those
accused were poor peasant women
— cottars, wage laborers — while
those who accused them were
wealthy and prestigious members
of the community, often their
employers or landlords, that is,
individuals who were part of the
local power structures and often
had close ties with the central
state.
In England, the witches were
usually old women on public
assistance or women who survived
by going from house to house
begging for bits of food or a pot of
wine or milk; if they were married,
their husbands were day laborers,
but more often they were widows
and lived alone. Their poverty
stands out in the confessions. It
was in times of need that the Devil
appeared to them, to assure them
that from now on they “should
never want,” although the money
he would give them on such
occasions would soon turn to
ashes, a detail perhaps related to
the experience of superinflation
common at the time.
As for the diabolical crimes of the
witches, they appear to us as
nothing more than the class
struggle played out at the village
level: the “evil eye,” the curse of
the beggar to whom an aim has
been refused, the default on the
payment of rent, the demand for
public assistance.
Witch-Hunting and Class Revolt
As we can see from these cases,
the witch hunt grew in a social
environment where the “better
sorts” were living in constant fear
of the “lower classes,” who could
certainly be expected to harbor evil
thoughts because in this period
they were losing everything they
had.
That this fear expressed itself as an
attack on popular magic is not
surprising. The battle against
magic has always accompanied the
development of capitalism, to this
very day. Magic is premised on the
belief that the world is animated,
unpredictable, and that there is a
force in all things so that every
event is interpreted as the
expression of an occult power that
must be deciphered and bent to
one’s will.
Magic was also an obstacle to the
rationalization of the work process,
and a threat to the establishment of
the principle of individual
responsibility. Above all, magic
seemed a form of refusal of work,
of insubordination, and an
instrument of grassroots resistance
to power. The world had to be
“disenchanted” in order to be
dominated.
By the sixteenth century, the attack
against magic was well under way
and women were its most likely
targets. Even when they were not
expert sorcerers/magicians, they
were the ones who were called to
mark animals when they fell sick,
heal their neighbors, help them
find lost or stolen objects, give
them amulets or love potions, help
them forecast the future. Though
the witch hunt targeted a broad
variety of female practices, it was
above all in this capacity — as
sorcerers, healers, performers of
incantations and divinations —
that women were persecuted. For
their claim to magical power
undermined the power of the
authorities and the state, giving
confidence to the poor in their
ability to manipulate the natural
and social environment and
possibly subvert the constituted
order.
It is doubtful, on the other hand,
that the magical arts that women
had practiced for generations
would have been magnified into a
demonic conspiracy had they not
occurred against a background of
an intense social crisis and
struggle. These were the “peasant
wars” against land privatization,
including the uprisings against the
“enclosures” in England (in 1549,
1607, 1628, 1631), when hundreds
of men, women and children,
armed with pitchforks and spades,
set about destroying the fences
erected around the commons,
proclaiming that “from now on we
needn’t work any more.” During
these revolts, it was often women
who initiated and led the action.
The persecution of witches grew
on this terrain. It was class war
carried out by other means.
Witch-Hunting, Woman-
Hunting, and the Accumulation
of Labor
It seems plausible that the witch
hunt was, at least in part, an
attempt to criminalize birth control
and place the female body, the
uterus, at the service of population
increase and the production and
accumulation of labor-power. We
can, in fact, imagine what effect it
had on women to see their
neighbors, friends, and relatives
being burned at the stake, and
realize that any contraceptive
initiative on their side might be
construed as the product of a
demonic perversion.
From this point of view, there can
be no doubt that the witch hunt
destroyed the methods that women
had used to control procreation, by
indicting them as diabolical
devices, and institutionalized the
state’s control over the female
body, the precondition for its
subordination to the reproduction
of labor-power. The witch hunt,
then, was a war against women; it
was a concerted attempt to degrade
them, dehumanize them, and
destroy their social power.
When this task was accomplished
— when social discipline was
restored, and the ruling class saw
its hegemony consolidated —
witch trials came to an end. The
belief in witchcraft could even
become an object of ridicule,
decried as a superstition, and soon
put out of memory. Just as the state
had started the witch hunt, so too,
one by one, various governments
took the initiative in ending it.
Once the subversive potential of
witchcraft was destroyed, the
practice of magic could even be
allowed to continue. After the
witch hunt came to an end, many
women continued to support
themselves by foretelling the
future, selling charms, and
practicing other forms of magic.
But now the authorities were no
longer interested in prosecuting
these practices, being inclined,
instead, to view witchcraft as a
product of ignorance or a disorder
of the imagination.
Yet the specter of the witches
continued to haunt the imagination
of the ruling class. In 1871, the
Parisian bourgeoisie instinctively
returned to it to demonize the
female Communards, accusing
them of wanting to set Paris
aflame. There can be little doubt,
in fact, that the models for the lurid
tales and images used by the
bourgeois press to create the myth
of the petroleuses were drawn
from the repertoire of the witch
hunt.

Développer des « pédagogies

radicales » ?
[lundi 08 octobre 2018]

Les pédagogies radicales

prolongent l’œuvre du
philosophe et pédagogue
brésilien Paulo Freire. Leur
objectif est de lutter contre les
inégalités sociales et les
discriminations.
CHRONIQUE SCOLAIRE, Irène
PEREIRA
L’expression « pédagogies
radicales » est parfois utilisée en
anglais pour désigner un ensemble
de pédagogies qui se donnent pour
objectif de lutter contre les
inégalités sociales et les
discriminations. Le plus souvent,
elles se situent dans la continuité
du pédagogue et philosophe
brésilien Paulo Freire.
Pour Paulo Freire, la pédagogie
n’est pas une méthode : elle ne
désigne pas un ensemble de
techniques, qu’elles soient
artisanales ou issues d’une
application de théories
scientifiques. Elle est avant tout
une praxis, c’est-à-dire, dans le
sens qu’il donne à cette notion, une
articulation entre la pratique et la
théorie. La notion de théorie doit
être prise ici au sens de théorie
sociale, qui constitue une
articulation entre l’étude empirique
issue des sciences sociales et la
réflexion normative provenant de
la philosophie. Parmi les théories
sociales les plus mobilisées
actuellement dans les pédagogies
critiques figurent des théories
intersectionnelles comme celle de
la « matrice des dominations » de
Patricia Hill Collins, la « théorie
décoloniale » latino-américaine,
les théories « queer of color » ou
encore des théories inspirées de
l’Ecole de Francfort.
Dans le sens de Paulo Freire,
la praxis pédagogique vise ainsi la
« conscientisation », entendue
comme prise de conscience du
caractère systémique et structurel –
plutôt qu’interpersonnel – des
inégalités sociales et des
discriminations. Cette praxisse
concentre par conséquent sur la
lutte contre la reproduction des
inégalités sociales et des
discriminations dans les pratiques
pédagogiques. On parle alors
de pédagogie anti-
discrimination ou, lorsqu’il s’agit
d’apprendre à éviter les
discriminations dans les espaces
militants ou associatifs,
de pratiques anti-oppression.
Enfin, les pédagogies radicales
peuvent également se donner pour
objectif de
développer l’enseignement de la
justice sociale. Dans le détail, elles
abordent des thématiques telles
que, la lutte contre le
racisme ou l’héritage de la pensée
coloniale, la lutte contre le
sexisme, l’homophobie et autre «
LGBTQIphobies », la lutte contre
les inégalités sociales, l’analyse
du curriculum caché industriel, la
formation de l’esprit critique, ou
encore l’éco-pédagogie.
La fondation de l’Institut bell
hooks : Paulo Freire à Paris
La promotion de ces
enseignements auprès du public
français a été relayée juin 2018 par
un colloque international organisé
à Paris et dédié aux Pédagogies
émancipatrices. Réunissant des
communications dans quatre
langues de travail – portugais,
espagnol, anglais et français –, il
marquait également l’inauguration
de l’institut bell hooks/Paulo
Freire, en présence d’une des filles
du pédagogue, Cristina Freire-
Heiniger.
Cet institut se donne plus
précisément pour objectif de
développer en France
les pédagogies féministes et
critiques, développées par Paulo
Freire et entre autres par
l’écrivaine états-unienne bell
hooks (tout en minuscules) qui se
revendique de l’influence de. Son
activité consiste à diffuser les
informations concernant ces sujets
via une lettre d’information, à
organiser un séminaire mensuel à
Paris, et à développer un fonds de
documentation qui sera disponible
à l’ESPE de Paris. Il soutient par
ailleurs des publications telles que
le récent ouvrage paru aux éditions
Cambourakis, Rencontre
Radicales, dans lequel on trouve
notamment des traductions de
textes pédagogiques de bell hooks.
En lien avec le Centre numérique
de documentation francophone
Paulo Freire, cet institut représente
enfin le chaînon français du réseau
international UNIFREIRE
(Universitas Paulo Freire), qui
organise un forum international
biannuel((La XIe session à eu lieu
en 2018 en Colombie à
l’Université Atlantico) et la
prochaine aura lieu en 2020 à
Paris) et qui réunit des Instituts
Paulo Freire de différents pays tels
que le Brésil, les Etats-Unis, le
Canada, le Mexique, le Portugal,
l’Italie, l’Espagne, l’Allemagne ou
le Royaume-Uni.
Le réseau de pédagogies
radicales fraîchement émoulu (il a
été créé durant l’été 2018) se
donne pour objet de mettre en
relation des collectifs qui
cherchent à développer et
promouvoir de telles pédagogies,
mais aussi de favoriser
l’émergence de collectifs de
pédagogies radicales aussi bien
dans l’éducation populaire que
dans l’institution scolaire, la
formation associative ou syndical
ou dans tout autre contexte.
Dans un pays comme la France,
qui est l’un de ceux de l’OCDE
qui reproduit le plus les inégalités
sociales, marqué par une forte
ségrégation sociale et ethnique
dans les établissements scolaires,
les continuateurs de Freire (et de
bell hooks) se donnent en somme
pour objectif de sensibiliser les
différents acteurs de l’éducation à
l’importance des questions
d’inégalités sociales et de
discriminations dans leurs métiers
et dans leurs pratiques
Copiii – ultimele produse de
export ale României sau scurtă
istorie a „produselor educative”.
Pe înţelesul copiilor
----
Am promis că nu mai scriu scurt.
Teza: Dacă secolul XX a fost
secolul mobilizării totale atunci
secolul XXI este unul al
demobilizării totale iar speranţa
vine dinspre "rebuturile umane".
-----
Fiecare regim, fiecare construct
politic, fiecare formă de stat îşi
construieşte şi o „ideologie
educativă” care să producă un tipaj
uman şi social pe care să-l
fololosească, care să-i fie util.
Fiecare regim a avut la dispoziţie
suficienţi „buşteni” care odată
introduşi în maşinăria instituţional-
educativă să producă nişte
„cetăţeni-Pinocchio” care să
susţină construcţia politică dată. E
adevărat că mereu apar „rebuturi”
iar ele sînt foarte importante în
ecuaţia socială şi politică a unui
sistem. Recunosc că am fost mereu
atras de „rebuturi”, adică
marginali.
Bun.
Sistemul medieval a produs un
anumit tip social şi economic
uman. Un regim pe caste oferea
sistem educativ pentru fiecare
castă separat: aristocratul era eduat
să conducă şi gestioneze, ţăranul să
fie supus şi să-şi facă treaba bine.
Liantul central al castelor (nu se
trecea din una în alta) era religia.
Revoluţia franceză şi cea
industrială a aruncat totul în aer.
Era nevoie de un alt mecanism
educaţional. Sistemul de caste nu
mai funcţiona, iar industria avea
nevoie de alte resurse umane.
Au intrat în joc mai multe
elemente. Apare statul naţional,
apare industria, apare burghezia,
apare clasa muncitoare,
proletariatul etc.
Statul naţional are nevoie de ostaşi,
birocraţi şi muncitori docili,
supuşi, loiali. Gata să lupte pentru
el. De unde şi tipul de educaţie:
totul pentru ţară. Burghezia
dizolvă aristrocrația şi preia frîiele
puterii impunînd un alt mecanism
educaţional: controlat finaciar dar
mult mai deschis pentru ca ea este
o clasă „parvenită”.
Industrializarea la rîndul ei are
nevoie de tot mai mulţi muncitori
calificaţi şi educaţi. Se împinge
totul spre educaţie universală
accesibilă tot mai mult păturilor
largi. A avea însă muncitori
educaţi şi bine organizaţi
presupune un mare risc pentru
orînduirea care-i produce.
Muncitorii încep să-şi dorească
drepturi pentru că aşa-i în viaţa
politică.
Secolul XX debutează cu
presiunea a doi factori importanţi
care vor duce la o explozie socială
şi politică violentă nemaiîntîlnită:
o industrializare accelerată,
agresivă şi expansivă precum şi o
militarizare fără precedent. Practic
pe de o parte ai o armată proletară
imensă care produce muncă mai
mult sau mai puțin calificată dar
mai degrabă prost plătită iar pe de
altă parte ai armata. Ambele
structuri pot trăi doar dacă pot să
se extindă. Capitalul şi armata sînt
unite de un singur factor
important: expansiunea. Secolul
XX este secolul mobilizării,
expansiunii şi a oamenilor în
uniformă. (Pînă şi femeile îşi
scuretază părul şi se îmbracă
precum bărbaţii.) Asta înseamană
război în diverse forme. Tot
secolul XX am trăit mobilizaţi, în
expansiune şi în plin război.
De aici rezultă şi regimurile
radicale ale acestui „secol al
extremelor” al cărui ultim produs
sîntem noi, cei născuţi în anii 70-
80 ai secolului trecut. Acum însă
condiţiile sociale, politice şi
economice s-au schimbat
fundamental. Cel puţin în zona
Occidentală din care facem parte.
Regimul comunist în care am trăit
noi a avut şi el mecansime care să-
şi producă o „ideologie educativă”
proprie. Elementul cheie al
educaţiei din regimul comunist,
trecînd dincolo de gargara de pe
prima pagină, este „educaţia
progresului” pe un tipaj iluminist.
Adică regimul are nevoie de
oameni educaţi pentru industrie,
tehnologie, ştiinţe, meserii şi mult
sport. Are ceva utopic dar şi ceva
foarte aplicat. Rezultatul finalului
de comunism: o populaţie ceva
mai educată (mai ales prin
comparaţie cu perioada fostului
regim: 50 % analfabeţi) o imensă
elită bine pregătită mai ales în
domeniile tehnice, medicale,
ştiinţe exacte etc. E destul să citeşti
manualele anilor 80 ca să înţelegi
asta. E destul să vezi exodul masiv
al forţei de muncă după căderea
comunismului. Acum sîntem
vizibil într-un regres la acest
capitol.
Partea ironică e următoarea:
regimul comunist a investit enorm
de mult în educaţie şi mai ales într-
o elită specializată în diverse
domenii care aveau să-l „trădeze”
şi să-l decapiteze. Interesele elitei,
al produsului social, economic şi
politic nu mai corespundeau cu
interesele regimului.
Ce avem acum e tot mai greu de
înţeles. Practic avem un soi de
capitalism glopal care luptă sau
mai degrabă utilizează cinic statele
naţionale şi alte structuri de putere.
E clar că regimul de tip neoliberal
nu mai are nevoie de loialităţi de
tip vechi ci de cu totul al tip de
loialitate şi produs social. Este
ceva ce ei numesc „flexibilitate”.
Practic regimul neoliberal nu are
probleme cu mutaţiile ideologice
de faţadă pentru că ei au nevoie de
produse umane tip „mercenar”,
foarte „flexibil” şi ca loc şi ca
meserie, şi bun de exportat oriunde
pe glob.
Şi asta se vede şi la noi foarte bine:
de la clasa de mijloc din oraşele
mari pînă la locuitorii din sate.
Unde mergi peste tot auzi şi vezi
cum părinţii gîndesc exact în aceşti
termeni: copiii sînt pentru piaţă şi
pentru export. Îi privim tot mai
mult ca pe nişte „produse pentru
piaţă şi export”. Asta e noua cheie
ideologică educativă şi noua grilă
de succes.
Dacă secolul XX a fost secolul
mobilizării totale atunci secolul
XXI este unul al demobilizării
totale.
Însă şi acest regim dă rateurile lui
chiar dacă pare atît de puternic şi
înfiorător în cinismul său. El
produce imens de multe „rebuturi
umane” numite azi precariat.
Armata precariatului creşte cu o
viteză atît de mare că pînă şi
„catedralele regimului”, băncile, se
sperie.
Şi nimeni nu poate spune ce se va
întîmpla mîine. Speranţa vine însă
dinspre "rebuturile umane".
Afară e o toamnă foarte frumoasă!

Cîmd antropologii europeni au

mers să studieze „primitivii” au
fost surprinşi de un lucru: de felul
lor de a reacţiona la filmele pe care
le proiecta „omul civilizat”.
„Primitivul” din junglă de fiecare
dată cînd vedea trenul sau maşina
venind spre el fugea din faţa
ecranului. Se temea să nu fie
strivit. Cînd vedeau o luptă, o
nedreptate săreau de pe locul lor de
spectatori şi luau parte la luptă.
Trăgeau cu arcul în ecran, dădeau
cu toporul în personajul rău de pe
ecran.
Din lipsa experienţe vizuale
cinematografice „primitivul” nu
făcea distincţie dintre real şi iluzie.
Noi, cei „civilizaţi” nu reacţionăm
aşa din cauză că ştim că totul e o
luzie. Dar cîndva am făcut şi noi la
fel.
Îmi spune un amic că noi
„civilizaţii” sîntem exact în aceeaşi
situaţie cînd vorbim de preţuri.
Există o credinţă atît de puternică
că preţul mărfurilor sau al muncii
reprezintă o realitate „ştiinţifică” a
unor „reguli economice” încît noi
ne comportăm la fel ca şi
„prmitivul” în faţa ecranului cînd
se proiectează un film.
În realitate însă preţul e un simplă
iluzie speculativă care are legătură
cu realitate strict spectral: da,
există un tren pe ecran care trimite
la o relaitate dar nu este realitatea.
Aşa stă situaţia şi cu preţul: există
o realitate spectrală în spate
(costuri) dar preţul final este o
simplă iluzie, un joc speculativ al
multor eroi.
Oare de ce mărfurile de o mai bună
calitate (acelaş brand şi produs)
sînt mai ieftine în „lumea bună”
decît mărfurile de o mai proastă
calitate din periferie sau din
„lumea a treia”?
Oare de ce munca (aceeaşi: timp,
calificare, eficienţă) este plătită la
centru de zeci de ori mai mult decît
munca prestată în periferia
capitalului? Nu-mi vorbiţi de
impozite şi eficienţă căci în
periferie impozitele sînt mai mici
iar profiturile sînt substanţial mai
mari...
Oare de ce mărfurile (acelaşi
brand, acelaşi produs) pot căpăta
preţuri atît de diferite: de la preţuri
atît de mici încît sigur sînt pe
pierdere, la preţuri halucinant de
mari. De unde fluctuaţiile astea
imense?
Noi nu sîntem însă suficient de
„barbari” încît să sărim cu toporul.
Noi sîntem „civilizaţi” şi ştim
undeva în sinea noastră că preţul
nu ţine de „natura mărfii”, nu e
ceva intrinsec care reprezintă o
realitate „ştiinţifică” ci e un joc al
conjuncturilor, al convenţiilor, al
negocierilor, al speculaţiilor, al
structurilor de putere etc. Noi ştim
intim că preţul e o convenţie care
ne anunţă că „realitatea preţului”
este o banală iluzie.
E asemenea filmului: ştim că e
iluzie dar avem nevoie de a ne
transpune în „realitatea filmului”
pentru a trăi emoţiile poveştii.
Cam aşa e şi cu preţul: toată
cultura hegemonică ne convinge că
e o „realitate ştiinţifică”.
Difrerenţa dintre iluzia filmului şi
iluzia preţului e imensă. Filmul ne
"fură" cîteva clipe de oboseală
pentru a ne duce într-o altă lume
pe cînd iluzia preţului ne fură
timpul şi energiile pentru a ne ţine
într-o minciună pentru care plătim
un preţ prea mare: plătim cu viaţa
noastră.
Şi noi ne convingem că e o
realitate pentru a putea trăi în
această mare iluzie, marea
micniună. Simţim intim că preţul şi
jocul acesta este o mare farsă dar
acceptăm să fim părtaşi la această
minciună. Sau nu putem altfel?
Căci altfel ar trebui să punem mîna
pe suliţă şi topor şi să rupem
ecranul. „Ecranul preţului” care
este însă straşnic de bine păzit.

Революционные монстры:
самоубийство политики
идентичности
Julie Reshe
18:54, 10 октября 2018380
Добавить в закладкиДобавить в
коллекцию
 “Монстры существуют”
Антонио Негри и Майкл
Хардт

В своих рассуждениях
о революции Антонио
Негри и Майкл Хардт
используют концепцию
позитивного генеративного
монстра. Монструозность
возникает как инаковость,
нечто противоречащее
существующему порядку.
Это уродливый ребенок,
который не похож на свою
мать. Монструозность
предполагает диспропорцию
и ужасающий избыток.
Рамки существующей
рациональности слишком
узкие, чтобы вместить ее
избыточные творческие
силы. Именно ужасающий
монструозный избыток
указывает на альтернативу.
Образы сражения
с монстрами — это охота
на ведьм в Европе
и Америке в XVI и XVII
веках. “Ведьмы” — способ
именования тех, кто
трансгрессировал рамки
доминирующих
религиозных догм.
В качестве примера одной
из современных форм
монструозности Негри
и Хардт указывают на образ
женщины, поведение
которой не совпадает
с традиционно
приписываемой ей ролью.
Это, например, женщины,
которые не хотят
заниматься эмоциональным
трудом по вызову
("улыбаться
соответствующим
образом…, обустраивать
социальные отношения
и вообще предоставлять
заботу и опеку"), поэтому
они воспринимаются
как своего рода монстры.
Хотя Негри и Хардт делают
акцент на позитивности
и генеративности монстров,
с ними можно поспорить,
заметив, что в монстрах нет
ничего позитивного
и генеративного, с точки
зрения существующих
рамок рациональности —
они исключительно
деструктивны и опасны
(именно это и означает
слово «монстр»). Как только
они получают
характеристику
генеративности
и позитивности, они больше
не могут считаться
монстрами.
По мнению Негри и Хардта
революция
с необходимостью
монструозна. Они вводят
терминологическое
различие
между эмансипацией
(emancipation)
и освобождением
(liberation). Революция
преследует цели
освобождения, а политика
идентичности —
эмансипации. Последняя,
если сосредоточена на себе,
противоречит по-
настоящему
революционным целям.
Политика идентичности
предполагает, что
существует нечто
универсально разделяемое
всеми представителями
определенной угнетаемой
группы — некая общая
природа или сущность (так,
феминизм основан
на вменяемой общности
всех представителей
человечества женского
пола).
В рамках политики
идентичности ведется
борьба за эмансипацию
сплоченной на основании
идентичности группы,
но одновременно
и навязывание этой
идентичности. Из–за этого
навязывания борьба
за утверждение
определенного класса, расы,
пола, сексуальной
идентичности может
служить средством для
восстания и эмансипации,
но в конечном итоге она
противоречит социальной
метаморфозе, необходимой
для действительно
революционных перемен.
Политика идентичности
революционна только в том
случае, если
парадоксальным образом
стремится к отмене
идентичности, то есть
направлена
на самоуничтожение.
Эмансипация полагает
целью свободу
идентичности, свободу быть
тем, кто вы “на самом деле”,
освобождение же
революционно и стремится
к свободе самоопределения
и самопреобразования,
свободе определять, кем мы
можем быть.
Иными словами, сама
по себе политика
идентичности предполагает
борьбу с социальной
субординацией, ее целью
является доминирующее
положение — расширение
прав и возможностей
угнетаемой идентичности,
но не борьба, направленная
на трансформацию (само-
устранение идентичности).
Любая сформированная
и наделенная
расширенными правами
и возможностями, то есть,
добившаяся власти
идентичность — становится
доминирующей.
Революционная политика
может начинаться
с эмансипации
идентичности, ведь все
революционные движения,
как считают Негри и Хардт,
запускаются борьбой против
угнетения определенной
идентичности, но ни в коем
случае не может
заканчиваться этим.
Негри и Хардт объясняют
это следующим образом:
“Черный национализм
в Соединенных Штатах,
который вдохновлен
антиколониальной борьбой
с ее целью национального
освобождения […]
направлен скорее
на суверенитет расовой
идентичности, что
подразумевает
отсоединение
и самоопределение,
контроль экономики
сообщества, полицейскую
функцию по отношению
к общественности и т.
д. Не сложно думать
о некоторых направления
феминистской политики
как аналогично
характеризующихся
гендерным национализмом,
или о национализме геев
и лесбиянок […] Метафора
нации в каждом случае
относится
к относительному
отделению общества
от общества в целом
и предполагает
формирование суверенного
народа. Все эти
национализмы, в отличие
от мультикультуральной
борьбы за признание,
являются боевыми
формациями, которые
постоянно восстают
против структур
подчинения. Однако такие
национализмы в конечном
итоге закрепляют
фиксированность
идентичности. Каждый
национализм является
дисциплинарным
формированием, которое
осуществляет контроль
за повиновением правилам
идентичности, контроль
поведения членов
сообщества
и их отсоединенности
от других.”
Задание политики
идентичности состоит в том,
чтобы убедиться, что
насилие и подчинение стали
видимы, восстать против
них и бороться
за эмансипацию, но после
этого нельзя возвращаться
к эмансипированной
идентичности
и останавливаясь на этом.
Чтобы стать
революционным, политика
идентичности должна найти
способ продолжать
движение вперед. Задание
освобождения
предотвращает остановку
революционного движения
и сохраняет бунтарскую
функцию идентичности
и продвигать политику
идентичности
к революционному проекту:
стремлению к собственной
отмене.
Рассуждая о феминизме,
Негри и Хардт вводят
условное разграничение
на эмансипационный и револ
юционный феминизм.
Первый нацелен
на закрепление
идентичности женщины
и наделение ее
расширенными правами
и возможностями, второй —
на отмену женщины
как идентичности.
Донна Харауэй удачно
описывает исход
революционного
предложения как “мечту
о […] монструозном мире
без пола”. Революционный
проект выходит за рамки
исключительно
реформистской
перспективы
эмансипации — вместо цели
сохранить половую
дифференциацию, при этом
лишив ее иерархии (здесь
ловушка, потому что сама
половая дифференциация
предполагает иерархию),
революционный проект
стремится упразднить
половую дифференциацию
как таковую. Это не значит,
что все различия будут
стерты, монструозность
несет потенциал новых
различий, но ничего из того,
что мы сейчас распознаем
как пол или гендер.
Негри и Хардт
одновременно заигрывают
с политикой идентичности,
утверждая ее необходимость
и пытаются ее критиковать.
Они прибегают к тонкому
трюку, объясняя, что
каждый раз, когда они
провозглашают, что вслед
за воплощением политики
идентичности должен
следовать революционный
этап, они делают это лишь
для удобства, на самом же
деле задача эмансипации
и задача освобождения
должны выполняться
одновременно, так
как существует риск, что
отсрочка революционного
проекта будет
откладываться
до бесконечности.
При всей абсурдности этого
трюка (политика
идентичности необходима,
но только для собственной
самоотмены) следует
задуматься, не является ли
эта аккуратность
результатом действия
политики идентичности,
причем не просто
откладывающей
до бесконечности
революционный проект,
но принципиально ему
противоречащей.
Негри и Хардт
идеализируют
(вынужденно?) политику
идентичности, предполагая,
что она может добровольно
упразднить свою цель.
На доминантную позицию
указывает запрет критики.
Может быть что-то не так
с феминизмом, раз его
нельзя критиковать,
при этом его вначале
не воспев ему оду? Ведь
сегодня, если ты
не прибегаешь к подобным
трюкам, ты автоматически
причисляешься к пособнику
патриархата со всеми
вытекающими из этого
последствиями в виде
социального остракизма.
Для Негри и Хардта
наиболее явной
революционной формой
политики идентичности,
является политика квир, так
как она неразрывно
связывает политику
идентичности с критикой
идентичности. Квир — это
не идентичность, а процесс
дезидентификации, то есть
дестабилизации
идентичности, который
не заинтересован в ее
консолидации или
стабилизации. Возникает
вопрос, не является ли
политика квир не формой
политики идентичности,
а самостоятельным,
противостоящим ей
революционным явлением?
Следует отметить, однако,
что все чаще
в общественном дискурсе
термин “квир” используется
не как критика
идентичности, а одна
из идентификационных
категорий, перечисляемых
к ЛГБТ, такое понимание
лишает термин “квир” его
монструозного
революционного
потенциала, сводя его
к эмансипации.
Merve Ozaslan
Идентичности могут быть
эмансипированы и даже
прийти к власти, но только
квир-монстры могут
освободить себя. Борьба
за утверждение
идентичности мотивирована
травмой угнетения, которая
свойственна этой
идентичности (скорее даже
определяет эту
идентичность). Политика
идентичности действует
от лица нанесенной травмы
и несет риск привязанности
к ней. В ее основании —
реактивная реакция,
обусловленная
оправданным желанием
отомстить
универсализированному
источнику травмы.
Монстры поступают иначе,
они не ассоциируют себя
с существующей травмой
и не действуют от ее имени.
Быть монстром означает
отправиться в бесконечное
путешествие поиска нового
травматичного опыта (новое
не может не травмировать):
«Этот революционный
процесс отмены
идентичности, мы должны
иметь в виду, монструозен,
жесток и травматичен.
Не пытайтесь себя
спасти —
в действительности, ваше
«я», должно быть
принесено в жертву! Это
не означает, что
освобождение бросает нас
в безразличное море
без объектов
идентификации,
но существующие
идентичности больше
не будут служить якорями.
Многие захотят отойти
от края пропасти
и попытаться остаться
теми, кем они являются,
а не погрузиться
в неизвестные воды мира
без расы, пола или других
идентичных
формообразований.
Упразднение также
требует уничтожения всех
институтов коррупции…
таких как семья,
корпорация и нация. Это
включает в себя часто
жестокую битву против
правящих сил, а также,
поскольку эти институты
отчасти определяют, кто
мы сейчас, операция,
безусловно, более
болезненная, чем
кровопролитие. Революция
не для слабонервных. Это
для монстров. Вы должны
потерять того, кем вы вы
являетесь чтобы узнать,
кем вы можете стать»
(Антонио Негри и Майкл
Хардт).
________________________
____
Источники:
Negri, Antonio. Empire and
Beyond. Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2008.
Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri, Commonwealth,
Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2009.
Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg
Manifesto,” in Simians,
Cyborgs, and Women, New
York: Routledge, 1991.
Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic
Subjects: Embodiment and
Sexual Difference in.
Contemporary Feminist
Theory. New York: Columbia
UP, 2011.
 Lege, religie, politică
Andrei PLEŞU

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•

Aparut in Dilema veche, nr. 764,

11-17 octombrie 2018
Cel care a spus „Să nu
preacurvești!“ a spus și „Să nu
judeci!“ (Pateric, Avva
Theodotos)
La ora cînd scriu acest text, nu ştiu
cum se va încheia referendumul.
Cred însă că, prin organizarea lui,
partidul de guvernămînt a obținut o
mare victorie strategică. Mai întîi
s-a arătat preocupat de o problemă
foarte „actuală“ și s a situat de
„partea cea bună“ a „neamului“, a
tradițiilor „noastre“, a familiei, a
bunelor moravuri, a Bisericii. În al
doilea rînd, punînd în dezbatere
publică o temă atît de „sensibilă“,
a reușit să modifice radical agenda
interesului național. De o bună
bucată de vreme, nu mai vorbim
despre spitale, autostrăzi, manuale,
prețuri crescute, reforme
(îndoielnice) ale Justiției. Vorbim
preponderent despre căsătorii,
copii răpiți de LGBT-iști,
„progresiști“ nepatrioți, dușmani ai
cutumelor strămoșești. În al treilea
rînd – și poate asta e „lovitura“ cea
mai profitabilă –, partidul de
guvernămînt și susținătorii lui au
reușit să creeze o breșă vehementă
în tabăra adversă. Inși care păreau
legați de aceleași convingeri
politice (anti-PSD) sînt acum
divizați (foarte convenabil pentru
cei de la putere), după cum susțin
sau nu Coaliția pentru Familie,
după cum se situează ideologic și
comportamental față de
referendum. Una peste alta, oricum
s-ar încheia „consultarea“ publică,
portretul PSD iese – prin cele trei
milioane de semnături strînse de
inițiatorii scrutinului – în cîștig.
„Subtilitatea electorală“ pe care nu
par să o fi perceput o mulțime de
oameni altminteri foarte inteligenți
este asimilarea pînă la confuzie a
opțiunilor privind familia
tradițională și participarea la
referendum. Nimănui nu pare să-i
treacă prin cap că poți să fii, în
același timp, un adept al familiei
tradiționale, dar un opozant al ideii
de referendum pe această temă.
Nu! „Aiasta nu se poate!“:
absentezi de la urne, ergo susții
căsătoriile gay! Cu alte cuvinte,
„cauza“ bună scuză mijloacele.
Dacă Ceaușescu propune un
referendum despre obligativitatea
de a ține post de două-trei ori pe
săptămînă, ne repezim, creștinește,
să-l susținem, lăsînd deoparte
faptul că, pentru el, postul nu e
decît un mod de a cosmetiza
penuria alimentară… O fi, dar
pentru noi, postul e totuna cu a-L
mărturisi pe Iisus Hristos! Tot așa,
ne putem gîndi, grijulii și pe un
fond de sărăcie generală, la o lege
care să instituie spălatul matinal pe
dinți drept o obligație cetățenească.
Nu se poate „curăție“ fără
curățenie… Dar eu am dreptul,
sper, să văd lucrurile altfel: mai
întîi pîine pe masă și abia apoi
legiferarea danturii „tradiționale“.
Sigur, exagerez. Problema familiei
are altă anvergură. Și n-am nici o
îndoială că, filogenetic vorbind,
instituția familiei își pierde sensul
originar dacă iese din structura
„bărbat-femeie-progenitură“. Iar
un cuplu gay care, prin definiție,
își ia distanță față de tradiția
familială unanimă, se pune într-o
situație paradoxală cînd pretinde să
fie asimilat acestei tradiții. Au
ales altceva, să rămînă coerenți cu
termenii opțiunii lor! Da, sînt de
acord cu parteneriatul civil, dar, de
pildă, am dubii cu privire la
problema adopției, pentru că am
„prejudecata“ normalității
parentale. Mi se pare „firesc“ ca
orice copil să aibă, de la bun
început, șansa de a pricepe și
experimenta noțiuni fundamentale
legate nu numai de ideea de
„cuplu“, ci de alcătuirea originară
a lumii: „masculin-feminin“ (vezi
și tradițiile Chinei vechi și ale
Indiei vechi), „maternitate-
paternitate“, „uniune-diversitate“
etc.
Pe de altă parte, nu cred nici
că totul se poate legifera, nici că
referendumul în genere e o soluție
garantată, suverană, universal
benefică. Aș reaminti cititorului cît
de cît familiarizat cu Scriptura că
Iisus a fost crucificat pe bază de
referendum! „Poporul“ a votat
împotriva Lui, salvîndu-l pe
Baraba. Adaug – pentru a accentua
diferența dintre problema
homosexualității și legitimitatea
referendumului – că cea dintîi e o
problemă complicată, ubicuă,
străveche, practic nedefinită în
cauzele și simptomatologia ei, în
vreme ce legislația e inevitabil
conjuncturală, manipulabilă,
interpretabilă (în bine sau în rău).
Politicieni mai curînd zglobii din
punct de vedere conjugal ies la
bătaie pentru „familia tradițională“
pe care, în fapt, o ilustrează
deficitar. Că atunci cînd vorbim
despre homosexuali vorbim despre
un păcat „împotriva naturii“? OK!
Dar amorul hetero are și el
„derapajele“ lui, „soluțiile“ lui,
străine de rigorile „firii“. (Pe cînd
un referendum pentru interzicerea
unor practici „divagatorii“, în afara
poziției „misionarului“?) În plus,
familia tradițională se confruntă și
cu alte păcate: curvia, preacurvia,
violența domestică. Referendum?
Și cum arată „controlul“,
„flagrantul“, „circumstanțele
atenuante“? Nu riscăm să abuzăm
de spiritul de geometrie în dauna
spiritului de finețe? De judecată în
dauna iertării? Cum rămîne cu
„iubirea aproapelui“, ba chiar cu
„iubirea vrăjmașului“?
Ceea ce m-a indispus, de-a lungul
numeroaselor dezbateri pe aceste
teme la care am putut asista în
ultima vreme, au fost suficiența,
inflația siguranței și a îndreptățirii
de sine, voluptatea judecății
nemiloase, disprețul autoritar față
de opinia diferită. În ambele
tabere. Ne confruntăm din nou cu
ispita de a sluji politicul cu o
pasiune cvasi-religioasă și cu aceea
de a apăra religia cu o vervă
propagandistică de tip politic. De o
parte „tradiționaliști“ care cred că
au toate îndreptățirile, de cealaltă
„progresiști“ care cred că merită o
porție suplimentară de
drepturi, altele și mai multe decît
oamenii „obișnuiți“. Nu se stă de
vorbă. Se proferează acuzații și
amenințări. Cînd aud că au existat
preoți și primari care le-au
comunicat aparținătorilor lor că,
dacă nu merg la referedum, vor fi
privați de dreptul la căsătorie civilă
și la înmormîntare, mă gîndesc că
Judecata de Apoi nu se mai amînă
pînă la „sfîrșitul veacurilor“, ci are
loc imediat: vom primi prompt
adeverințe care să ne repartizeze în
iad sau în rai, după cum ne-am
purtat sîmbăta și duminica trecute.
Sînt sincer invidios pe cei care se
simt deja mîntuiți și dau cu
anatema în dreapta și-n stînga. Dar
în Evanghelia mea există locuri
care sună nițel altfel. „Cel căruia i
se pare că stă neclintit, să ia seama
să nu cadă!“ (1 Corinteni, 10, 12).
„Omule, dacă tu judeci, n-ai
iertare, căci judecîndu-i pe alții, te
condamni pe tine“ (Romani, 2,1).
“…dacă neprihănirea se capătă
prin Lege, degeaba a murit
Hristos“ (Galateni, 2, 21). „Căci
toată Legea se cuprinde într-o
singură poruncă: Să iubeşti pe
aproapele tău ca pe tine
însuţi“ (Galateni, 5, 14). Știu
replica: noi nu judecăm pe alții,
noi apărăm o valoare tradițională.
Oare? Va schimba cutare articol
din Constituție realitatea „din
teren“? Vom face ordine
organizînd ședințe de partid în
biserică, cu altarul drept
scenografie optimă? Eu, unul, nu
mă pot implica în acest mod de
gîndire. Și – sperînd că cei născuți
sau marcați contextual de
deprinderi neconforme vor reflecta
responsabil la statutul lor prezent
și viitor – voi continua să mă rog
pentru luminarea lor lăuntrică.
Cum să-i trimit în iad pe Socrate și
pe Michelangelo, pe Proust și pe
Gide, pe Ceaikovski și pe Oscar
Wilde, pe Leonardo da Vinci, pe
Thomas Mann, Walt Whitman,
Roland Barthes și pe atîția alții pe
care Dumnezeu i-a hărăzit unei
crîncene confruntări cu ei înșiși?!
Cum să-i exclud din „bibliografia“
mea pe Ion Negoițescu sau pe
Petru Comarnescu? Tot ce pot cere
invertiților e să renunțe la
militantism, la confiscarea unor
instituții născute după alte criterii
decît ale lor și la stigmatizarea
celor care nu le sînt asemenea ca
fiind înapoiați, anormali, victime
ale unei propagande „reacționare“.
Păcatul de a crede așa ceva mi se
pare mai grav decît „diferența“
care îi definește în plan intim.
Sîmbătă, 6 octombrie 2018
Biserica are o tradiție milenară de
a vorbi vag despre subiecte despre
care nu știe nimic, sau despre care
nu are parametri preciși și clari.
Un exemplu de mesaj vag :
”credința are un efect bun asupra
moralității”.
În ce privește familia, studiată de
antropologi (domeniul se numește
𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑠) există parametri
clari despre stabilitatea familiei :
durata medie a unei căsătorii, de
exemplu, procentul de divorțuri
din totalul de căsătorii, procentul
de căsătorii versus cupluri
informale.
Sînt chestii măsurabile. Pentru
fiecare țară, pentru fiecare grup
etnic, antropologii pot calcula
stabilitatea familiei.
Cu ceva efort în plus, o pot calcula
și pentru perioade istorice mai
vechi. Se poate observa o evoluție,
desigur.
Cînd vorbim de ”stabilitatea
familiei” și de ”subminarea
familiei de către homosexuali”
(cum vorbesc alde
Neamțu/Papahagi) vorbim despre
niște metrici precise.
Iată un tabel cu asemenea date :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divor
ce_demography
(sînt și altele mai specializate, dar
ăsta e bun).
comparînd rata brută a nupțialității
cu rata brută a divorțialității, avem
din start o măsură a stabilității
cuplurilor. Portugalia, Spania,
Cuba, țări latinofone catolice din
zone calde, au aceeași
divorțialitate ca Danemarca,
Finlanda, țări protestante din zona
friguroasă. Rusia dreptmăritoare
pravoslavnică are aceeași rată
divorț/căsătorii ca Cehia ateistă.
Nivelul scade de la 52 % căsătorii
care se termină prin divorț, în
Rusia, la 42 % în Ucraina, la 22 %
în România (de fapt, între 25 % și
28 %) și 22 % în Grecia.
Așa se discută despre stabilitatea
familiei, cu cifre precise. Cu
metrici.
Un alt parametru al instabilității
familiei : procentul de familii
monoparentale :
https://www.educationnext.org/inte
rnational-look-single-pa…/
Știm, de exemplu, că familiile sînt
extrem de instabile în Africa
subsahariană și în America Latină :
numărul de mame celibatare,
raportul căsătorii/concubinaj,
procentul de divorțuri - toate sunt
mult mai mari ca în Europa și
indică o șubrezire metastatică a
structurii familiale.
Da, familiile stabile sînt un lucru
bun. Da, structura familiei se poate
șubrezi, și asta e un lucru rău. Dar
ceea ce duce la șubrezirea familiei
sînt cauzele economice.
Dar dacă vreți s-o țineți liric cu
șubrezirea familiei, vă rog, poftiți.
Selfize se auto. Despre
desființarea filologiei clasice de
la Iași
Alexander Baumgarten octombrie
12, 2018 Educatie, Reactie rapida
14 comentarii 2,764 Vizualizari
Vestea pe care a comunicat-o
societății noastre domnul profesor
Codrin Liviu Cuțitaru prin articolul
domniei sale din Monitorul de Iași
(consultabil aici) a năucit și a
stârnit suficientă revoltă ca să mai
fie necesar să însoțim o reacție
deja comună cu un simplu
asentiment. E vorba de faptul că la
Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan
Cuza” din Iași a fost decisă
intrarea în lichidare a secției de
limbi clasice. Urmarea ar fi faptul
că la această universitate, în cel
mult trei ani academici, predarea
limbii latine și a limbii grecești
vechi va înceta. Pentru că această
universitate este una dintre cele
mai mari și mai de prestigiu
instituții de învățământ superior
din România, alături de
Universitatea din București, de cea
din Cluj și de cea din Timișoara,
care încă predau aceste studii, și
pentru că, după știința mea, nu mai
există alte universități care să
predea sub forma unei specializări
autonome aceste discipline, reiese
în mod consecvent că vor rămâne
în România doar trei centre unde
filologia clasică supraviețuiește.
Simplul protest împotriva unui
asemenea fapt nu este suficient și
nici nu mai este, cred, foarte
important să protestăm, de vreme
ce decizia a fost asumată. A
protesta împotriva unei asemenea
măsuri în sens simplu înseamnă a
formula o expresie nostalgică
asupra vremurilor în care predarea
acestor discipline în universitățile
României avusese o anumită
importanță în construcția noastră
identitară și, eventual, înseamnă a
remarca, cinic și pe bună dreptate,
coincidența acestei măsuri cu
centenarul statului căruia îi
rezervăm impozitele muncii
noastre. Din acest motiv, nu îmi
propun să protestez, ci cred că este
mult mai util pentru nivelul
discuției publice asupra
importanței acestor studii să
propun și să argumentez o serie de
teze asupra valorii filologiei
clasice în construcția noastră
spirituală și să pun în evidență
consecințele care vor urma din
restrângerea unor asemenea studii.
Pentru aceasta, primul pas ar fi să
încadrez evenimentul, al doilea –
să îl judec din perspectiva
încadrării lui, al treilea să enumăr
consecințele amintite. În al
patrulea rând, vreau să transform o
amintire într-o adresare colegială
celor care au decis suprimarea la
Iași a acestor studii.
1. Încadrarea. Guvernele noastre
din ultimii 30 de ani au luptat
metodic împotriva limbilor clasice.
Primul pas a fost eliminarea
acestor limbi, din rațiuni de
economie financiară și posesie
tribală asupra planurilor de
învățământ, de la secțiile colaterale
celor de filologie clasică din
universități. Juriștii, biologii,
istoricii, filosofii și teologii au
asumat ignorarea acestor surse și
instrumente ale științelor lor în
perioada anilor 1990-2000, pentru
ca mulți dintre ei să le reinventeze
pe cont propriu atât cât au putut, cu
absolvenți cu dublă specializare, în
propriile secții și facultăți. Apoi,
intervențiile miniștrilor
învățământului au lovit treptat
aceste discipline, prin restrângerea
drastică a orelor preuniversitare cu
acest profil, apoi prin neîncrederea
tot mai mare manifestată față de
secțiile universitare care pregăteau
profesori de latină și de greacă,
incriminate de minister că au
studenți puțini și sunt nerentabile
financiar. Acuza este un sofism,
deoarece scăderea orelor de profil
din nivelul preuniversitar este
cauza principală a scăderii
atractivității acestor secții. Apoi,
refuzul constant al ministerului sau
tergiversarea indefinită și
pervertirea ideii de ierarhizare a
universităților a împiedicat și mai
mult valorizarea acestui domeniu,
predat numai în universitățile de
anvergură și tradiție ale României.
Toate aceste măsuri au loc într-un
context european și american care
contrazice total această direcție:
fenomenul restrângerii studiului
filologiei clasice în România este
un caz atipic și straniu față de
constanta preocupare a liceelor și
universităților cu un nivel decent
de civilizație și de reflecție matură
asupra efectelor negative ale
masificării învățământului pentru
păstrarea riguroasă a acestor studii.
Să lărgim însă contextul. România
ultimelor trei secole a înregistrat
preocupări față de predarea în
particular a limbii latine dintr-un
motiv la fel de atipic ca și
atitudinea contemporanilor noștri:
am promovat limba latină ca să
alimentăm o identitate națională
revendicată între popoarele latine.
E un caz particular de
instrumentalizare, benefic și
important, dar care nu poate fi
transformat în invocare a unui
motiv valabil universal de studiere
a limbii latine. Sigur că merită să
studiem latina ca să aflăm ce limbă
vorbim și să înțelegem
(întrucâtva!) „cine suntem”, dar nu
în primul rând. Să lărgim contextul
mai departe. Ultimii patru sute de
ani ai Europei au însemnat o
despărțire lentă de limba latină, cu
accelerații diferite ale diferitelor
științe, și înlocuirea ei cu
vernacularele. Acest fenomen
poate fi încadrat în unul mai
general, pe care îl numim
„modernitate”, și despre care știm
că și-a construit o identitate
zugrăvind în culori sinistre și
acoperind cu ocară cei o mie de ani
precedenți, pe care i-a numit „Ev
mediu” și i-a evocat cel mai adesea
drept ceva tenebros. Știm astăzi
destul de bine că această optică
este una profund nedreaptă, și că
redescoperirea culturii (latine,
grecești, arabe, iudaice) a acelei
epoci poate însemna o rejudecare a
modernității noastre, și mai ales că
această rejudecare poate fi una
culturală, dar și surprinzător de
geopolitică (aș spune, din această
perspectivă, că o bună înțelegere a
contribuției latinilor și arabilor la
universitățile medievale poate da
motive suficiente pentru a înțelege
mai corect și mai profund invazia
în Europa a Asiei Mici). Dar, dacă
judecarea modernității potrivit
modului în care ea își reprezintă
Evul Mediu trece și prin
înțelegerea treptatei separări a
modernității față de latinitate și
dacă unii europeni (de pildă, noi)
procedăm în completă
neorânduială în această atitudine
blocată deja în universități
civilizate, reiese o concluzie
simplă: că mefiența față de limbile
clasice arată incapacitatea
civilizației românești de a asimila
și de a depăși modernitatea, în
timp ce alte zone ale acestei
Europe moderne cultivă cel puțin
instinctul acestei asimilări și
depășiri păstrându-și atenția trează
asupra filologiei clasice.
2. Cu aceasta am trecut deja la
formularea tezei mele principale:
că pot înțelege despărțirea noastră
de limbile clasice ca pe o dovadă a
incapacității României de a
parcurge și de a depăși critic
cultura modernă. Există un aspect
particular al acestei teze. Când
modernitatea europeană a privit
spre limba latină, ea a păstrat din
valorificarea ei numai aspectul ei
clasic: adică, latina a rămas o
vreme importantă – de pildă pentru
umaniști și renascentiști – dar
numai pentru faptul că invoca
antichitatea romană, iar
gramaticienii puteau da drept
rigoare a limbii latine ablativele
instrumentale cu rol de
complement instrumental sau
indirect folosind pasaje din opera
lui Caesar. Și noi ne-o reprezentăm
cel mai adesea astăzi așa. După
părerea mea, însă, când discutăm
raportul dintre, pe de o parte,
nașterea și identitatea lumii
moderne și, pe de altă parte, limba
latină, avem în vedere mai ales
această dimensiune antichizantă. În
schimb, motivul negării treptate a
limbii latine în lumea modernă nu
a fost antichitatea, ci paradigma
științei medievale de expresie
universitară și latină pe care lumea
modernă făcea efortul să o
depășească pentru a se putea
mândri cu o diferență specifică și,
prin urmare, o identitate proprie.
De aici ar rezulta o idee foarte
simplă: că destinul secțiilor de
filologie clasică poate fi înțeles
pentru secolul XXI și în România,
și oriunde într-o universitate
dedicată cu adevărat studiului (și
nu politicii sau chiverniselii
provinciale) în funcție de modul în
care identitatea lumii moderne
ajunge la o conștiință de sine
suficientă pentru a se împăca cu
strămoșul ei proxim, adică cu
știința și limba universităților
medievale. Aceasta înseamnă,
desigur, a înțelege că idei precum
raportul nemediat dintre suflet și
transcendent, echivalarea oricărui
bun sub aspectul unui preț,
acceptarea în antropologie a
universului infinit și omogen,
negarea existenței unui principiu
ierarhic de ordonare a realității,
apelul la hermeneutica surselor (nu
doar sacre) în modul unei metode
universale de înțelegere a sensului
culturii sunt idei tipic moderne ale
căror premise și mai ales
alternative au fost gândite în Evul
mediu (latin, dar cu rădăcini și
alternative grecești, ebraice și
arabe). Și încă și mai simplu: când
vom simți nevoia rediscutării
critice a acestor idei, vom vota
bucuroși revenirea limbilor clasice
în universitățile care acum le
alungă.
Este destul de firesc ca cititorii
articolului meu să bombăne
nemulțumiți, sperând de la mine o
apologie a limbii latine lipsită de
elucubrațiile de mai sus. Le
reamintesc politicos și cu un
zâmbet cald că termenul însuși de
elucubratio a avut un sens foarte
decent și firesc în universitățile
Evului Mediu târziu, până chiar
spre epoca Luminilor, când el a
însemnat „iluminare, clarificare” și
a denumit un gen academic al
dizertațiilor doctorale. El a căzut,
desigur, în derizoriu abia când nici
instituția organizatoare a
elucubrațiilor nu a mai fost
receptată potrivit intenției sale
originare. La rândul meu, prefer
aceste elucubrații dintr-un motiv
simplu: sunt convins că lumina
intelectului este cu atât mai clară,
cu cât gradul de universalitate al
desemnării cauzelor este mai înalt,
deoarece (știm) orice cauză primă
este mai influentă asupra
cauzatului său decât o cauză
universală secundă. De aceea, nu
identific cauza prigonirii limbilor
clasice din România nici în slaba
noastră simțire identitară, nici în
măreția unei limbi antice, ci prefer
să o raportez la cel mai universal
nivel pe care îl pot imagina în
acest caz, adică parcursul sinuos al
civilizației Europene prin ceea ce
numim „modernitate”. O asemenea
perspectivă ar putea să ne oblige
chiar să înțelegem că între ritmul
construirii autostrăzilor din
România (aproape identic cursului
Rhonului, care incredibili lenitate
influit, cum spunea Caesar) și
această constantă prigoană la
adresa filologiei clasice există
legături subterane, dar ferme, pe
care o gândire atentă le-ar putea
asocia și cu altele, precum lipsa de
apetit în construcția unui stat de
drept, uriașul sofism recent al
intenției de schimbare a
constituției (unde trecerea unui
principiu al tradiției – existent și
cultivabil inerent în morală – spre
domeniul politicii secularizează și
mai mult viața noastră modernă
distrugând fundamentele ei
tradiționale, în loc să pună la
adăpost tradiția însăși, cum părea
să ne inducă în eroare chemarea la
vot), sau lupta recentă a
ministeriaților contra marilor
universități din România, porniți să
slăbească energia urcării în
clasamentele internaționale ale
acestora.
3. Aceasta este judecata mea.
Poate greșesc, propunând genuri
ultime de încadrare ale unui
fenomen mult mai meschin și mai
îngust, legat de o simplă măsură
temporară. Oricare ar fi însă
încadrarea corectă, oricât de puțin
am avea dreptul să apelăm o
filosofie a istoriei pentru a înțelege
un fenomen, consecințele pot fi
totuși gândite și ele rămân aceleași.
A scoate afară din universități
latina și greacă poate conduce la:
a) formarea unor generații de
intelectuali care sunt expuși
indefinit confuziilor mentale,
deoarece limbile modernității sunt
rezultatul cunoscut al unui infinit
număr de glisări, imprecizii,
confuzii, metaforizări și
ridiculizări ale unor concepte
denumite clar și univoc în limbile
originare în care s-au născut. La
limită, degradarea înțelegerii
structurilor exprimării conceptuale
originate în limbile clasice poate
nimici capacitatea studenților
noștri de a exprima propoziții cu
subordonate până la nivelul unei
exprimări bazate preponderent pe
emoticoane; b) crearea unor
cercetători în toate domeniile unde
limbile clasice au vreo importanță
care vor fi complet inapți în a-și
concura colegii care au absolvit
universități ce au păstrat aceste
discipline. Vom cere inutil de la
acești intelectuali pregătiți
superficial să publice în locuri
consacrate internațional ale științei,
pentru că ei nu vor avea adâncimea
necesară a înțelegerii și gândirii; c)
cantonarea României, din punctul
de vedere al educației, într-o etapă
de imposibilitate de depășire a
unui mimetism strâmb și
autocontradictoriu a tot ce se
petrece în universitățile din fluxul
principal al cunoașterii
internaționale; d) imposibilitatea
generațiilor următoare de
intelectuali absolvenți ai
universităților care au prigonit
limbile clasice de a avea acces la
sursele comune culturii din care se
revendică. Adică, atunci când
colegii lor scandinavi vor scanda
corect pe Horațiu, ei vor trăi
scandalul neputinței de a-l mai citi
corect, potrivit surselor literare, pe
Văcărescu. e) nu e nimic
apocaliptic, totuși, aici. Averroes
credea că dispariția culturii
reflexive într-o parte locuită a
pământului nu este o catastrofă, ci
mișcările cerului generează în mod
spontan apariția ei în altă parte,
lăsând sporadic supraviețuitori.
Tradusă în termenii veștii de la
Iași, ideea lui Averroes înseamnă:
dacă totuși decidenții nu vor merge
până la capăt, adică să elimine și
din biblioteci manualele de limbi
clasice și întreaga literatură
aferentă, în mod natural ele vor
reveni într-o altă generație fără
prea mult scandal, prin firescul
naturii cercetătoare a omului.
Așadar, deocamdata vom păstra
studiul declinărilor și a bunei
înțelegeri a textelor clasice,
patristice și medievale în celelalte
mari universități ale României și,
la nevoie, ne vom retrage între
salcâmi (din lemnul cărora ne
putem deja face o corabie) și le
vom transmite sub forma unor
școli private și, din acest motiv,
probabil foarte atractive.
4. Îmi amintesc de o reclamă din
Cipru, văzută în fuga autocarului.
Viteza m-a făcut să nu percep
imediat imaginea, ci textul (oare
pentru că fac încă parte dintr-o
cultură care păstrează această
prioritate?). Scria: selfize se auto.
Nu am înțeles imediat ce vrea
reclama, și pentru că nu știu
neogreacă, m-am gândit repede că
o fi vreo aluzie la preceptul delfic.
Discuția cu prietenii mei
medieviști din autoturism mi-a
lămurit repede defazarea: ei
fuseseră mult mai atenți și au văzut
portretul unei tinere care își făcea
singură o fotografie, cu un
instrument adecvat. Nimic din
expresie nu avea nici o legătură cu
conotația din mintea mea. Mă
gândesc acum că ruperea acestei
legături este un semn al culturii
noastre. Adresez colegial celor
care au decis suprimarea la Iași a
studiilor de filologie clasică
această amintire: fără limba greacă
și latină, vom produce o lume
autoreferențială, care își va scrie pe
propriul fronton cuvintele
simpaticei reclame.
Ai informatii despre tema de mai
sus? Poti contribui la o mai buna
intelegere a subiectului? Scrie
articolul tau si trimite-l la
editor[at]contributors.ro
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 Currently there are "14
comments" on this Article:
1. Kurt spune:
12/10/2018 la 21:51
Alții se simt obligați să întroducă
științele umaniste în universitatea
tehnică.
TU München s-a decis la un
moment dat să completeze științele
naturii, tehnologia, ingineria cu
științele umanistice pentru a deveni
o universitate deplină, echivalentă
cu LMU München si celălalte
universități de prestigiu din lume.
Am văzut la TV prezentarea
rectorului care a decis acest pas la
sfârșitul secolului 20. Nu era destul
ca Technische Universität
München să fie specializată pe
știință și tehnologie.
….. „…E vorba de faptul că la
Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan
Cuza” din Iași a fost decisă
intrarea în lichidare a secției de
limbi clasice. Urmarea ar fi faptul
că la această universitate, în cel
mult trei ani academici, predarea
limbii latine și a limbii grecești
vechi va înceta… „….
Greaca veche are o pondere
deosebită pentru filozofie,
literatură, teatru, cultura
europeană. Dreptul roman fără
limba latină?
Latina era baza culturală a
continentului în mănăstiri până la
renașterea italiană și întroducerea
englezei după WW1 în vest ca
limbă universală.
Die Zeit publică acum într-o ediție
specială „Künstliche Inteligenz
/AI” cerințele pentru elevi și
studenți care vor participa în acest
sector în plină expansiune:
„Klassische Bildung”, stiințele
umaniste (Faust, Goethe), muzica,
sport, evident matematica. Pentru
comunicare cu alții e nevoie de
bazele culturii, e nevoie de
educație, e nevoie de bazele
științelor umaniste. Profesorii
universitari și de liceu sunt cei care
predau cunoștințele.
In cartea sa: The Unity of the
Knowledge” N.Y 1998 profesorul
Edgar O. Wilson de la Harvard
cere celor din domeniul științelor
naturii (fizica, matematica, chimia,
biologia, astrofizica) să cunoască
din timpul studenției bazele
ștințelor umaniste (filozofia,
literatura, economia, și ev.
transcendența- religia) și la fel
celor din domeniul umanistic să
cunoască bazele științelor naturii
recente. Deplânge reducerea
studiului în universități americane.
Studenții si cercetătorii sunt prea
specializați, prea izolați între ei.
NU mai pot comunica „academic”
între ei. Filozofia ar trebui să fie un
liant, o complementare pentru
cercetarea în științele naturii.
Filozofia fără greaca veche?
Ce fel de mediu academic e într-un
centru universitar de renume cu
pretenții internationale fără greaca
veche și latina? Romanistica pe ce
se va baza?
Robert Oppenheimer cita din
sanscrit, din literatura din India de
acum peste 2000 de ani. Werner
Heisenberg (Der Teil und das
Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der
Atomphysik) citea din Platon.
Stefan Walter Hell, directorul
Max-Planck-Institut für
biophysikalische Chemie in
Göttingen (premiul Nobel 2014),
spune într-un dialog (KlarText,
Preis für
Wissenschaftskommunikation,
Klaus Tschira Stiftung 2018) cu
Martina Grundmann-Ecker de la o
grădiniță de copii care are
„Forschungsstation”:
Ich habe Physik studiert weil ich
fasziniert war von dem, was die
„Welt im Innersten
zusammenhält”, wie es bei Goethe
heißt. Es sind sehr simple
Prinzipien. Diese Erkenntnis war
für mich unwahrscheinlich
befriedigend- und die Erkenntnis,
das manche praktische Grenzen in
Wahrheit gar keine sind.
Wenn man ein Phänomen
verstanden hat, kann man es allen
erklären. Wenn jemand sein
Forschungsgebiet nicht auf das
Einfachste herunterbrechen kann,
ist das so gut wie immer ein Beleg
dafür, dass er es selbst (noch) nicht
verstanden hat.
Făra un dialog între academicieni
la nivel universal, fără un dialog cu
societatea civică nu se câștigă
încrederea cetățenilor. Cred că e
momentul ca să se discute predarea
științelor naturii (fizica, chimia,
biologia) în licee în limba engleză
(Singapur, Hongkonk, India, etc).
Conectarea elevilor și studenților
la patrimoniul universal în era
digitală se realizează cu un clic.
UP TO DATE nu e posibil numai
cu traduceri. Inovația are un ritm
mult mai mare decât traducerile.
JUST IN TIME e important pentru
 cercetătorii care din liceu și
universitate sunt obișnuiți cu
engleza ca a doua limbă
„maternă”. Inovație, export, salarii
mari e de mult timp calea spre
bunăstare în vest.
Tinerii părăsesc țara … …..
Răspunde
2. Se schimba lumea spune:
12/10/2018 la 22:48
Acum 100-150 de ani examenul de
admitere la Harvard (si nu numai
la Harvard) avea, in afara de
matematica si engleza, si teste de
cunostinte AVANSATE de latina
si greaca veche.
Pina acum 100 de ani nu puteai
pretinde ca esti intelectual daca nu
stapineai latina si greaca veche.
Mircea Eliade noteaza in “Jurnal”
un amanunt dintr-o discutie cu
Jung, care ajunsese sa faca crize de
isterie de cite ori venea vorba de
Sigmund Freud, pe care ajunsese
sa il numeasca impostor. “Nici
macar nu stia greaca veche!!!”, a
explodat Jung.
Se schimba lumea. Progreseaza.
De-acu’ altele sint prioritatile, altii
indicatorii de performanta
intelectuala: Gender and Women’s
Studies, LGBTQ Studies, LGBTQ
rights, equity and inclusion -values
at the core of the LGBTQ Studies
minor programs, Gender, Women
& Sexuality Studies,
Womens/Gender/Queer Studies,
Diversity Studies, Gender and
Diversity Studies, BA in Critical
Diversity Studies | University of
San Francisco, Transgender
Studies @ Duke | Duke Gender,
Sexuality & Feminist Studies etc.
Asta cere piata, asta e viitorul. ;-)
Moldovenii s-au orientat primii pe
plai. Renunta la latina si baga
gender studies. Proactivi.
Trendsetters. Ca d’aia au ei oi mai
multe, mindre si cornute.
Si, iaca, conform traditiei locului,
unii, in loc sa ia exemplu, vor sa-i
dea in cap. Se putea altfel?
 Baciul Ungurean,
Si cu cel Vrancean,
Mari se vorbira,
Ei se sfatuira
Pe l’apus de soare
Ca sa mi-l omoare
Pe cel Moldovan
Ca-i mai ortoman
S’are oi mai multe,
Mindre si cornute,
Si cai invatati
Si cini mai barbati!…
Răspunde
3. Paganel spune:
12/10/2018 la 23:44
Bună seara (în fapt de noapte)!
 Nu mai am ore în această
săptămână, dar, în următoarea, voi
fi prezent în Universitatea
„Alexandru Ioan Cuza” cu o
banderolă albă, în semn de „grevă
japoneză”! Poate se „trezește”
cineva!…
Doamne, ajută!
Răspunde
4. Paganel spune:
13/10/2018 la 0:12
Bună seara (în fapt de noapte)!
Nu mai am ore în această
săptămână, dar, în următoarea, voi
fi prezent în Universitatea
„Alexandru Ioan Cuza” cu o
banderolă albă, în semn de „grevă
 japoneză”! Poate se „trezește”
cineva!…
P.S. Am lansat deja o petiție:
https://www.petitieonline.com/pe
tiie_impotriva_eliminrii_limbilor
_clasice_la_universitatea_alexan
dru_ioan_cuza_din_iai
Doamne, ajută!
Răspunde
5. Zev spune:
13/10/2018 la 7:42
Fain articol. Ma mira ce – chiar
daca nu o spune, probabil ca o
gandeste Dl Cutitaru – bun, dar
decanii facultatilor care formeaza
profesionistii pe care ii
mentioneaza in text, si pe buna
dreptate, nu se plang ca pe termen
lung le cam trage mercantilismul
universitar presul de sub picioare?
Sa fie asta revolta mentionata de
autor? Daca nu, mai ramane
salvarea in extremis, sectia de
clasice sa fie de acum inainte
cunoscuta ca Facultatea de Studii
de Comunicare Strategica si
Aparare Lingvistica in Istoria
Integrarii Europene si a Relatiilor
Internationale Europene. Ca si
romanii tot un soi de integrare au
facut, mai de manu militari asa (ca
sa raman in ton), dar na, asa erau
vremile. Sa vedem aunci coada de
masseuze si dizeuze cu amanti in
sectorul public mai ceva ca la
SNSPA. Ce-o sa faca Dr
 Baumgarten cu materialul ala
uman, e altceva.
Răspunde
6. Constantin Jinga spune:
13/10/2018 la 10:43
Intr-o tara ca Germania (despre
care regretatul Constantin Noica
spunea ca ales untul), daca esti
elev la un liceu de mate-fizica, poti
opta sa dai bacalureatul din limba
latina. Si de altfel studiezi limba
latina cat se poate de serios. Iar
bacul nu e floare la ureche. Asta
asa, ca fapt divers …
Răspunde
7. Klopo_Tare spune:
13/10/2018 la 10:45
Este un pas final din anihilarea
gândirii critice – gândirea critică
își are originea fundamentală în
literatură și filozofie. Științele
exacte moderne o folosesc într-un
fel foarte restrictiv, și de aceea
apare un fenomen interesant:
teroriștii arabi au apărut dintre
studenții de la facultățile tehnice –
nu doar pentru că aveau nevoie de
cunoștințele tehnice pentru a face
bombe, ci și pentru că științele
exacte facilitează o înțelegere
mecanicistă a lumii, care este
extrem de permeabilă la
manipulare; în timp ce studiul
filologiei, filozofiei și în general al
 științelor umaniste lărgește
orizontul și prin maleabilitatea
înțelegerii conferite de aceste
științe, împiedică masiv
manipularea.
De aceea eliminarea acestor științe
este în avantajul programatic al
prostirii nației române…
Răspunde
8. Cabron spune:
13/10/2018 la 16:51
Daca aceasta e tendinta organica,
si nu doar o nebunie de moment a
unor nulitati locale, vor urma
engleza, germana, italiana,
spaniola si franceza, practic
limbile clasice ale modernitatii. In
 fiorul materialist al adaptarii la
mizeria pe care-o numim
civilizatie, vom invata araba,
chineza si ceva expresii de neo-
sanscrita, prin care vom chema
populatia la vot si referendum.
Daca societatea romana decade sub
toate aspectele, de ce-ar fi fost
ocolite redutele nobletii culturale?
E de mirare ca n-au cazut deja.
Răspunde
9. Corina spune:
13/10/2018 la 20:59
Nici la Cluj lucrurile nu stau prea
bine. Masterat de limbi clasice nu
există, iar la licență a fost nevoie
de două sesiuni ca să se ocupe cele
 5-6 locuri bugetate și să mai vină
vreo doi studenți pe locuri cu taxă.
Răspunde
10. Cristian Felea spune:
14/10/2018 la 9:59
Civilizatia europeana este la
fundamentele sale civilizationale,
culturale, greaca si latina.
Eu zic sa desfiintam acest lucru.
Renasterea europeana, curentul
care a stimulat capitalismul si a
adus sfarsitul evului mediu in
Europa, starnind totodata
europenilor o mare pofta de a
descoperi si cuceri lumea, a avut la
origine redescoperirea filozofiei
grecesti.
Eu zic sa stergem acest lucru din
istorie.
Scoala Ardeleana a fost profund
latinista si a redescoperit radacina
nobila a poporului roman, risipit in
doua state vasale otomanilor si trei
provincii ce tineau de coroana
imperiala austriaca.
Cui ii pasa?
La ce ne-ar ma folosi greaca veche
si latina?
La ce ne mai foloseste cartea,
educatia cultura?
Nu ne sunt de ajuns zisele inspirate
ale lui Dragnea, patriarhul Daniel,
Toader, Dancila, Codrin
Stefanescu, Olguta Vasilescu,
Iordache si altii ca ei?
Răspunde
o Zev spune:
14/10/2018 la 15:21
Dixit! Ah pardon, vrednic esteeee,
domnul Feleeaa!
Sorry, n-am putut sa ma abtin,
traim un marasm de-si roade Kafka
unghiile :)
Răspunde
11. Nicolaus spune:
14/10/2018 la 10:40
Când universitatea este condusă
după regulile întreprinderii, iese
ceea ce vedeți! Când eficiența
economică a întreprinderii / firmei
este calculată pe intervale de trei
luni, iese iarăși ceea ce vedeți și
experimentați!
N-am auzit nici o voce puternică în
Academie sau universități care să
se ridice împotriva standardizării,
conformării (a se consulta Roland
Gori), mediocrației (a se consulta
Alain Deneau!) și disrupției (vezi
Bernard Stiegler!). În condițiile
sărăciei cronice de la noi, cu
corpul profesoral (în ansamblul
lui) infectat de impostură, politizat,
masonizat etc., cu conducători
politici tot mai obtuzi, cu manageri
academici tot mai focusați pe bani
și-atât, când omul devine manager
pentru om, intelectualul umanist
are o soartă previzibilă.
Foarte urâtă, această măsură a
conducerii Universității din Iași.
Dată fiind importanța locului și
 momentul, este o lovitură fățișă
dată românismului. Se putea trece
cu vederea dacă așa ceva s-ar fi
petrecut într-una din șuetele de
universități noi. Când cuțitul
ajunge la os, poate începem să ne
trezim. Dacă nu, vom continua să
ne masturbăm (pe noi înșine).
Răspunde
12. Grammaticus spune:
14/10/2018 la 12:21
Bun si binevenit articol. Cu privire
la “a) formarea unor generații de
intelectuali care sunt expuși
indefinit confuziilor mentale…” sa
zicem ca vom vorbi in viitor de
quasi-intelectuali, adica de
persoane dotate cu o cultura
superficiala. Un exemplu cu
privire la aceste confuzii. La o
facultate de drept pe care am
urmat-o, la cursuri cu frecventa
obisnuita, ni s-a spus, am
descoperit mai tarziu ca era zis
papagaliceste, ca “dreptul nu se
bazeaza pe morala”. Si asta de
catre mai multi, contrazicand ceea
ce instinctiv simte orice om; un fel
de “dreptul nu se bazeaza pe
dreptate”. Facand un referat despre
istoria dreptului romanesc, gasesc
in Ion Peretz „Curs de Istoria
Dreptului Român, Originile
Dreptului Român” Bucureşti,
Editura Tipografiei Ziarului
„Curierul Judiciar”, 1915 (Peretz
era profesor de drept la Iasi) ca
Revolutia franceza a adus in drept,
in plus, impreuna cu morala,
recursul la logica. Citez
aproximativ, bineinteles. Deci, nici
vorba ca nu mai exista o baza
morala pentru drept, dar ai nostri
profesori, au uitat prima parte.