Defining the Fragmentary cont'd
Dao Jones
> You claimed "the failure of traditional means
> of locating the self" was new to the 20th century ("worthy of
> recognition as a significant new arrival"). Not so -- it dates
> back at least to the early 1600's.
No argument. However, whilst many such doubts existed in the early
1600s, and many thousands of years before that, the failure was not
total. I think we approach that point only now. My points about the
time in which Donne was writing were not irrelevant. I was trying to
indicate that although Donne et al had things to worry about, there was a
great deal in which people still put considerable faith without much
question. That is no longer the case for many of those things, and for
many new things Donne hadn't even thought of.
> Moggin:
>
> >> The trouble (maybe also the solution) is that you're using
> >> "post-modern" to name "the failure of traditional means of
> >> locating the self": i.e., defining selfhood in the terms of an
> >> established hierarchy.
>
> >> That's in Donne -- the construction of a self when "Prince,
> >> subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot..." But now look
> >> what he's talking about: the breakdown of feudalism during the
> >> early modern era.
>
> DJ:
>
> >Does that mean that once again we are entering a time of radical doubt
> >leading to a reconceptualisation of society? Do you think we're at a set
> >of recurring gateposts leading to a new age which might lay legitimate
> >claim to being the Post Modern Era? It would be nice...
>
> You can call anything you please "post-modern."
That's untrue.
> As you've
> described post-modernism, the term applies to Donne and to
> early modern England.
As I've described postmodernism, there are common elements. As I've
described the postmodern situation, there are common elements. That is
completely unsurprising.
> So obviously the phenomenon isn't unique
> to the 20th century.
Parts of it are, parts of it are not.
> Yes, it's possible to conceive modernism or post-modernism
> as a recurrent phenomenon -- something that crops up now and
> then in the course of history. "Leading to a new age," no, I'd
> say. Oh, wait, I see what you mean -- the gateposts keep
> reappearing, but nobody ever steps thru them. I like the image.
I think Tom C. would say you can't actually exist inside a PM situation
- it keeps slipping away, because being temporary is part of it. I
don't want to put words in his mouth, though.
> Moggin:
>
> >> In other words, Donne's describing the modern condition --
> >> so are you. So why call it "post-modern?" You've skipped a
> >> step. The step you've skipped is named "modernity." (NB: not
> >> "modernism.") But now you know where to get the piece you
> >> need.
>
> DJ:
>
> > I think I even made that same distinction in another post.
>
> I wasn't correcting you -- just trying to keep it in sight.
>
> > I've also said that Giddens refers to now as 'late modern' rather than
> > 'post modern'. It's arguable whether the period of readjustment belongs
> > to the preceeding or succeeding phase - if this is the shift from
> > modern to post, do we belong in one, the other, or neither?
>
> > Modernity has defining charactersistics, however, some of which are
> > brought forward from feudalism, others of which are its own. The family,
> > despite Donne's presentiment of disaster, remains a major factor in self-
> > definition all the way through the next few hundred years. So does the
> > state, the local area, social class, and so on.
>
> Donne isn't making a prediction -- he's describing the
> world as he sees it. (The First Anniverserie is subtitled, "An
> Anatomy of the World.") This ain't Nostradamus that we're
> talking about. Maybe poets _are_ the antennae of the race; but
> Donne was writing about his own time.
<shrug> It's facile to say so, but the crisis he saw wasn't as bad as it
appeared to be - or we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the
family as he saw it would not still exist. It remained coherent until
more like 1850 or so.
> Of course the family, class,. etc. etc. were still factors.
> And not just "through the next few hundred years." They're
> important now, notwithstanding any anxiety that might accompany
> them.
They are indeed - but they are not reliable in the same way, and
(and this is the point) anxiety does accompany them, almost be
definition.
> The point remains that such anxiety isn't a new phenomenon.
> Not by a long stretch. It's at least four centuries old. I
> wouldn't be the least surprised if it appeared before then, e.g.
> in late antiquity (as someone suggested) or ancient Greece.
Try Sumeria. That doesn't change things, however. The more we
understand, the more we have to doubt. We live in a time where we have
repeatedly proved earlier assumptions wrong, and now we are having
trouble coming up with any trust to put in new ideas of 'how it all
works'.
> (Although the first example that occurs to me is about locating
> one's identity rather than losing it. Which shows that
> there's more than just one way to feel anxious about the self.)
Of course. That just compounds it.
> DJ:
> >Not that these ideas are
> >unquestioned, but they hold sway and frame ideas, so that even as reason
> >throws out the mythologies of ethics, it seeks clearer, scientific
> >schemes for why morality should remain the same (Consequentialism, for
> >example).
>
> >Modernity's love affair with the Enlightenment Project is one of its
> >defining characteristics - the attempt to produce a rational world.
> >This love affair has broken down only rather recently, and that breakdown
> >pushes us into late modernity or postmodernity, depending on your point
> >of view.
>
> Well, no. Blake was going on about Newton's single vision
> two centuries ago. So "that breakdown" pushes us into
> Romanticism. (Not that I was there -- you may have a few years
> on me.)
Blake had other faiths and certain convictions. He was also notedly
eccentric. Actually, that's a rather interesting point - Blake, Donne,
and Nietsche were all viewed, at the time and for some time after, as
disfunctional in some way. They were atypical. They may well have been
correct, but expressing frictions and problems which were embryonic in
their own time, only coming to obvious fruition later. Nietsche, at
least, is also one of the thinkers responsible for the situation (well,
for discovering and illuminating it).
> DJ:
> > In one sense, the world as a whole has not yet entered proper
> > modernity. In another, because in some areas modernity is already
> > outmoded, the whole world is pulled into the untidiness of postmodernity,
> > rather than merely the slow winding down of 'late modernity'.
Moggin:
> Ernst Bloch points out somewplace it's always many
> different ages at once -- depends entirely on who and where you
> are. Talking about "the world as a whole" is next to
> meaningless in this regard. We haven't even addressed anything
> outside Western history, and we've beem ignoring the great
> majority of _that_. Except for Gorgias, who I tried to drag in,
> we've been discussing the Renaissance on.
The interesting thing about my proposition is exactly that: I think
that, for the first time, it may just be possible to say that this
phenomenon of doubt *is* almost global, whether the society experiencing
it is industrial, informational, or agrarian. Delocalisation has struck.
The world has never been more a 'whole' from a strictly human point of
view.
> DJ:
>
> > I don't know that I'd link Marx, Nietsche, and Freud so closely in this
> > context.
Moggin:
> Nonetheless, that's where they make a set. Looks like you
> might have missed the point. I'm not saying that they're
> alike in their thinking: I'm using them as examples which show
> the humanist subject wasn't beyond questioning. That's a
> cliche of intellectual history -- thus my reference to the Holy
> Trinity.
>
> It's not hard to sort them out. Nietzsche is the wildcard.
> Marx and Freud belong together as kids of the Enlightenment.
> If you feel like it, then you can lump Darwin in with them, too.
Thanks, I'll pass.
> >Marxian social analysis is very much of the Enlightenment kind
> >- 'there are four eras, they have these characteristics, and they are
> >rolling towards this construction of society for these reasons. It is
> >inevitable, it is scientificially determined.' - quantifiable forces
> >made up of groups of individuals all actin in a coherent fashion - the
> >Capitalists, the Proletariat, the Feudal Overlords, the Peasants, the
> >Bourgeoisie. Very cut and dried.
>
> It depends on the Marxian doing the analysis. You're much
> too quick to generalize.
No, I'm going to source. That's why I said 'Marxian' rather than
'Marxist' - Marx's own analysis is like this. Other people have used
his work in a variety of ways, but always with their own agenda. He had
his own agenda, which I think was pretty much as I have characterised it.
> > Freud cannot really be characterised like that, with the emphasis on
> > interpretation.
>
> Oh, of course he can. An emphasis on interpretation is no
> guide to the form or content of an exegesis.
Perhaps. But the idea of interpretation runs counter to the dogma of
objectivity.
> > Nor can his work be said to have had the same effect -
> > where Marx bread a new kind of certainty, a surety of historical purpose
> > and manifest desinty, Freud's work creates uncertainty - what are my
> > motivations in this, can I ever know myself?
>
> By reputation, the New York Psychoanalytical Society is as
> afficted with doubt as the French CP.
Well, that's an organisation with an agenda again.
> >And Nietsche, well...The genealogical approach seems to be destructive to
> >ideas - 'what are the roots of this supposedly pure concept?' - an
> >attempt to attack the legitimacy of an idea. So Nietsche does for theory
> >what Freud does for the mind and the heart.
>
> Freud attacks the legitimacy of the mind and heart? Or he
> simply destroys them?
He seeks the unseen and undeclared root.
> >The latter two lead into what I'm talking about with doubt; Marx does
> >not.
>
> Marx supplies you with your central thesis. It's there in
> the Manifesto, if you're interested.
I don't recall seeing it there.
DJ (waffling on):
> >I would say that these were modern writers - but that the effects
> >of their writing was to engender postmodernity, hence the distinction I
> >drew between postmodernity as the state where doubt has permeated every
> >aspect of self, and postmodernism, the attempt to do theory and cope with
> >that situation.
>
> You said that. But you date "postmodernity" to the second
> half of the twentieth century, while the feature you say is
> unique to it, "the failure of traditional means of locating the
> self in the world," goes back at the least to early modern
> England, as you can see in Donne. It also belongs to modernity
> by definition. So your idea of "postmodernism" lacks both
> rhyme and reason.
No, not really. The phenomenon I describe is qualitatively different
from other, similar periods and ideas of doubt in history. They are
probably linked very directly, but there are differences in derivation,
distribution, and type.
The difficulties of locatin the self begin with modernity, but they do
not come to fruition until postmodernity - and it's just going to get
worse.
DJ
Not that that's a bad thing.
PS apologies for the new thread - newsreader hell....
Puss in Boots
>>>>>Doubt has been aroud for a long, long time. No argument. It is this
>>>>>construction of doubt, and these specific doubts in the world - the
>>>>>failure of traditional means of locating the self in the world, and of
>>>>>having confidence in the self and the world, which I think is worthy of
>>>>>recognition as a significant new arrival.
Moggin:
>>>> But that's in Donne, as I pointed out. If you want to say
>>>> it's never been so common as now, I won't argue. (I'm not
>>>> certain I agree, but I won't dispute it with you.) It's not an
>>>> innovation of the 20th century, tho.
DJ:
>>>Yes, although I think there are aspects of it now which Donne didn't have
>>>to cope with. Obviously, he wasn't trying to be exhaustive, but whether
>>>it was meaningful or even possible to write about it wasn't a daily
>>>topic, and certainly he could lay claim to a say in what he meant when he
>>>wrote.
Moggin:
>> Maybe it came up every day chez Donne. I don't know and I
>> don't care. I'm pointing out that the "specific doubts" you
>> assign to the 20th century are in Donne -- that means they date
>> back at least four centuries. "The failure of traditional
>> means of locating the self in the world" _isn't_ a "new arrival."
DJ:
>>>Moreover, his society had not experienced the horror of the 20th Century
>>>genocides in Hitler's Germany, Lenin and Stalin's Sviet Union, or even
>>>the New World. They had never seen the failure of a man-made project of
>>>state creation and definition. Perhaps more significantly, Donne may be
>>>writing about the collapse of King and God, but Kings were still held in
>>>fairly high esteem around the world, nobles certainly were, and while
>>>Cromwell's revolution (?) removed Charles, it immediately replaced him
>>>with Cromwell (and reaffirmed God to a quite staggering degree).
Moggin:
>> Irrelevant. You claimed "the failure of traditional means
>> of locating the self" was new to the 20th century ("worthy of
>> recognition as a significant new arrival"). Not so -- it dates
>> back at least to the early 1600's.
DJ:
> No argument.
Odd you would say so, since that's what we've been arguing
about. (You: "...signficant new arrival." Me: "Except in
that it isn't new.") But I'm glad to see that we finally agree.
> However, whilst many such doubts existed in the early
> 1600s, and many thousands of years before that, the failure was not
> total. I think we approach that point only now. My points about the
> time in which Donne was writing were not irrelevant. I was trying to
> indicate that although Donne et al had things to worry about, there was
> a great deal in which people still put considerable faith without much
> question. That is no longer the case for many of those things, and for
> many new things Donne hadn't even thought of.
This is awfully vague. We were talking about something at
least a bit more more specific: "the failure of traditional
means of locating the self." As we agree now, that dates to at
least the early 1600's, if not before.
Moggin:
>>>> The trouble (maybe also the solution) is that you're using
>>>> "post-modern" to name "the failure of traditional means of
>>>> locating the self": i.e., defining selfhood in the terms of an
>>>> established hierarchy.
>>>> That's in Donne -- the construction of a self when "Prince,
>>>> subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot..." But now look
>>>> what he's talking about: the breakdown of feudalism during the
>>>> early modern era.
DJ:
>>>Does that mean that once again we are entering a time of radical doubt
>>>leading to a reconceptualisation of society? Do you think we're at a set
>>>of recurring gateposts leading to a new age which might lay legitimate
>>>claim to being the Post Modern Era? It would be nice...
Moggin:
>> You can call anything you please "post-modern."
DJ:
> That's untrue.
No, it's true. Verbs are the proudest; adjectives you can
do anything with.
Moggin:
>> As you've
>> described post-modernism, the term applies to Donne and to
>> early modern England.
DJ:
> As I've described postmodernism, there are common elements. As I've
> described the postmodern situation, there are common elements. That is
> completely unsurprising.
The common elements include the one that you named new and
significant as well as others you've mentioned.
Moggin:
>> So obviously the phenomenon isn't unique to the 20th century.
DJ:
> Parts of it are, parts of it are not.
Could be. But none of the parts that you've described are
novelties.
[...]
Moggin:
>>>> In other words, Donne's describing the modern condition --
>>>> so are you. So why call it "post-modern?" You've skipped a
>>>> step. The step you've skipped is named "modernity." (NB: not
>>>> "modernism.") But now you know where to get the piece you
>>>> need.
[...]
DJ:
>>> Modernity has defining charactersistics, however, some of which are
>>> brought forward from feudalism, others of which are its own. The family,
>>> despite Donne's presentiment of disaster, remains a major factor in self-
>>> definition all the way through the next few hundred years. So does the
>>> state, the local area, social class, and so on.
Moggin:
>> Donne isn't making a prediction -- he's describing the
>> world as he sees it. (The First Anniverserie is subtitled, "An
>> Anatomy of the World.") This ain't Nostradamus that we're
>> talking about. Maybe poets _are_ the antennae of the race; but
>> Donne was writing about his own time.
DJ:
> <shrug> It's facile to say so, but the crisis he saw wasn't as bad as it
> appeared to be - or we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the
> family as he saw it would not still exist. It remained coherent until
> more like 1850 or so.
My point here is simple. Donne is describing what follows
on the breakdown of feudal society, namely the modern
condition. So are you. There's not much sense in labelling it
"post-modern" (unless you take "post" to to mean "starting
with" rather than "coming after"). But once you recognize that,
you have some options.
Moggin:
>> Of course the family, class,. etc. etc. were still factors.
>> And not just "through the next few hundred years." They're
>> important now, notwithstanding any anxiety that might accompany
>> them.
DJ:
> They are indeed - but they are not reliable in the same way, and
> (and this is the point) anxiety does accompany them, almost be
> definition.
That takes us back to Donne, who's writing with some angst
about the construction of the self when traditional means of
establishing identity no longer function reliably. And when is
he writing? 1611. (More on that below.)
Moggin:
>> The point remains that such anxiety isn't a new phenomenon.
>> Not by a long stretch. It's at least four centuries old. I
>> wouldn't be the least surprised if it appeared before then, e.g.
>> in late antiquity (as someone suggested) or ancient Greece.
DJ:
> Try Sumeria. That doesn't change things, however.
Sumeria? Sumer? Samaria?
> The more we
> understand, the more we have to doubt. We live in a time where we have
> repeatedly proved earlier assumptions wrong, and now we are having
> trouble coming up with any trust to put in new ideas of 'how it all
> works'.
Just what Donne is describing. Not just Donne. The times
have been out of joint for some time. (Or several times,
depending how you look at it. I'm open to both possibilities.)
Moggin:
>> (Although the first example that occurs to me is about locating
>> one's identity rather than losing it. Which shows that
>> there's more than just one way to feel anxious about the self.)
DJ:
> Of course. That just compounds it.
It certainly doesn't help. I'm not sure about compounding.
We've got anxiety about losing identity and anxiety about
finding it. Those seem like opposites, at least an the surface.
Although the passage from Donne includes both, as I was
pointing out before.
DJ:
>>>Not that these ideas are
>>>unquestioned, but they hold sway and frame ideas, so that even as reason
>>>throws out the mythologies of ethics, it seeks clearer, scientific
>>>schemes for why morality should remain the same (Consequentialism, for
>>>example).
>>>Modernity's love affair with the Enlightenment Project is one of its
>>>defining characteristics - the attempt to produce a rational world.
>>>This love affair has broken down only rather recently, and that breakdown
>>>pushes us into late modernity or postmodernity, depending on your point
>>>of view.
Moggin:
>> Well, no. Blake was going on about Newton's single vision
>> two centuries ago. So "that breakdown" pushes us into
>> Romanticism. (Not that I was there -- you may have a few years
>> on me.)
DJ:
> Blake had other faiths and certain convictions. He was also notedly
> eccentric. Actually, that's a rather interesting point -
Interesting it may be -- fascinating, even. Unfortunately
it's not directly relevant. You claimed that modernity is
defined in part by its "love affair with the Enlightenment" and
that that attachment "has broken down only rather recently,"
producing "late modernity or postmodernity," depending what you
want to call it.
The problem with that schema is simple -- you've forgotten
about Romanticism. The breakdown that you're talking about
begins with Blake and the Romantics, which dates it back to the
late 18th century. That's not recent, unless you take a
fairly long view. (It's recent compared to ancient Greece, and
very recent next to the Pleistocene.)
> Blake, Donne,
> and Nietsche were all viewed, at the time and for some time after, as
> disfunctional in some way. They were atypical. They may well have been
> correct, but expressing frictions and problems which were embryonic in
> their own time, only coming to obvious fruition later. Nietsche, at
> least, is also one of the thinkers responsible for the situation (well,
> for discovering and illuminating it).
Blake was an eccentric; but not the Dean of St. Paul's. I
did some casual checking (_very_ casual) on D's reception,
indidentally. Sayan is basically right -- his poems circulated
mostly in private manuscripts while he was alive. But they
were published just two years after his death, and they quickly
found an audience. What's more, one of the exceptions was
precisely the poem I quoted, the First Anniverserie, which went
to the press in the year I gave for it -- 1611.
You could call Nietzsche dysfunctional, if you wanted, but
that would just be a fancy way of saying he had bad health.
Before he got sick he spent ten years on the Basel faculty as a
philologist. Of course he did go nuts, but his work dates
from before his breakdown, excepting his last notes and letters.
Obviously the ideas they expressed did come to fruition in
their times (not counting the death of God, which quite
explicitly doesn't -- but I'm not using Nietzsche as an example
here): specifically in their work.
You're still free to say something like, "Yeah, well, more
people thought like them later on." As I said, I'm not
getting into a debate about numbers. It's not as tho we've got
any to debate about. Besides, I don't care.
DJ:
>>> In one sense, the world as a whole has not yet entered proper
>>> modernity. In another, because in some areas modernity is already
>>> outmoded, the whole world is pulled into the untidiness of postmodernity,
>>> rather than merely the slow winding down of 'late modernity'.
Moggin:
>> Ernst Bloch points out somewplace it's always many
>> different ages at once -- depends entirely on who and where you
>> are. Talking about "the world as a whole" is next to
>> meaningless in this regard. We haven't even addressed anything
>> outside Western history, and we've beem ignoring the great
>> majority of _that_. Except for Gorgias, who I tried to drag in,
>> we've been discussing the Renaissance on.
DJ:
> The interesting thing about my proposition is exactly that: I think
> that, for the first time, it may just be possible to say that this
> phenomenon of doubt *is* almost global, whether the society experiencing
> it is industrial, informational, or agrarian. Delocalisation has struck.
> The world has never been more a 'whole' from a strictly human point of
> view.
I tried to suggest before that you might want to
differentiate. Can you speak about "_this_ phenomenon of doubt"
(my emphasis) when you're addressing such very different
settings? That definite article is questionable, since it says
the phenomenon is basically the same in all cases.
Besides, there's no sense in calling a phenomenon of doubt
in an agrarian society "post-modern" (allowing for the
exception I made above). An agrarian society is pre-modern, by
definition. Again, you need to draw more distinctions.
[...]
DJ:
>>>Marxian social analysis is very much of the Enlightenment kind
>>>- 'there are four eras, they have these characteristics, and they are
>>>rolling towards this construction of society for these reasons. It is
>>>inevitable, it is scientificially determined.' - quantifiable forces
>>>made up of groups of individuals all actin in a coherent fashion - the
>>>Capitalists, the Proletariat, the Feudal Overlords, the Peasants, the
>>>Bourgeoisie. Very cut and dried.
Moggin:
>> It depends on the Marxian doing the analysis. You're much
>> too quick to generalize.
DJ:
> No, I'm going to source. That's why I said 'Marxian' rather than
> 'Marxist' - Marx's own analysis is like this.
In my experience, the common term for "Marx's own analysis"
is "Marx's." (Makes sense to me.) "Marxian" serves as an
alternative to "Marxist" for those who need one. I don't think
I've ever seen it used to substitute for "Marx's," but like
"Marxist" it can be used to include Marx's work (Marx's opinion
notwithstanding).
> Other people have used
> his work in a variety of ways, but always with their own agenda. He had
> his own agenda, which I think was pretty much as I have characterised it.
Of course Marx had an agenda. But weren't you were trying
to describe a style?
DJ:
>>> Freud cannot really be characterised like that, with the emphasis on
>>> interpretation.
Moggin:
>> Oh, of course he can. An emphasis on interpretation is no
>> guide to the form or content of an exegesis.
DJ:
> Perhaps. But the idea of interpretation runs counter to the dogma of
> objectivity.
Not necessarily, no: no more than the concept of ideology
does. Or precisely as much.
DJ:
>>> Nor can his work be said to have had the same effect -
>>> where Marx bread a new kind of certainty, a surety of historical purpose
>>> and manifest desinty, Freud's work creates uncertainty - what are my
>>> motivations in this, can I ever know myself?
Moggin:
>> By reputation, the New York Psychoanalytical Society is as
>> afficted with doubt as the French CP.
DJ:
> Well, that's an organisation with an agenda again.
Could be -- neither one of them invites me to the meetings.
But my point stands.
DJ:
>>>And Nietsche, well...The genealogical approach seems to be destructive to
>>>ideas - 'what are the roots of this supposedly pure concept?' - an
>>>attempt to attack the legitimacy of an idea. So Nietsche does for theory
>>>what Freud does for the mind and the heart.
Moggin:
>> Freud attacks the legitimacy of the mind and heart? Or he
>> simply destroys them?
DJ:
> He seeks the unseen and undeclared root.
Exactly. And where are roots located? The ground. While
in Nietzsche everything opens onto the abyss.
DJ:
>>>The latter two lead into what I'm talking about with doubt; Marx does
>>>not.
Moggin:
>> Marx supplies you with your central thesis. It's there in
>> the Manifesto, if you're interested.
DJ:
> I don't recall seeing it there.
That's why I mentioned it. I even steered you to the most
relevant passage.
DJ:
>>>I would say that these were modern writers - but that the effects
>>>of their writing was to engender postmodernity, hence the distinction I
>>>drew between postmodernity as the state where doubt has permeated every
>>>aspect of self, and postmodernism, the attempt to do theory and cope with
>>>that situation.
Moggin:
>> You said that. But you date "postmodernity" to the second
>> half of the twentieth century, while the feature you say is
>> unique to it, "the failure of traditional means of locating the
>> self in the world," goes back at the least to early modern
>> England, as you can see in Donne. It also belongs to modernity
>> by definition. So your idea of "postmodernism" lacks both
>> rhyme and reason.
DJ:
> No, not really.
Yes, honest.
> The phenomenon I describe is qualitatively different
> from other, similar periods and ideas of doubt in history.
That's exactly what you haven't been able to establish. I
thought you were pushing the quantitative argument as a
replacement: granting that the phenomenon isn't new but saying
it's never been as common.
To be clear, I'm not saying that you can't distinguish one
type of doubt from another: I'm just continuing with what I
said above re "the failure of traditional means of locating the
self in the world."
> They are
> probably linked very directly, but there are differences in derivation,
> distribution, and type.
> The difficulties of locatin the self begin with modernity, but they do
> not come to fruition until postmodernity - and it's just going to get
> worse.
The difficulties you're referring to were fruited ages ago.
You can still say that the crop was never so big before.
That's not what I'd advise, but I wouldn't argue. I'm just not
interested in talking about agriculture.
-- Moggin
Dao Jones
mog...@mindspring.com says...
> DJ:
>
> >>>Moreover, his [Donne's] society had not experienced the horror of the 20th Century
> >>>genocides in Hitler's Germany, Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union, or even
> >>>state creation and definition. Perhaps more significantly, Donne may be
> >>>writing about the collapse of King and God, but Kings were still held in
> >>>fairly high esteem around the world, nobles certainly were, and while
> >>>Cromwell's revolution (?) removed Charles, it immediately replaced him
> >>>with Cromwell (and reaffirmed God to a quite staggering degree).
>
> Moggin:
>
> >> Irrelevant. You claimed "the failure of traditional means
> >> of locating the self" was new to the 20th century ("worthy of
> >> recognition as a significant new arrival"). Not so -- it dates
> >> back at least to the early 1600's.
>
> DJ:
>
> > No argument.
>
> Odd you would say so, since that's what we've been arguing
> about. (You: "...signficant new arrival." Me: "Except in
> that it isn't new.") But I'm glad to see that we finally agree.
Oh, dear. I must have been concentrating on the other part of the post.
First, my arguments about Donne's situation are most certainly *not*
irrelevant, they are crucial to understanding the tenor of his doubt and
what it meant to him to question things. Second, whilst I am prepared to
agree that doubt is not new, and that Donne felt many of his traditional
means of locating himself were under fire, I do not agree that the
*failure* of traditional means of the self is not new. It seems to me
that as the traditional means were challenged, so they emerged refined.
It is only now that we find ourselves in Nietsche's position (as you
characterise it) of the genealogy leading us to the abyss.
DJ:
> > However, whilst many such doubts existed in the early
> > 1600s, and many thousands of years before that, the failure was not
> > total. I think we approach that point only now. My points about the
> > time in which Donne was writing were not irrelevant. I was trying to
> > indicate that although Donne et al had things to worry about, there was
> > a great deal in which people still put considerable faith without much
> > question. That is no longer the case for many of those things, and for
> > many new things Donne hadn't even thought of.
>
> This is awfully vague. We were talking about something at
> least a bit more more specific: "the failure of traditional
> means of locating the self." As we agree now, that dates to at
> least the early 1600's, if not before.
I'd see it the other way around. I think we need to get to specifics of
how the world was constructed, how that construction failed, and how it
is failing now, and what 'failure' means.
> DJ:
>
> > <shrug> It's facile to say so, but the crisis he saw wasn't as bad as it
> > appeared to be - or we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the
> > family as he saw it would not still exist. It remained coherent until
> > more like 1850 or so.
>
> My point here is simple. Donne is describing what follows
> on the breakdown of feudal society, namely the modern
> condition.
Precisely. And just as Donne describes the breakdown of Feudal Society,
so I have characterised (albeit far less elegantly) the breakdown of
Modernity and the onset of Postmodernity. There are similarities, but
the projects and redefinitions and explorations of the intervening times
have qualitatively altered the nature of failure and what we have to fall
back on. Nietsche has found the abyss where before it was always assumed
there would be something underneath.
> >> The point remains that such anxiety isn't a new phenomenon.
> >> Not by a long stretch. It's at least four centuries old. I
> >> wouldn't be the least surprised if it appeared before then, e.g.
> >> in late antiquity (as someone suggested) or ancient Greece.
>
> DJ:
>
> > Try Sumeria. That doesn't change things, however.
>
> Sumeria? Sumer? Samaria?
Sumer. Apologies. I recall substance of the quote, but not the correct
name of the place. Wish I could remember who said it to me - you could
blast me out of the water with it...except that I think it helps me,
too...
> > The more we
> > understand, the more we have to doubt. We live in a time where we have
> > repeatedly proved earlier assumptions wrong, and now we are having
> > trouble coming up with any trust to put in new ideas of 'how it all
> > works'.
>
> Just what Donne is describing. Not just Donne. The times
> have been out of joint for some time. (Or several times,
> depending how you look at it. I'm open to both possibilities.)
And we sit at the culminating moment, where the abyss is directly
beneath us, without another layer of disguising myth. End of
Enlightenment Project of finding Truth.
> Moggin:
>
> >> Well, no. Blake was going on about Newton's single vision
> >> two centuries ago. So "that breakdown" pushes us into
> >> Romanticism. (Not that I was there -- you may have a few years
> >> on me.)
>
> DJ:
>
> > Blake had other faiths and certain convictions. He was also notedly
> > eccentric. Actually, that's a rather interesting point -
>
> Interesting it may be -- fascinating, even. Unfortunately
> it's not directly relevant. You claimed that modernity is
> defined in part by its "love affair with the Enlightenment" and
> that that attachment "has broken down only rather recently,"
> producing "late modernity or postmodernity," depending what you
> want to call it.
>
> The problem with that schema is simple -- you've forgotten
> about Romanticism. The breakdown that you're talking about
> begins with Blake and the Romantics, which dates it back to the
> late 18th century. That's not recent, unless you take a
> fairly long view. (It's recent compared to ancient Greece, and
> very recent next to the Pleistocene.)
I haven't forgotten them, I love 'em. They do not, however, represent a
problem for me. Their concerns are not damaging to my case.
> > Blake, Donne,
> > and Nietsche were all viewed, at the time and for some time after, as
> > disfunctional in some way. They were atypical. They may well have been
> > correct, but expressing frictions and problems which were embryonic in
> > their own time, only coming to obvious fruition later. Nietsche, at
> > least, is also one of the thinkers responsible for the situation (well,
> > for discovering and illuminating it).
>
> Blake was an eccentric; but not the Dean of St. Paul's. I
> did some casual checking (_very_ casual) on D's reception,
> indidentally. Sayan is basically right -- his poems circulated
> mostly in private manuscripts while he was alive. But they
> were published just two years after his death, and they quickly
> found an audience. What's more, one of the exceptions was
> precisely the poem I quoted, the First Anniverserie, which went
> to the press in the year I gave for it -- 1611.
I seem to recall that Donne was viewed with some perplexity for being a
poet and Churchman both, especially in the light of the simmering passion
of his work.
[...]
>
> Obviously the ideas they expressed did come to fruition in
> their times (not counting the death of God, which quite
> explicitly doesn't -- but I'm not using Nietzsche as an example
> here): specifically in their work.
True enough - I phrased that poorly. However, I intended a more
societal fruition.
> DJ:
>
> > The interesting thing about my proposition is exactly that: I think
> > that, for the first time, it may just be possible to say that this
> > phenomenon of doubt *is* almost global, whether the society experiencing
> > it is industrial, informational, or agrarian. Delocalisation has struck.
> > The world has never been more a 'whole' from a strictly human point of
> > view.
>
> I tried to suggest before that you might want to
> differentiate. Can you speak about "_this_ phenomenon of doubt"
> (my emphasis) when you're addressing such very different
> settings? That definite article is questionable, since it says
> the phenomenon is basically the same in all cases.
I could examine that for years. I'll bear it in mind.
> Besides, there's no sense in calling a phenomenon of doubt
> in an agrarian society "post-modern" (allowing for the
> exception I made above). An agrarian society is pre-modern, by
> definition. Again, you need to draw more distinctions.
I think there is every reason to do so. No agrarian society today is
totally disconnected from the industrialised societies around the world.
The globe is balkanised, yes, but it is also a unit, with happenings in
one corner having bearing on those in another, even in small. Thus an
agrarian society today may indeed suffer from aspects of postmodernity in
the global, whilst remaining 'pre-modern' itself.
> Moggin:
>
> >> You said that. But you date "postmodernity" to the second
> >> half of the twentieth century, while the feature you say is
> >> unique to it, "the failure of traditional means of locating the
> >> self in the world," goes back at the least to early modern
> >> England, as you can see in Donne. It also belongs to modernity
> >> by definition. So your idea of "postmodernism" lacks both
> >> rhyme and reason.
>
> DJ:
> > The phenomenon I describe is qualitatively different
> > from other, similar periods and ideas of doubt in history.
>
> That's exactly what you haven't been able to establish.
It is what I am still trying to demonstrate. The discussion continues.
You have yet to place an obstacle in my path which I regard as
conclusive.
> I
> thought you were pushing the quantitative argument as a
> replacement: granting that the phenomenon isn't new but saying
> it's never been as common.
Nah, not interested. It's true, I think, but it doesn't do enough. Yes,
the globalisation is important, but not purely for the numbers - for
what it means to have a hotchpotch of societies affected by a global
expression of the angst of one, perhaps.
> To be clear, I'm not saying that you can't distinguish one
> type of doubt from another: I'm just continuing with what I
> said above re "the failure of traditional means of locating the
> self in the world."
And I remain convinced that there is a novelty to the awareness of the
abyss. I shall have to find a more convincing formulation for you.
Dao Jones
Puss in Boots
>>>>>Moreover, his [Donne's] society had not experienced the horror of the
>>>>20th >Century genocides in Hitler's Germany, Lenin and Stalin's Soviet
>>>>>Union, or even the New World. They had never seen the failure of a
>>>>>man-made project of state creation and definition. Perhaps more
>>>>>significantly, Donne may be writing about the collapse of King and God,
>>>>>fbut Kings were still held in airly high esteem around the world, nobles
>>>>>certainly were, and while Cromwell's revolution (?) removed Charles, it
>>>>>wimmediately replaced him ith Cromwell (and reaffirmed God to a quite
>>>>>staggering degree).
mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots):
>>>> Irrelevant. You claimed "the failure of traditional means
>>>> of locating the self" was new to the 20th century ("worthy of
>>>> recognition as a significant new arrival"). Not so -- it dates
>>>> back at least to the early 1600's.
DJ:
>>> No argument.
Moggin:
>> Odd you would say so, since that's what we've been arguing
>> about. (You: "...signficant new arrival." Me: "Except in
>> that it isn't new.") But I'm glad to see that we finally agree.
DJ:
> Oh, dear. I must have been concentrating on the other part of the post.
> First, my arguments about Donne's situation are most certainly *not*
> irrelevant, they are crucial to understanding the tenor of his doubt and
> what it meant to him to question things.
Still irrelevant. My point is that what you identify as a
"significant new arrival" is at least four centuries old.
"Oh, dear" indeed. I'm sorry our agreement disappeared as soon
as you regained your concentration, but there it is.
> Second, whilst I am prepared to
> agree that doubt is not new, and that Donne felt many of his traditional
> means of locating himself were under fire, I do not agree that the
> *failure* of traditional means of the self is not new.
Of course you disagree: by now I've come to expect it.
But your agreement is unnecessary. Donne is writing about what
you called "the failure of traditional means of locating the
self," so obviously it isn't a novelty of the twentieth century,
despite what you say.
> It seems to me
> that as the traditional means were challenged, so they emerged refined.
You'll have that; it still doesn't make the phenomenon new.
> It is only now that we find ourselves in Nietsche's position (as you
> characterise it) of the genealogy leading us to the abyss.
Nietzsche's position is that we're not in Nietzsche's
position. You might also reflect on Walker Percy's observation
that we haven't merely reached the abyss, we've built a
McDonald's there. He might say a Howard Johnsons or a Marriott
-- I forget.
[...]
DJ:
>>> <shrug> It's facile to say so, but the crisis he saw wasn't as bad as it
>>> appeared to be - or we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the
>>> family as he saw it would not still exist. It remained coherent until
>>> more like 1850 or so.
Moggin:
>> My point here is simple. Donne is describing what follows
>> on the breakdown of feudal society, namely the modern
>> condition. So are you. There's not much sense in labelling it
>> "post-modern" (unless you take "post" to to mean "starting
>> with" rather than "coming after"). But once you recognize that,
>> you have some options.
DJ:
> Precisely. And just as Donne describes the breakdown of Feudal Society,
> so I have characterised (albeit far less elegantly) the breakdown of
> Modernity and the onset of Postmodernity.
No, you haven't. You referred explicitly to the breakdown
of tradition ("traditional means of locating the self," e.g.
in relation to the family). That's what's usually described as
"the modern condition." It's senseless to call it
"post-modern" since it's a feature of modernity.(unless you use
"post" to mean "starting with" as distinct from "coming
after").
> There are similarities, but
> the projects and redefinitions and explorations of the intervening times
> have qualitatively altered the nature of failure and what we have to fall
> back on. Nietsche has found the abyss where before it was always assumed
> there would be something underneath.
Not always. But like I said, once you stop using the term
"post-modernism" for modernity, some options open up.
Moggin:
>>>> The point remains that such anxiety isn't a new phenomenon.
>>>> Not by a long stretch. It's at least four centuries old. I
>>>> wouldn't be the least surprised if it appeared before then, e.g.
>>>> in late antiquity (as someone suggested) or ancient Greece.
DJ:
>>> Try Sumeria. That doesn't change things, however.
Moggin:
>> Sumeria? Sumer? Samaria?
DJ:
> Sumer. Apologies. I recall substance of the quote, but not the correct
> name of the place. Wish I could remember who said it to me - you could
> blast me out of the water with it...except that I think it helps me,
> too...
Well, how's it go?
DJ:
>>> The more we
>>> understand, the more we have to doubt. We live in a time where we have
>>> repeatedly proved earlier assumptions wrong, and now we are having
>>> trouble coming up with any trust to put in new ideas of 'how it all
>>> works'.
Moggin:
>> Just what Donne is describing. Not just Donne. The times
>> have been out of joint for some time. (Or several times,
>> depending how you look at it. I'm open to both possibilities.)
DJ:
> And we sit at the culminating moment, where the abyss is directly
> beneath us, without another layer of disguising myth. End of
> Enlightenment Project of finding Truth.
Disguising myth: "We sit at the culminating moment, where
the abyss is directly beneath us, without another layer of
disguising myth." Makes a nice story, tho -- one that's highly
appealing to certain sensibilities, including mine.
Moggin:
>>>> Well, no. Blake was going on about Newton's single vision
>>>> two centuries ago. So "that breakdown" pushes us into
>>>> Romanticism. (Not that I was there -- you may have a few years
>>>> on me.)
DJ:
>>> Blake had other faiths and certain convictions. He was also notedly
>>> eccentric. Actually, that's a rather interesting point -
Moggin:
>> Interesting it may be -- fascinating, even. Unfortunately
>> it's not directly relevant. You claimed that modernity is
>> defined in part by its "love affair with the Enlightenment" and
>> that that attachment "has broken down only rather recently,"
>> producing "late modernity or postmodernity," depending what you
>> want to call it.
>> The problem with that schema is simple -- you've forgotten
>> about Romanticism. The breakdown that you're talking about
>> begins with Blake and the Romantics, which dates it back to the
>> late 18th century. That's not recent, unless you take a
>> fairly long view. (It's recent compared to ancient Greece, and
>> very recent next to the Pleistocene.)
DJ:
> I haven't forgotten them, I love 'em. They do not, however, represent a
> problem for me. Their concerns are not damaging to my case.
They harm your claim that modernity's "love affair with
the Enlightenent" has "broken down only rather recently," since
Romanticism isn't a recent thing (unless you're taking a
fairly long view).
DJ:
>>> Blake, Donne,
>>> and Nietsche were all viewed, at the time and for some time after, as
>>> disfunctional in some way. They were atypical. They may well have been
>>> correct, but expressing frictions and problems which were embryonic in
>>> their own time, only coming to obvious fruition later. Nietsche, at
>>> least, is also one of the thinkers responsible for the situation (well,
>>> for discovering and illuminating it).
Moggin:
>> Blake was an eccentric; but not the Dean of St. Paul's. I
>> did some casual checking (_very_ casual) on D's reception,
>> indidentally. Sayan is basically right -- his poems circulated
>> mostly in private manuscripts while he was alive. But they
>> were published just two years after his death, and they quickly
>> found an audience. What's more, one of the exceptions was
>> precisely the poem I quoted, the First Anniverserie, which went
>> to the press in the year I gave for it -- 1611.
DJ:
> I seem to recall that Donne was viewed with some perplexity for being a
> poet and Churchman both, especially in the light of the simmering passion
> of his work.
People also find Wallace Stevens perplexing: how could an
insurance executive write poetry like _that_? But he's not
considered either eccentric or dysfunctional. And he didn't go
mad. (At least not that anyone could tell.)
Moggin:
>> Obviously the ideas they expressed did come to fruition in
>> their times (not counting the death of God, which quite
>> explicitly doesn't -- but I'm not using Nietzsche as an example
>> here): specifically in their work.
DJ:
> True enough - I phrased that poorly. However, I intended a more
> societal fruition.
Haven't we been down that path before? I'm just trying to
point out that ideas you label "new" or "post-modern" have a
good bit of history behind them -- a thought that dates back at
least four hundred years is not unique to the twentieth
century, for example. That's all -- the sociological arguments
don't much interest me, as I've already said.
DJ:
>>> The interesting thing about my proposition is exactly that: I think
>>> that, for the first time, it may just be possible to say that this
>>> phenomenon of doubt *is* almost global, whether the society experiencing
>>> it is industrial, informational, or agrarian. Delocalisation has struck.
>>> The world has never been more a 'whole' from a strictly human point of
>>> view.
Moggin:
>> I tried to suggest before that you might want to
>> differentiate. Can you speak about "_this_ phenomenon of doubt"
>> (my emphasis) when you're addressing such very different
>> settings? That definite article is questionable, since it says
>> the phenomenon is basically the same in all cases.
DJ:
> I could examine that for years. I'll bear it in mind.
Moggin:
>> Besides, there's no sense in calling a phenomenon of doubt
>> in an agrarian society "post-modern" (allowing for the
>> exception I made above). An agrarian society is pre-modern, by
>> definition. Again, you need to draw more distinctions.
DJ:
> I think there is every reason to do so. No agrarian society today is
> totally disconnected from the industrialised societies around the world.
> The globe is balkanised, yes, but it is also a unit, with happenings in
> one corner having bearing on those in another, even in small. Thus an
> agrarian society today may indeed suffer from aspects of postmodernity in
> the global, whilst remaining 'pre-modern' itself.
Last person who tried that line was Trotsky. And you know
what happened to him.
Moggin:
>>>> You said that. But you date "postmodernity" to the second
>>>> half of the twentieth century, while the feature you say is
>>>> unique to it, "the failure of traditional means of locating the
>>>> self in the world," goes back at the least to early modern
>>>> England, as you can see in Donne. It also belongs to modernity
>>>> by definition. So your idea of "postmodernism" lacks both
>>>> rhyme and reason.
DJ:
>>> The phenomenon I describe is qualitatively different
>>> from other, similar periods and ideas of doubt in history.
Moggin:
>> That's exactly what you haven't been able to establish.
DJ:
> It is what I am still trying to demonstrate. The discussion continues.
> You have yet to place an obstacle in my path which I regard as
> conclusive.
Naturally -- you're in the habit of disregarding obstacles,
including conclusive ones.
Moggin:
>> I thought you were pushing the quantitative argument as a
>> replacement: granting that the phenomenon isn't new but saying
>> it's never been as common.
DJ:
> Nah, not interested.
[...]
Oh, sure you are. "...I intended a more societal fruition."
"'Reach' is significant in this case."
-- Moggin
Dao Jones
mog...@mindspring.com says...
>
> Still irrelevant. My point is that what you identify as a
> "significant new arrival" is at least four centuries old.
> "Oh, dear" indeed. I'm sorry our agreement disappeared as soon
> as you regained your concentration, but there it is.
It is not irrelevant. I'm considering the idea that 'doubt' refers to a
variety of things and moods.
> > Second, whilst I am prepared to
> > agree that doubt is not new, and that Donne felt many of his traditional
> > means of locating himself were under fire, I do not agree that the
> > *failure* of traditional means of the self is not new.
>
> Of course you disagree: by now I've come to expect it.
> But your agreement is unnecessary. Donne is writing about what
> you called "the failure of traditional means of locating the
> self," so obviously it isn't a novelty of the twentieth century,
> despite what you say.
It depends on how you interpret what he says. That being the case, we
don't know.
> > It seems to me
> > that as the traditional means were challenged, so they emerged refined.
>
> You'll have that; it still doesn't make the phenomenon new.
If you want to be ultrastrict, perhaps. I think it indicates a
difference in the experience, though not the word. Since I'm after the
experience, that's ok.
> > It is only now that we find ourselves in Nietsche's position (as you
> > characterise it) of the genealogy leading us to the abyss.
>
> Nietzsche's position is that we're not in Nietzsche's
> position.
Meaning?
> You might also reflect on Walker Percy's observation
> that we haven't merely reached the abyss, we've built a
> McDonald's there. He might say a Howard Johnsons or a Marriott
> -- I forget.
That's perfect for me. MacDonalds is a perfect example of the
delocalising expert system. The ring-binder DNA of MacDonalds is part of
the process of removing basic footholds of identity in the world.
MacDonalds in the Abyss is Coca Cola selling philosophy. Even philosophy
can be bought and sold, even thought is a commodity, and worth and value
can be traded.
> [...]
>
> DJ:
>
> >>> <shrug> It's facile to say so, but the crisis he saw wasn't as bad as it
> >>> appeared to be - or we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the
> >>> family as he saw it would not still exist. It remained coherent until
> >>> more like 1850 or so.
>
> Moggin:
>
> >> My point here is simple. Donne is describing what follows
> >> on the breakdown of feudal society, namely the modern
> >> condition. So are you. There's not much sense in labelling it
> >> "post-modern" (unless you take "post" to to mean "starting
> >> with" rather than "coming after"). But once you recognize that,
> >> you have some options.
>
> DJ:
>
> > Precisely. And just as Donne describes the breakdown of Feudal Society,
> > so I have characterised (albeit far less elegantly) the breakdown of
> > Modernity and the onset of Postmodernity.
>
> No, you haven't. You referred explicitly to the breakdown
> of tradition ("traditional means of locating the self," e.g.
> in relation to the family).
Not only the family. There's a whole host of other things.
> That's what's usually described as
> "the modern condition." It's senseless to call it
> "post-modern" since it's a feature of modernity.(unless you use
> "post" to mean "starting with" as distinct from "coming
> after").
That is described as one of the consequences of Modernity, yes. However,
towards this end, Modernity grows ever more fuzzy. Other defining
characteristics (eg. the attempt to replace traditional 'myth' beliefs
with similar 'scientific' ones, where reason was to provide structures
based on solid, demonstrable facts to fit old prejudgements; the concept
of a realty perhaps accessible behind the veils of misconstruction or
satire; the sovereignty of the Nation State...) are fading. Before
Modernity has been fully realised, it is already falling apart. It's
conceits are under attack. Hence we slip into a grey area of 'late
Modernity' if you're Anthony Giddens, or 'Postmodernity' if you're me. I
don't claim this condition will last, but I do think that it can be
separated from Modernity proper and I think that calling it 'late
Modernity' is just a form of words to avoid a troublesome term.
> > There are similarities, but
> > the projects and redefinitions and explorations of the intervening times
> > have qualitatively altered the nature of failure and what we have to fall
> > back on. Nietsche has found the abyss where before it was always assumed
> > there would be something underneath.
>
> Not always. But like I said, once you stop using the term
> "post-modernism" for modernity, some options open up.
True enough, but I don't think it's accurate. I use postmodernity to
mean 'what comes after Modernity', and I think that's where we are. Now,
if my idea of 'doubt' as central is false, that's another thing, but I'll
hold onto the idea that we're in PM.
> Moggin:
>
> >>>> The point remains that such anxiety isn't a new phenomenon.
> >>>> Not by a long stretch. It's at least four centuries old. I
> >>>> wouldn't be the least surprised if it appeared before then, e.g.
> >>>> in late antiquity (as someone suggested) or ancient Greece.
>
> DJ:
>
> >>> Try Sumeria. That doesn't change things, however.
>
> Moggin:
>
> >> Sumeria? Sumer? Samaria?
>
> DJ:
>
> > Sumer. Apologies. I recall substance of the quote, but not the correct
> > name of the place. Wish I could remember who said it to me - you could
> > blast me out of the water with it...except that I think it helps me,
> > too...
>
> Well, how's it go?
Something along the lines of the Donne quote. It was written on a stone
tablet on the walls of a temple or somesuch. It's a kind of 'end of the
world' thing about children being disrespectful and the streets being
full of pollution and so on. I must be mad to mention it.
They don't, though. The Romantics were a movement, or a counter-
movement. The affair continued. Let's get away from my 'love affair'
metaphor - it's going to go stale on us if I start claiming the
Romantics represent a 'tiff'.
No, but Donne wasn't expressing doubt, he was writing about other
people's apparent inability to behave correctly on things he himself felt
strongly about. So he wouldn't go mad, he'd just be upset.
> Moggin:
>
> >> Obviously the ideas they expressed did come to fruition in
> >> their times (not counting the death of God, which quite
> >> explicitly doesn't -- but I'm not using Nietzsche as an example
> >> here): specifically in their work.
>
> DJ:
>
> > True enough - I phrased that poorly. However, I intended a more
> > societal fruition.
>
> Haven't we been down that path before? I'm just trying to
> point out that ideas you label "new" or "post-modern" have a
> good bit of history behind them -- a thought that dates back at
> least four hundred years is not unique to the twentieth
> century, for example. That's all -- the sociological arguments
> don't much interest me, as I've already said.
I was about to say 'et's not go down this road' but I don't think I can.
I do not see the dichotomy. I think these are integral parts of the
discussion and were actually in large part what I was trying to talk
about with my initial post.
He got ice-picked for being more right than Stalin. That happened to
quite a lot of poeple in the thirties and forties. Somewhere between one
and twenty five million, depending on who you trust. That kind of thing
affects societies.
> Moggin:
>
> >>>> You said that. But you date "postmodernity" to the second
> >>>> half of the twentieth century, while the feature you say is
> >>>> unique to it, "the failure of traditional means of locating the
> >>>> self in the world," goes back at the least to early modern
> >>>> England, as you can see in Donne. It also belongs to modernity
> >>>> by definition. So your idea of "postmodernism" lacks both
> >>>> rhyme and reason.
>
> DJ:
>
> >>> The phenomenon I describe is qualitatively different
> >>> from other, similar periods and ideas of doubt in history.
>
> Moggin:
>
> >> That's exactly what you haven't been able to establish.
>
> DJ:
>
> > It is what I am still trying to demonstrate. The discussion continues.
> > You have yet to place an obstacle in my path which I regard as
> > conclusive.
>
> Naturally -- you're in the habit of disregarding obstacles,
> including conclusive ones.
Don't be catty. I agree you're making a powerful case. I'm just not
read to call it quits yet. I think there's merit in this idea, even if
it does turn out to be over-ambitious.
> Moggin:
>
> >> I thought you were pushing the quantitative argument as a
> >> replacement: granting that the phenomenon isn't new but saying
> >> it's never been as common.
>
> DJ:
>
> > Nah, not interested.
>
> [...]
>
> Oh, sure you are. "...I intended a more societal fruition."
> "'Reach' is significant in this case."
That's not just a question of numbers, it's a question of the qualitative
effect of being part of a large phenomenon. The numbers alone aren't
important. The subjective experience is. Revolution takes place in the
mind.
Dao Jones