Deconstruction: What The....?
Kater Moggin
Sylvia Sydney <syl...@spottsylvania.net>:
> Does it provide the civilian with much bang for hir
> intellectual buck, novelappreciation-wise? Or would I be better off
> reading Northrop Frye and T.S. Eliot?
Here's a simple test which you can use to make up your own
mind: read Shoshona Felman on "The Turning of the Screw"
-- "Turning the Screw of Interpretation" -- and Barbara Johnson
on "Billy Budd" ("Melville's Fist"). That will probably
answer your question with a minimum expenditure of life-capital.
Felman's essay is easy to find, since it's included in the
Norton edition of the story; Johnson's piece is in her book
_The Critical Difference_. Oh, and look at de Man on Proust in
_Allegories of Reading_. That's another good one. By the
time you've read two or three of those, you'll more than likely
know what you think.
-- Moggin
Lewis Mammel
Kater Moggin wrote:
> Here's a simple test which you can use to make up your own
> mind: read Shoshona Felman on "The Turning of the Screw"
> -- "Turning the Screw of Interpretation" -- and Barbara Johnson
> on "Billy Budd" ("Melville's Fist"). That will probably
> answer your question with a minimum expenditure of life-capital.
... if you don't die laughing.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
j del col
Or you could read Tia DeNora's idiotic -Beethoven and the Construction
of Genius--, a "study" of Beethoven's career that ignores his music.
J. Del Col
Kater Moggin
>>> Does it provide the civilian with much bang for hir
>>> intellectual buck, novelappreciation-wise? Or would I be better off
>>> reading Northrop Frye and T.S. Eliot?
Kater Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> Here's a simple test which you can use to make up your own
>> mind: read Shoshona Felman on "The Turning of the Screw"
>> -- "Turning the Screw of Interpretation" -- and Barbara Johnson
>> on "Billy Budd" ("Melville's Fist"). That will probably
>> answer your question with a minimum expenditure of life-capital.
l.ma...@worldnet.att.net (Lew Mammel, Jr):
> ... if you don't die laughing.
Have you read the stuff I mentioned, or are you just doing
a del Col?
-- Moggin
to e-mail, remove the thorn
j del col
Hey, Moggy, try Ms Felman's "Paul de Man's Silence" in --Critical
Inquiry-- 15 (Summer 1989) 704-744.
It's a perfect example of decon "reasoning."
J. Del Col
Kater Moggin
> Hey, Moggy, try Ms Felman's "Paul de Man's Silence" in --Critical
> Inquiry-- 15 (Summer 1989) 704-744. It's a perfect example of decon
> "reasoning."
Some scourge you. You know where the paper is, so go read
the thing.
j del col
You've read it, Moggy?
Do you agree with her suggestion that
Paul de Nazi's collaboration can be equated with
Primo Levi's experience in Auschwitz?
Tell us, Moggy. Tell us how to decon DeMan's past.
I believe your boy Deflatable's apology for DeMan runs along similar
lines, that DeMan was, if anything, more of a victim than the Jews.
C'mon Moggy, give us your version of DeMan's collaboration
and Deriddance's defense of it. Surely you can frame it in your
own terms without relying on jargon or arguments from
authority. Having spent all those hours poring over the
Derridance's Holy Writ, you should be able to employ all that theory
you've assimilated and phrase it in your own words.
J. Del Col
smw
j del col wrote:
>Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com> wrote in message news:<moggin-6E944F....@news.ne.ipsvc.net>...
>
>>del...@ab.edu (j del col):
>>
>>>Hey, Moggy, try Ms Felman's "Paul de Man's Silence" in --Critical
>>>Inquiry-- 15 (Summer 1989) 704-744. It's a perfect example of decon
>>>"reasoning."
>>>
>> Some scourge you. You know where the paper is, so go read
>>the thing.
>>
>>-- Moggin
>>
>>to e-mail, remove the thorn
>>
>
>You've read it, Moggy?
>
You certainly have not, otherwise you wouldn't have written the following:
>Do you agree with her suggestion that
>Paul de Nazi's collaboration can be equated with
>Primo Levi's experience in Auschwitz?
>
If I recall correctly, she cites a remark by Levi where he says that
remaining mute can be one (of many) results of having been a victim. In
other words, she is saying that silence can mean many things.
Just to clarify -- the one article de Man wrote that is blatantly
anti-semitic is a very bad piece of work, despite the confusing
inclusion of Kafka in the list of those writers who assure that Europe
doesn't "need" Jewish writers. And to interpret de Man's silence as a
sign of shame, guilt, or opportunism is entirely plausible.
What is crap -- morally, intellectually -- is to condemn de Man's
later _writings_ on the basis of that article. Even if you want to
condemn the man, on the basis that he should have apologized, made
amends, owned up --- and you yourself are in a position to demand such a
thing, because you and those you respect have always acted in accordance
with the underlying principles of such a deman --, very little follows
regarding his writings on, say, Wordsworth. Nothing, actually. Which is
so simple and so obvious a point that all claims to the contrary come
down to either idiocy or simple fraudulence. Not that the two are
mutually exclusive, as del Col never tires of demonstrating.
s
Michael S. Morris
Saturday, the 30th of March, 2002
Jeff Del Col:
Do you agree with her suggestion that
Paul de Nazi's collaboration can be equated with
Primo Levi's experience in Auschwitz?
Silke:
If I recall correctly, she cites a remark
by Levi where he says that remaining mute can
be one (of many) results of having been a victim.
In other words, she is saying that silence can
mean many things.
Look, I have not read any of the articles in
question (though I have read some Levi), but I
*can* read, and someone citing a remark by Levi
where Levi says that remaining mute can be one
(of many) results of having been a victim *is not
equivalent and does not imply* that "silence
can mean many things". What it says is that silence
could well mean one thing---that one has been a
victim. I.e., to say that in that context *implies*
that maybe de Man was a victim of the Holocaust
just like Levi was. I.e. just what Jeff said
at the point where you upbraided him for not
having read the article.
I mean, at this point the evidence is on the
table, and it doesn't seem like Jeff is the one
with the reading difficulty.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
j del col
> j del col wrote:
>
> >Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com> wrote in message news:<moggin-6E944F....@news.ne.ipsvc.net>...
> >
> >>del...@ab.edu (j del col):
> >>
> >>>Hey, Moggy, try Ms Felman's "Paul de Man's Silence" in --Critical
> >>>Inquiry-- 15 (Summer 1989) 704-744. It's a perfect example of decon
> >>>"reasoning."
> >>>
> >> Some scourge you. You know where the paper is, so go read
> >>the thing.
> >>
> >>-- Moggin
> >>
> >>to e-mail, remove the thorn
> >>
> >
> >You've read it, Moggy?
> >
> You certainly have not, otherwise you wouldn't have written the following:
>
> >Do you agree with her suggestion that
> >Paul de Nazi's collaboration can be equated with
> >Primo Levi's experience in Auschwitz?
> >
> If I recall correctly, she cites a remark by Levi where he says that
> remaining mute can be one (of many) results of having been a victim. In
> other words, she is saying that silence can mean many things.
Yes, yes, Silke many things, many things. Of course she just happened
to pick Levi at random, I suppose? Nothing like quoting a real victim
in an attempt to absolve a bastard. You think there's no attempt
at equivalence on her part? No attempt to borrow Auschwitz
stripes for poor Paul?
DeMan had the sense to shut up about his grimy past, but it wasn't
because he was a victim of anything.
DeMan's past and his "reconstruction" of it is a fine example of the decon
enterprise in action. It's the free play of signs, Silke, the free play of
signs. I believe the Nazis were good at it too. Come to think of it,
I believe some decon panjundrum or other --I can't recall which one;
their muck is so similar after a while-- expressed admiration for Dr.
Goebbels' skill at manipulating the "text" Germany in the third Reich.
J. Del Col
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
So you haven't read the article either and are just as happy to hold
forth on it anyway. So what else is new?
Oh for the days when Fiona would yell as paschal for defaming
Burroughs...
>I mean, at this point the evidence is on the
>table, and it doesn't seem like Jeff is the one
>with the reading difficulty.
>
Funny, I thought the "evidence" would have to be the article you haven't
read. In other words, it's certainly on some table somewhere, but it
ain't yours, and it ain't any table here on r.a.b.
I don't know whether de Man was a victim of the Nazis in some way,
btw. Do you?
s
smw
j del col wrote:
No, dear, the Nazis proceeded like you do. Defamation, rumor, hear-say,
playing to the masses, pushing ignorance, impoverishing the universities.
s
Douglas Clark
Just to say that two very good, but complimentary , biographies
of Primo Levi have just been published here. What is interesting
it that he introduced a note of fiction into his work to improve
his story.
--
Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: d.g.d...@bath.ac.uk
Lynx: Poetry from Bath .......... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
Kater Moggin
> Do you agree with [Felman's] suggestion that
> Paul de Nazi's collaboration can be equated with
> Primo Levi's experience in Auschwitz?
I disagree that she equates de Man's experience with Primo
Levi's. Far as I can see, she never claims Auschwitz and
Brussels were the same thing. (I'm referring to "Paul de Man's
Silence" -- I don't know if Felman's addressed the topic
anywhere else.) She suggests that some of Levi's _remarks_ are
relevant to de Man's case, e.g.:
Popular history, and also the history taught in schools,
are influenced by this Manichaean tendency, which shuns
half-tints and complexities: it is prone to reduce the
river of human occurences to conflicts, and the conflicts
to duels, -- we and they, winners and losers -- ... the
good guys and the bad guys, respectively, because the
good must prevail, otherwise the world would be subverted.
From Levi's _The Drowned and the Saved_. Felman says, "We
blind ourselves to the historical reality of the past by
reducing its obscurity to a paradigm of readability: an easily
intelligible and safely remote paradigm of good and evil:
'Yale Scholar Wrote for Pro-Nazi Newspaper.'" She's connecting
Levi's writing to the issues raised by de Man's life during
the war, not claiming they lived through equivalent experiences.
> I believe your boy Deflatable's apology for DeMan runs along similar
> lines, that DeMan was, if anything, more of a victim than the Jews.
You believe all sortsa crap. So what?
> C'mon Moggy, give us your version of DeMan's collaboration
> and Deriddance's defense of it. Surely you can frame it in your
> own terms without relying on jargon or arguments from
> authority.
Surely I already have, and more than once, in both RAB and
alt.pomo. The most recent example:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=moggin-612BFD.15040920122000%40news.n
e.mediaone.net&output=gplain
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> If I recall correctly, [Felman] cites a remark by Levi where he says that
> remaining mute can be one (of many) results of having been a victim. In
> other words, she is saying that silence can mean many things.
Felman quotes Levi several different times: his objection
to the habit of avoiding "half-tints and complexities" in
history, for example. In the bit you're remembering, Levi says
that "we, the survivors, are not the true witnesses." The
only people who can speak truly, he's decided, are the dead and
the mute.
Felman goes out of her way to note that his experience was
_not_ the same as de Man's: before quoting Levi here, she
explicitly states that he's writing "_from a different position_"
-- my emphasis -- than de Man: the opposite of what del Col
claimed. Either he never read the article, or he needs to work
on his reading skills.
> Just to clarify -- the one article de Man wrote that is blatantly
> anti-semitic is a very bad piece of work, despite the confusing
> inclusion of Kafka in the list of those writers who assure that Europe
> doesn't "need" Jewish writers.
The anti-Semitism is undeniable, but Kakfa is far from the
only strange thing there. Consider the rest of the list de
Man offers: Gide, Lawrence, and Hemingway. Counting Kafka, de
Man favorably cites a Jew, a queer, a pornographer, and an
anti-fascist: those are the writers he holds up for admiration.
> And to interpret de Man's silence as a sign of shame, guilt,
> or opportunism is entirely plausible. What is crap -- morally,
> intellectually -- is to condemn de Man's later _writings_ on the basis
> of that article. Even if you want to condemn the man, on the basis that
> he should have apologized, made amends, owned up --- and you yourself
> are in a position to demand such a thing, because you and those you
> respect have always acted in accordance with the underlying principles
> of such a deman --, very little follows regarding his writings on, say,
> Wordsworth. Nothing, actually.
Agreed.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> You think there's no attempt
> at equivalence on her part? No attempt to borrow Auschwitz
> stripes for poor Paul?
Nope. Felman says Levi and de Man occupied different positions.
de Man could borrow some of Levi's words (like "An apology is in
order"), she argues: _not_ that he somehow shared Levi's experience
in the camps.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> I don't know whether de Man was a victim of the Nazis in some way,
> btw. Do you?
In some small ways. Nothing worth making a fuss about, no
comparison to people in the concentration camps. But since
you asked, he was questioned for a day by the Gestapo about his
membership in a left-leaning student group (de Man was
college-age at the time), and he later was removed from his job
as an editor, apparently because of his help in publishing a
banned journal associated with the French resistance (_Messages:
Cahiers de la poesie francaise_).
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
> Look, I have not read any of the articles in
> question (though I have read some Levi), but I
> *can* read, and someone citing a remark by Levi
> where Levi says that remaining mute can be one
> (of many) results of having been a victim *is not
> equivalent and does not imply* that "silence
> can mean many things".
Felman doesn't cite any remarks by Levi saying silence can
result from victimization. She quotes his assertion in _The
Drowned and the Saved_ that only the dead and the mute are true
witnesses to the Holocaust.
> What it says is that silence
> could well mean one thing---that one has been a
> victim. I.e., to say that in that context *implies*
> that maybe de Man was a victim of the Holocaust
> just like Levi was. I.e. just what Jeff said
> at the point where you upbraided him for not
> having read the article.
The context includes Felman's explicit assertion that Levi
and de Man occupied different positions, i.e., just the
opposite of what Jeff del Col claimed about her article. Which
is par for the course with him.
> I mean, at this point the evidence is on the table
You haven't read "any of the articles in question," so the
evidence isn't on the table for you.
> and it doesn't seem like Jeff is the one
> with the reading difficulty.
Either he reads badly, he hasn't read the article, or he's
practicing the Big Lie.
-- Moggin
smw
Kater Moggin wrote:
I didn't mean that kind of thing, actually -- I know he himself wasn't
persecuted in any serious way, seeing the context. But there are various
other ways of falling victim to the Nazis; I'm not going to elaborate,
because some asshole is sure to claim that I said losing friends to the
Nazis is the same thing as dying in Auschwitz.
s.
>
>
>-- Moggin
>
smw
Kater Moggin wrote:
>"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net>:
>
>>Look, I have not read any of the articles in
>>question (though I have read some Levi), but I
>>*can* read, and someone citing a remark by Levi
>>where Levi says that remaining mute can be one
>>(of many) results of having been a victim *is not
>>equivalent and does not imply* that "silence
>>can mean many things".
>>
>
> Felman doesn't cite any remarks by Levi saying silence can
>result from victimization. She quotes his assertion in _The
>Drowned and the Saved_ that only the dead and the mute are true
>witnesses to the Holocaust.
>
She is talking about those who are dead or have "returned mute" ---
to me, that implies that returning mute is one possible effect of having
been a victim. I agree that she doesn't explicitly say this, but it
seems a reasonable paraphrase to me, in the context of the question of
what it means to be silent.
Agreed that she doesn't say that therefore de Man's silence is the
same as the silence of those who have returned mute. That's a fantasy of
the aggressive non-reader.
s
Kater Moggin
> She is talking about those who are dead or have "returned mute" ---
> to me, that implies that returning mute is one possible effect of having
> been a victim. I agree that she doesn't explicitly say this, but it
> seems a reasonable paraphrase to me, in the context of the question of
> what it means to be silent.
Sure, no problem. I think the implication is indisputable.
-- Moggin
Kater Moggin
>>> Does it provide the civilian with much bang for hir
>>> intellectual buck, novelappreciation-wise? Or would I be better off
>>> reading Northrop Frye and T.S. Eliot?
Kater Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> Here's a simple test which you can use to make up your own
>> mind: read Shoshona Felman on "The Turning of the Screw"
>> -- "Turning the Screw of Interpretation" -- and Barbara Johnson
>> on "Billy Budd" ("Melville's Fist"). That will probably
>> answer your question with a minimum expenditure of life-capital.
l.ma...@worldnet.att.net (Lew Mammel, Jr):
> ... if you don't die laughing.
Have you read the stuff I mentioned, or are you just doing
a del Col?
-- Moggin
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 1st of April, 2002
Jeff Del Col:
Do you agree with her suggestion that
Paul de Nazi's collaboration can be equated with
Primo Levi's experience in Auschwitz?
Silke:
If I recall correctly, she cites a remark
by Levi where he says that remaining mute can
be one (of many) results of having been a victim.
In other words, she is saying that silence can
mean many things.
I said:
Look, I have not read any of the articles in
question (though I have read some Levi), but I
*can* read, and someone citing a remark by Levi
where Levi says that remaining mute can be one
(of many) results of having been a victim *is not
equivalent and does not imply* that "silence
can mean many things". What it says is that silence
could well mean one thing---that one has been a
victim. I.e., to say that in that context *implies*
that maybe de Man was a victim of the Holocaust
just like Levi was. I.e. just what Jeff said
at the point where you upbraided him for not
having read the article.
Silke:
So you haven't read the article either and are just as happy to hold
forth on it anyway. So what else is new?
Oh, fer chrissake, how illogical and irrational a mind must
you display for public consumption? It is fucking irrelevant what
the article said, for *anything* I have said above. It is irrelevant.
Let me rephrase that: It is irrelevant.
I spoke about what *you* said. *You* are the one who
prefaced the above exchange with the following:
"You certainly have not, otherwise you wouldn't have
written the following:"
I.e., *you* are the one who accused Jeff of getting Felman wrong.
And *you* are the one, on the basis of your memory of Felman
who indicates that Jeff was right. And *you* are the one who twists
your own memory of Felman into a conclusion that is *the opposite*
of what your stated memory would indicate.
Again, what Felman's article *actually* said is
absolutely, positively, fucking irrelevant to the fact
that *you* play the utter sophist self-contained
in two sentences, which, let us recall were:
"If I recall correctly, she cites a remark
by Levi where he says that remaining mute can
be one (of many) results of having been a victim.
In other words, she is saying that silence can
mean many things."
I could not care less than I do about whether Paul de Man
was a Nazi collaborator or not. I'm sure someone can post a
final score when it is all argued and done. But, accusing Jeff
of not reading what he claimed to read, turning right around
and giving *your* memory of the article, which perfectly
supports Jeff's sarcasm, and then, in a sentence twisting *your*
memory of the article into a *meaning* opposite of what it plainly
means is just like your attempt to twist Andrew Sullivan's article
on Demo's playing the race card in Florida to mean the opposite of
what Sullivan said---you simply can't be trusted to read things and
come out of it with any but the most distorted of meanings..
Silke:
Oh for the days when Fiona would yell as paschal for defaming
Burroughs...
Oh for the days, yeah, great.
I said:
I mean, at this point the evidence is on the
table, and it doesn't seem like Jeff is the one
with the reading difficulty.
Silke:
Funny, I thought the "evidence" would have to be
the article you haven't read.
Funny, I thought you were more intelligent than that.
The article is absolutely irrelevant. The *premise*
for my insertion into this thread was *your* assertion
that "she cites a remark by Levi where he says that
remaining mute can be one (of many) results of having
been a victim." Maybe she did cite such a remark,
maybe she didn't. I don't care. But, granting *your*
memory that she did cite such a remark, the question
is whether you can legitimately say
"In other words, she is saying that silence can
mean many things."
You can't. It doesn't follow from what you said she said.
Maybe she explicitly says somewhere in the article "Silence
can mean many things." Who cares? That *isn't* relevant to
going from "remaining mute can be one (of many) results of
having been a victim" to "silence can mean many things".
"been victim"="many possible responses including silence"
is not the same as
"silence"="response to many possible things"
But "been victim"="many possible responses including
silence" *does* justify Jeff's sarcasm (assuming your memory is
correct, which I wasn't even interested in checking).
Silke:
In other words, it's certainly
on some table somewhere, but it ain't
yours, and it ain't any table here on r.a.b.
Look, I glance at the thread and happen to read your post.
There an obvious howler in your post. I merely pointed out
the howler---precisely at the point where you are accusing Jeff
of not reading, you are transparently misreading, and providing
evidence (weak evidence---obviously in dealing with your reports of
things you have read, one should always check the original article)
that Jeff *had* read the article.
Silke:
I don't know whether de Man was a victim of the
Nazis in some way, btw. Do you?
I don't care. It is irrelevant.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
Sorry, no. What the article says is relevant to determining whether del
Col misrepresented the article.
>I spoke about what *you* said. *You* are the one who
>prefaced the above exchange with the following:
> "You certainly have not, otherwise you wouldn't have
> written the following:"
>I.e., *you* are the one who accused Jeff of getting Felman wrong.
>And *you* are the one, on the basis of your memory of Felman
>who indicates that Jeff was right.
>
Nope. Jeff claimed that Felman analogized de Man's past with Levi's
past. I corrected him by saying that she cites Levi on silence. She
doesn't say Levi's silence is the same silence as de Man's silence.
>And *you* are the one who twists
>your own memory of Felman into a conclusion that is *the opposite*
>of what your stated memory would indicate.
>
Your hermeneutic limitations are your own affair; perhaps there's
someone to blame for them, but it ain't me.
I'm just intelligent enough to suggest that in order to make honest
claims about Felman's article, one ought to have read it.
>
>The article is absolutely irrelevant. The *premise*
>for my insertion into this thread was *your* assertion
>that "she cites a remark by Levi where he says that
>remaining mute can be one (of many) results of having
>been a victim." Maybe she did cite such a remark,
>maybe she didn't. I don't care. But, granting *your*
>memory that she did cite such a remark, the question
>is whether you can legitimately say
> "In other words, she is saying that silence can
> mean many things."
>You can't. It doesn't follow from what you said she said.
>Maybe she explicitly says somewhere in the article "Silence
>can mean many things." Who cares? That *isn't* relevant to
>going from "remaining mute can be one (of many) results of
>having been a victim" to "silence can mean many things".
>
>"been victim"="many possible responses including silence"
>is not the same as
>"silence"="response to many possible things"
>
You can't be as much of a moron as that, really. Surely, neither Felman
nor I would have to tell you that silence can also be the result of
other experiences. The fact, for instance, that silence can be a result
of shame, guilt, or opportunism is simply a given.
>But "been victim"="many possible responses including
>silence" *does* justify Jeff's sarcasm (assuming your memory is
>correct, which I wasn't even interested in checking).
>
>Silke:
> In other words, it's certainly
> on some table somewhere, but it ain't
> yours, and it ain't any table here on r.a.b.
>
>Look, I glance at the thread and happen to read your post.
>There an obvious howler in your post. I merely pointed out
>the howler---precisely at the point where you are accusing Jeff
>of not reading, you are transparently misreading, and providing
>evidence (weak evidence---obviously in dealing with your reports of
>things you have read, one should always check the original article)
>that Jeff *had* read the article.
>
Morris, you've always been an ass, but you haven't always been such a
stupid ass.
s
Michael S. Morris
I said:
Oh, fer chrissake, how illogical and irrational a mind must
you display for public consumption? It is fucking irrelevant what
the article said, for *anything* I have said above. It is irrelevant.
Let me rephrase that: It is irrelevant.
Silke:
Sorry, no. What the article says is relevant to determining whether del
Col misrepresented the article.
Sorry, no. *You* called del Col on the basis of what you *remembered*
the article said. Then you misrepresented the meaning of that. That is
that is needed to catch you in misrepresenting a meaning, and basing
your accusation that Jeff hadn't actually read the thing on your very
misrepresentation. The actual article is irrelevant. It could be about
the composition of moon rocks, for all I care. Jeff may well have totally
misrepresented it. But, *your* obfuscation is manifest.
I said:
I spoke about what *you* said. *You* are the one who
prefaced the above exchange with the following:
"You certainly have not, otherwise you wouldn't have
written the following:"
I.e., *you* are the one who accused Jeff of getting Felman wrong.
And *you* are the one, on the basis of your memory of Felman
who indicates that Jeff was right.
Silke:
Nope. Jeff claimed that Felman analogized de Man's past with Levi's
past. I corrected him by saying that she cites Levi on silence.
You did not correct him at all. You accused him of not reading something
he claims to have read, and probably did. You didn't say "I disagree with
your reading of Felman for this and this reasons of text," but you employed
SSOP (Standard Silke Operating Procedure) to accuse him of lying about
having read Felman. And your claim that she cites Levi on silence only
proves to bolster del Col's contention that she *was* likening de Man
to Levi.
Silke:
She doesn't say Levi's silence is the same silence as de Man's silence.
What you said that she says means that she implies it.
I said:
And *you* are the one who twists
your own memory of Felman into a conclusion that is *the opposite*
of what your stated memory would indicate.
Silke:
Your hermeneutic limitations are your own affair;
perhaps there's someone to blame for them, but it ain't me.
My powers of reading are champion compared to what you
display hereon. My general agreement with you about
Brecht's _Life of Galileo_ v. Lew frightens me in fact.
I said:
Again, what Felman's article *actually* said is
absolutely, positively, fucking irrelevant to the fact
that *you* play the utter sophist self-contained
in two sentences, which, let us recall were:
"If I recall correctly, she cites a remark
by Levi where he says that remaining mute can
be one (of many) results of having been a victim.
In other words, she is saying that silence can
mean many things."
I could not care less than I do about whether Paul de Man
was a Nazi collaborator or not. I'm sure someone can post a
final score when it is all argued and done. But, accusing Jeff
of not reading what he claimed to read, turning right around
and giving *your* memory of the article, which perfectly
supports Jeff's sarcasm, and then, in a sentence twisting *your*
memory of the article into a *meaning* opposite of what it plainly
means is just like your attempt to twist Andrew Sullivan's article
on Demo's playing the race card in Florida to mean the opposite of
what Sullivan said---you simply can't be trusted to read things and
come out of it with any but the most distorted of meanings.
[...]
I said:
I mean, at this point the evidence is on the
table, and it doesn't seem like Jeff is the one
with the reading difficulty.
Silke:
Funny, I thought the "evidence" would have to be
the article you haven't read.
I said:
Funny, I thought you were more intelligent than that.
Silke:
I'm just intelligent enough to suggest that in order
to make honest claims about Felman's article, one
ought to have read it.
Honest claims? How dare you? You are the one who
accuses someone of not having read where he claims to
have and merely on the basis of disagreement with your take,
which upon examination appears to be baseless.
I said:
The article is absolutely irrelevant. The *premise*
for my insertion into this thread was *your* assertion
that "she cites a remark by Levi where he says that
remaining mute can be one (of many) results of having
been a victim." Maybe she did cite such a remark,
maybe she didn't. I don't care. But, granting *your*
memory that she did cite such a remark, the question
is whether you can legitimately say
"In other words, she is saying that silence can
mean many things."
You can't. It doesn't follow from what you said she said.
Maybe she explicitly says somewhere in the article "Silence
can mean many things." Who cares? That *isn't* relevant to
going from "remaining mute can be one (of many) results of
having been a victim" to "silence can mean many things".
"been victim"="many possible responses including silence"
is not the same as
"silence"="response to many possible things"
Silke:
You can't be as much of a moron as that, really. Surely, neither Felman
nor I would have to tell you that silence can also be the result of
other experiences.
Then, why would you claim that "in other words", Felman was
telling me this?
Silke:
The fact, for instance, that silence can be a result
of shame, guilt, or opportunism is simply a given.
Then it *was not* what Felman was saying by saying
that "remaining mute can be one (of many) results of
having been a victim", if that is what she said.
I said:
But "been victim"="many possible responses including
silence" *does* justify Jeff's sarcasm (assuming your memory is
correct, which I wasn't even interested in checking).
Silke:
In other words, it's certainly
on some table somewhere, but it ain't
yours, and it ain't any table here on r.a.b.
I said:
Look, I glance at the thread and happen to read your post.
There an obvious howler in your post. I merely pointed out
the howler---precisely at the point where you are accusing Jeff
of not reading, you are transparently misreading, and providing
evidence (weak evidence---obviously in dealing with your reports of
things you have read, one should always check the original article)
that Jeff *had* read the article.
Silke:
Morris, you've always been an ass, but you haven't always been such a
stupid ass.
Tell it to the marines, Silke.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
No, I didn't. I stated that Felman quotes Levi in the context of a
discussion of the meaning of silence, and that as far as I remember this
passage serves to show that silence can mean many things. If you want to
establish that this is a misrepresentation of Felman, you'd have to read
the text. You can hardly claim that I misinterpret my own reading unless
you want to change your politics of reading from the ground up. The fact
that Lehmann, del Col, and you are incapable of understanding a simple
point doesn't really speak against either Felman (as del Col wants it
to) or mine (as you want it to).
>That is
>that is needed to catch you in misrepresenting a meaning,
>
To repeat -- how could you _possibly_ talk of misrepresenting if you
don't know what is being represented in the first place? Doesn't the
idiocy of this jump into your face?
> and basing
>your accusation that Jeff hadn't actually read the thing on your very
>misrepresentation. The actual article is irrelevant. It could be about
>the composition of moon rocks, for all I care. Jeff may well have totally
>misrepresented it. But, *your* obfuscation is manifest.
>
Well, no, it's a figment of your imagination, both fevered and impoverished.
>I said:
> I spoke about what *you* said. *You* are the one who
> prefaced the above exchange with the following:
> "You certainly have not, otherwise you wouldn't have
> written the following:"
> I.e., *you* are the one who accused Jeff of getting Felman wrong.
> And *you* are the one, on the basis of your memory of Felman
> who indicates that Jeff was right.
>Silke:
> Nope. Jeff claimed that Felman analogized de Man's past with Levi's
> past. I corrected him by saying that she cites Levi on silence.
>
>You did not correct him at all. You accused him of not reading something
>he claims to have read, and probably did.
>
Actually, mendacious as del Col is he isn't mendacious enough to claim
he's read the article. Which proves once again what a lousy reader you are.
>You didn't say "I disagree with
>your reading of Felman for this and this reasons of text," but you employed
>SSOP (Standard Silke Operating Procedure) to accuse him of lying about
>having read Felman.
>
See above. I accuse him of intellectual dishonesty. My guess is he found
the misreading in Lehmann and is parroting it.
>And your claim that she cites Levi on silence only
>proves to bolster del Col's contention that she *was* likening de Man
>to Levi.
>
How the fuck does that follow? Can't you see that you're simply
repeating a mendacious gesture? How the fuck does the fact that Felman
is writing about silence imply that she says silences are alike? Her
point is exactly the opposite -- hence my paraphrase that "silence can
mean many things." It can mean the things de Man was habitually and
gleefully accused of (guilt, shame, opportunism, etc.), it can also mean
other things.
>Silke:
> She doesn't say Levi's silence is the same silence as de Man's silence.
>
>What you said that she says means that she implies it.
>
Nope. Not even close. You know, if you had any idea of what you're
talking about, you wouldn't commit such idiotic blunders. But like del
Col, you think it's okay to hold forth on things you know crap about. My
remarks come out of a context -- if you knew it, you wouldn't have
misread them so blatantly. Now, if you were the kind of guy who had any
respect for what it means to display intellectual integrity (or even
intellectual curiosity, for that matter), you would ask for
clarification. If you were interested in the truth, you'd read the
article. Things being what they are, you just blather on, not just
ignorant, but happily and proudly ignorant.
>
>Silke:
> I'm just intelligent enough to suggest that in order
> to make honest claims about Felman's article, one
> ought to have read it.
>
>Honest claims? How dare you?
>
By dint of writing about texts I've read.
>You are the one who
>accuses someone of not having read where he claims to
>have
>
see above
>and merely on the basis of disagreement with your take,
>which upon examination appears to be baseless.
>
no, on the basis of del Col's pattern of displaying his utter ignorance
of the texts he comments on, e.g. his constant confusion of Derrida and
Foucault and Fish (or moronic but vaguely recognizeable reductions of
their positions), or of deconstruction and reader response theory, and
any other number of historically loosely related but intellectually
clearly differentiated positions. No doubt, to you these things are all
one big miasma of things you don't care about, and that's actually fine,
but its execrable behavior for a humanities professor.
s
s
j...@radidelmex.net
baseball books (stat and otherwise). It's time somebody wrote a
deconstructionist baseball book to liven up the selection!
G*rd*n
| > Do you agree with [Felman's] suggestion that
| > Paul de Nazi's collaboration can be equated with
| > Primo Levi's experience in Auschwitz?
Kater Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
| I disagree that she equates de Man's experience with Primo
| Levi's. Far as I can see, she never claims Auschwitz and
| Brussels were the same thing. (I'm referring to "Paul de Man's
| Silence" -- I don't know if Felman's addressed the topic
| anywhere else.) She suggests that some of Levi's _remarks_ are
| relevant to de Man's case, e.g.:
|
| Popular history, and also the history taught in schools,
| are influenced by this Manichaean tendency, which shuns
| half-tints and complexities: it is prone to reduce the
| river of human occurences to conflicts, and the conflicts
| to duels, -- we and they, winners and losers -- ... the
| good guys and the bad guys, respectively, because the
| good must prevail, otherwise the world would be subverted.
|
| From Levi's _The Drowned and the Saved_. Felman says, "We
| blind ourselves to the historical reality of the past by
| reducing its obscurity to a paradigm of readability: an easily
| intelligible and safely remote paradigm of good and evil:
| 'Yale Scholar Wrote for Pro-Nazi Newspaper.'" She's connecting
| Levi's writing to the issues raised by de Man's life during
| the war, not claiming they lived through equivalent experiences.
| ...
But the Manicheaean procedure makes history _usable_.
History has to be reduced in order to be used, and the
question is how to reduce it. j del col wants to make
out de Man to be a Nazi, for instance, which is no doubt
useful to him in some way. We are inevitably "blind to
the historical reality of the past" because we _cannot_
_take_it_in_. We can at most scratch at it, like cats
who industriously work over the leg of the couch before
jumping up on it to take a nap.
Personally, I think De Man's "Naziism" is not very
interesting, unlike Heidegger's, a couch out of which
I think a lot more stuffing could be pulled.
--
(<><>) /*/
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 11/22/01 <-adv't
Kater Moggin
> ... The Manicheaean procedure makes history _usable_.
> History has to be reduced in order to be used, and the
> question is how to reduce it. j del col wants to make
> out de Man to be a Nazi, for instance, which is no doubt
> useful to him in some way.
Doubtless so. But he'll have to do without, since there's
no evidence that de Man was ever a Nazi. You already knew
that, but I'll sketch in the basics for anyone who hasn't heard
them before.
During the Occupation de Man wrote for a German-controlled
newspaper called _Le Soir_. One of the articles he
contributed -- "The Jews in Contemporary Literature" --includes
some clearly anti-Semitic assertions: he claims that Jewish
writers are second-rate, and he concludes that if the Jews
were exiled, the consequences to European culture would be very
small.
There's more to the story, tho. A Resistance member named
Edouard Colinet says de Man wrote the essay under duress.
"All witnesses agree he did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his
livelihood." (Colinet in _Responses: On Paul de Man's
Wartime Journalism_ 430.) Colinet, who knew de Man even before
the war, also says he never displayed any anti-Semitism:
"nobody had ever noticed" any "hostile feelings versus the Jews."
Charles Dosogne also contends de Man couldn't be suspected
of anti-Semitism. _Responses_ 435: "I can affirm that
never, neither before nor during the war, did either the
words or the attitudes of Paul de Man permit one to suspect him
of anti-semitic opinions."
Georges Goriely, another Resistance member, states that de
Man "had no ideological sympathies with the _Ordre nouveau_."
What's more, "He knew about my life and my clandestine
activities, and I never had any hesitations about expressing my
views to him, which in addition he never contested."
A few more pieces of testimony. Esther Sluszny says in so
many words, "I can guarantee you that [de Man] was not an
anti-Semite." Who's Esther Sluszny and how would she know, one
way or the other? She's a Jew who found herself trapped on
the streets after curfew, along with her husband Nahum. de Man
sheltered them in his apartment (436).
Goriely also says de Man used his links with the
publishing company _Editions de la Toison d'Or_ to find work as
translators for people who were barred by law from holding a
job, including both Goriely himself and a woman named Hilda
Rosner. Rosner confirms Goriely's report, and adds that de Man
knew she was Jewish (436).
In addition, de Man seems to have used his position at the
publishing company to help print a banned journal --
_Messages: Cahiers de la poésie française_ -- which was linked
with the French resistance.
The article itself has some strange features -- especially
strange for anti-Semitic propaganda. Instead of beginning
with an attack on the Jews, it starts by criticizing
anti-Semitism. Granted, de Man aims his criticism specifically
at "vulgar anti-Semitism," which would leave room to praise
some supposedly more refined variety. But instead he goes into
a discussion of modernism in literature, which he tries to
defend from the critics who would condemn it as "degenerate and
decadent." That puts de Man directly at odds with the Nazi
line. His exemplars are Kafka, Gide, Lawrence, and
Hemingway; that is, a Jew, a queer, a pornographer, and an anti-
fascist, as I mentioned last time around.
> We are inevitably "blind to
> the historical reality of the past" because we _cannot_
> _take_it_in_. We can at most scratch at it, like cats
> who industriously work over the leg of the couch before
> jumping up on it to take a nap.
> Personally, I think De Man's "Naziism" is not very
> interesting, unlike Heidegger's, a couch out of which
> I think a lot more stuffing could be pulled.
de Man's Naziism doesn't seem to exist, although there are
some folks who'd like to conjure it up.
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 17th of April, 2002
Kater Moggin wrote:
de Man's Naziism doesn't seem to exist, although there are
some folks who'd like to conjure it up.
His moral relativism, however, does seem to exist,
exactly where some folks say it might be.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
G*rd*n
| de Man's Naziism doesn't seem to exist, although there are
| some folks who'd like to conjure it up.
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net>:
| His moral relativism, however, does seem to exist,
| exactly where some folks say it might be.
The demon with which moral absolutism struggles is not moral
relativism but its own poor performance based on its own
standards, an example in this case being the characterization
of De Man as a Nazi.
j del col
> g...@panix.com (G*rd*n):
>
> > ... The Manicheaean procedure makes history _usable_.
> > History has to be reduced in order to be used, and the
> > question is how to reduce it. j del col wants to make
> > out de Man to be a Nazi, for instance, which is no doubt
> > useful to him in some way.
>
> Doubtless so. But he'll have to do without, since there's
> no evidence that de Man was ever a Nazi. You already knew
> that, but I'll sketch in the basics for anyone who hasn't heard
> them before.
>
> During the Occupation de Man wrote for a German-controlled
> newspaper called _Le Soir_.
Yes, 170 articles for a publication that was enthusiastically
pro-nazi. Despite his later lie that his articles were literary,
many of them were thinly disguised political commentaries that
praised "hitlerism." At the moment of Belgium's gravest
moral crisis, DeMan sided with its enemies.
Of course there is the question of why he wrote for a
German-controlled,
(avidly pro-german is more like it) publication in the first place.
Was he deluded enough to think that there would be anything like free
expression under Nazi control? Was he just an apolitical literary
figure? That's the lie he promoted. He claimed to have left Le Soir
because he thought the Germans would -no longer- allow "freedom of
statement."
The very idea that there ever was any freedom of statement under
German
control is absurd. DeMan knew very well who he was working for.
He left Le Soir for one reason; the Belgian Resistance had marked Le
Soir's
writers for death.
They knew what DeMan was, a fascist and a German collaborator.
After the liberation of Belgium the journal Debout summed up DeMan's
departure from Le Soir:
"After a while, he senses that things are taking a bad turn and he
beats a very prudent retreat. His name no longer appears in the
columns
of the self-proclaimed Le Soir. The poor little carcass of this
little man,
blond, frail, with his lock of hair a la Hitler, deserts the Place
de Louvain. "
One of the articles he
> contributed -- "The Jews in Contemporary Literature" --includes
> some clearly anti-Semitic assertions: he claims that Jewish
> writers are second-rate, and he concludes that if the Jews
> were exiled, the consequences to European culture would be very
> small.
>
> There's more to the story, tho. A Resistance member named
> Edouard Colinet says de Man wrote the essay under duress.
> "All witnesses agree he did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his
> livelihood." (Colinet in _Responses: On Paul de Man's
> Wartime Journalism_ 430.)
So he was simply a craven opportunist, eh? He continued to write for
-Le Soir- until December 1942.
> de Man's Naziism doesn't seem to exist,...
Only in the imaginations of his acolytes.
J. Del Col
G*rd*n
| > > ... The Manicheaean procedure makes history _usable_.
| > > History has to be reduced in order to be used, and the
| > > question is how to reduce it. j del col wants to make
| > > out de Man to be a Nazi, for instance, which is no doubt
| > > useful to him in some way.
Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com>:
| > Doubtless so. But he'll have to do without, since there's
| > no evidence that de Man was ever a Nazi. You already knew
| > that, but I'll sketch in the basics for anyone who hasn't heard
| > them before.
| >
| > During the Occupation de Man wrote for a German-controlled
| > newspaper called _Le Soir_.
del...@ab.edu (j del col):
| Yes, 170 articles for a publication that was enthusiastically
| pro-nazi. Despite his later lie that his articles were literary,
| many of them were thinly disguised political commentaries that
| praised "hitlerism." At the moment of Belgium's gravest
| moral crisis, DeMan sided with its enemies.
| [... etc. .... ]
Yes, but having constructed it, of what use is de Man's vague,
craven, apologetic, questionable Naziism to you? If you
want Nazis, why don't you find yourself a forthright Nazi?
Ned Ludd
news:4dc68fdd.02041...@posting.google.com...
>
> Yes, 170 articles for a publication that was enthusiastically
> pro-nazi. Despite his later lie that his articles were literary,
> many of them were thinly disguised political commentaries that
> praised "hitlerism." At the moment of Belgium's gravest
> moral crisis, DeMan sided with its enemies.
>
Simply post the most egregious, anti-semitic, or pro-nazi
thing he every wrote for that magazine.
The fact that you DON'T do this, as this thread goes on,
indicates that you have no position to stand on, other than
repeating that he worked for the magazine until 1942, or
repeating other people's slanders against him.
Ned
j del col
> g...@panix.com (G*rd*n):
> | > > ... The Manicheaean procedure makes history _usable_.
> | > > History has to be reduced in order to be used, and the
> | > > question is how to reduce it. j del col wants to make
> | > > out de Man to be a Nazi, for instance, which is no doubt
> | > > useful to him in some way.
>
> Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com>:
> | > Doubtless so. But he'll have to do without, since there's
> | > no evidence that de Man was ever a Nazi. You already knew
> | > that, but I'll sketch in the basics for anyone who hasn't heard
> | > them before.
> | >
> | > During the Occupation de Man wrote for a German-controlled
> | > newspaper called _Le Soir_.
>
> del...@ab.edu (j del col):
> | Yes, 170 articles for a publication that was enthusiastically
> | pro-nazi. Despite his later lie that his articles were literary,
> | many of them were thinly disguised political commentaries that
> | praised "hitlerism." At the moment of Belgium's gravest
> | moral crisis, DeMan sided with its enemies.
> | [... etc. .... ]
>
> Yes, but having constructed it,
Bullshit. DeMan's fascism and collaboration were no one's work
but his own. If his toadies wish to excuse the fact that their
leading light's visage appeared in the Belgian Resistance's
Traitors' Gallery in 1943, the
construction, or more correctly, dishonesty, is theirs.
of what use is de Man's vague,
> craven, apologetic, questionable Naziism to you? If you
> want Nazis, why don't you find yourself a forthright Nazi?
The problem isn't with DeMan. It is with his apologists who wish to
treat
his grimy past, or any history for that matter, as just another excuse
for linguistic legerdemain or legerdeman in this case.
Derrida's suggested that DeMan was as much of a victim
as those who were murdered by the Nazis. Only a fool or a liar
would think so. The public disclosures of DeMan's collaboration
occurred only after his death, so he suffered nothing. If Derrida
thinks
DeMan suffered any spiritual torment while writing for Le Soir and the
virulently, anti-semitic - Het Vlaamsche Land-, he has no basis for
this assertion other than his own deconstructive chicanery.
DeMan's career during and after WWII was that of deceitful
opportunist.
As for the forthright Nazi in deconstruction's heritage, that role
belongs to Martin Heidegger, who joined the Nazi party in 1933
and never expressed a word of remorse about his membership or the
Nazis' activities. He seems to have hoped that the Nazis would
elevate
him to be the party's official philosopher, an ambition that only
shows how pathetically out of touch with reality he was. They had the
Fuhrer-- they didn't need somebody whose
work they described as:
"characterized by the same obsession with hairsplitting
distinctions as Talmudic thought. That is why it holds such an
extraordinary fascination for Jews, persons of Jewish
ancestry and others with a similar mental make-up."
J. Del Col
G*rd*n
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n):
|> ... of what use is de Man's vague,
|> craven, apologetic, questionable Naziism to you? If you
|> want Nazis, why don't you find yourself a forthright Nazi?
del...@ab.edu (j del col):
| The problem isn't with DeMan. It is with his apologists who wish to
| treat
| his grimy past, or any history for that matter, as just another excuse
| for linguistic legerdemain or legerdeman in this case.
| ...
| As for the forthright Nazi in deconstruction's heritage, that role
| belongs to Martin Heidegger, who joined the Nazi party in 1933
| and never expressed a word of remorse about his membership or the
| Nazis' activities. ...
So you're just using de Man to annoy people? I'm trying to
figure out what your point is. One would think if you were
concerned about Naziism influencing deconstruction and thus
destroying Western Civilization or whatever, you'd be attending
to Heidegger instead of de Man. And I don't mean proving that
he was a Nazi -- everyone knows that. Too big of a cheese?
smw
G*rd*n wrote:
He might have to read either Heidegger or deconstructionists. The whole
point of his de Man blather is to avoid doing precisely that. It's a
common phenomenon amongst academics of a certain age and/or a certain
type of career. I'm rather reluctant to immerse myself in today's
preferred theories and texts (as a colleague of mine said, "Silky,
you're so EIGHTIES!"). The temptation to legitimize ignorance by
declaring them either stupid or obscure or old-hat or, best of all,
totalitarian is considerable, and there's always some neo-con riding his
ressentiment who'll back you up.
s
Lee Rudolph
> The problem isn't with DeMan. It is with his apologists who wish to
> treat
> his grimy past, or any history for that matter, as just another excuse
> for linguistic legerdemain or legerdeman in this case.
Legerdemain, legerhier, but never any legeraujourd'hui.
Lee Rudolph
Kater Moggin
> [de Man] claimed to have left Le Soir
> because he thought the Germans would -no longer- allow "freedom of
> statement." The very idea that there ever was any freedom of
> statement under German control is absurd.
Charles Dosogne (in _Responses_ 434-5): "Beginning at the
end of September 1940, preliminary censorship by the
_Propaganda Abteilung_ was limited to important political
articles. Literary columns were thus exempted from this, at
least until August 1942 -- date at which censorship was
reestablished. It was about this time that Paul de Man's
activities as a journalist ceased." His final article appeared
in November, 1942. Also:
It would be wrong to conclude...that henceforth _Le
Soir_ could be seen as a mouthpiece for the official Nazi
doctrine. For one thing, this 'official Nazi doctrine'
was not by any means as solid and universally accepted by
all German officials as we have been led to believe:
quarrels between the two authorities under which the PA
[_Propaganda Abteilung_] resorted, to wit, General
Reeder of the_ Militärverwaltung_ in Brusells and the
Third Reich's Minister of Information and Propaganda,
Dr. Goebbels, as well as intrigues between the PA and the
German Embassy's press agency -- to name only a few of
the conflicting parties -- made it very difficult to
maintain a truly official policy. In addition to this,
and arguably more importantly, there was always a
significant margin of recalcitrance to a number of German
decrees among the journal's editors and contributors to
be reckoned with. [...] Thus, not withstanding the fact
that the PA was theoretically supposed to be capable of
making certain that _Le Soir_ fulfilled its function in
the German propaganda scheme, the physical impossibility
of a persistent regime of pre-publication censorship,
combined with the unwillingness of the paper's
contributors to meekly follow all the occupant's
stipulations, caused this journal to be a less than ideal
representative of 'loyal collaboration.'
Ortwin de Graef, _Responses_ 100-101.
> They knew what DeMan was, a fascist and a German collaborator.
The post-war Belgian authorities disagreed. In May of '45
de Man was questioned by the military prosecutor in Antwerp
and released without any charges. In 1988 the Auditeur Général
confirmed that de Man hadn't been the object of official
objections against either his attitude or his activities during
wartime. _Responses_ 475. Pierre de Ligne (another of the
Belgians asked about de Man's past) reports being let go by the
military was significant, since they were very strict with
accused collaborators, while the civilian prosecutors were less
so. _Responses_ 433.
Say de Man _was_ a Nazi, tho, as you keep insisting. Then
it's a damn shame there weren't alot more Nazis like him:
Nazis who weren't anti-Semitic, Nazis who sheltered Jews, Nazis
who found jobs for Jews banned from work, Nazis who helped
publish banned Resistance journals, Nazis who slipped approving
references to Jews and anti-fascists into articles meant to
serve as Nazi propaganda. If all of the Nazis had been like de
Man, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
Moggin:
>> ... A Resistance member named
>> Edouard Colinet says de Man wrote the essay under duress.
>> "All witnesses agree he did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his
>> livelihood." (Colinet in _Responses: On Paul de Man's
>> Wartime Journalism_ 430.) Colinet, who knew de Man even before
>> the war, also says he never displayed any anti-Semitism:
>> "nobody had ever noticed" any "hostile feelings versus the Jews."
del Col:
> So he was simply a craven opportunist, eh?
Maybe; or maybe a young man (de Man was college-age at the
time) trying to support his family, and hoping to keep
himself out of the German work-camps, which the unemployed were
herded into.
Michael Dorfman
Cite, please.
Or, less politely, bullshit. Having read all of Derrida's published
writings on the subject, I find that he most emphatically states the
opposite.
A couple relevant quotes:
"Nothing in what I am about to say, analyzing the article as closely
as possible, will heal over the wound I right away felt when, my
breath taken away, I perceived in it what the newspapers have most
frequently singled out as recognized antisemitism, an antisemitism
that would have come close to urging exclusions, even the most
sinister deportations. Even if, in the texts already quoted, no
pro-Nazism was ever declared; even if the disjunctions, the
precautions, the complications seemed to protect against any simple
allegiance, is not what we have here the most unquestionable
manifestation of an antisemitism as violent as it is stereotyped?"
He closes with:
"Having just reread my text, I imagine that for some it will seem I
have tried, when all is said and done and despite all the protests or
precautions, to protect, save, justify what does not deserve to be
saved. I ask these readers , if they still have some concern for
justice and rigor, to take the time to reread, as closely as
possible."
> Only a fool or a liar would think so.
Precisely.
> The public disclosures of DeMan's collaboration
>occurred only after his death, so he suffered nothing. If Derrida
>thinks DeMan suffered any spiritual torment while writing for Le Soir and the
>virulently, anti-semitic - Het Vlaamsche Land-, he has no basis for
>this assertion other than his own deconstructive chicanery.
If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
>DeMan's career during and after WWII was that of deceitful
>opportunist.
>
>As for the forthright Nazi in deconstruction's heritage, that role
>belongs to Martin Heidegger, who joined the Nazi party in 1933
>and never expressed a word of remorse about his membership or the
>Nazis' activities. He seems to have hoped that the Nazis would
>elevate
>him to be the party's official philosopher, an ambition that only
>shows how pathetically out of touch with reality he was. They had the
>Fuhrer-- they didn't need somebody whose
>work they described as:
>
>
>"characterized by the same obsession with hairsplitting
>distinctions as Talmudic thought. That is why it holds such an
>extraordinary fascination for Jews, persons of Jewish
>ancestry and others with a similar mental make-up."
>
>
>J. Del Col
Michael Dorfman
j del col
Le Soir was run by Belgian fascists. The Germans were confident
their
toadies would not stray far.
There is no doubt that Le Soir thoroughly conformed with Nazi
doctrine.
The issue with DeMan's "The Jews in Contemporary Literature" reveals
exactly how throughly nazified the paper was.
The eidtorial in that issue proclaimed:
"The Jews have committed numerous social wrongs. With their trickery
and tenacity they have seized control of politics, the economy, the
press; they
have profited from their privileged status, getting rich at the
expense of
their host nations and luring them into catastrophes that can only
lead to war...... Our antisemitism is of a racial order. We are
determined
to forbid ourselves any cross-breeding with them and to liberate
ourselves
spiritually from their demoralizing influence in the realm of
thought, literature , and the arts."
That's the company DeMan kept until November 1942.
Sounds more like the --Volkischer Beobachter-- than any sort of
dubiously
loyal newspaper.
And, of, course, your boy also worked for another fascist rag,
-Het Vlaamsche Land-.
Ortwin de Graef, _Responses_ 100-101.
Ortwin de Graef also had this to say about DeMan's effort to set
about a publishing house, --Editions Hermes-- The company was
"appropriately named." The implication being that Hermes was the
patron of thieves and
swindlers
> > They knew what DeMan was, a fascist and a German collaborator.
>
> The post-war Belgian authorities disagreed. In May of '45
> de Man was questioned by the military prosecutor in Antwerp
> and released without any charges. In 1988 the Auditeur Général
> confirmed that de Man hadn't been the object of official
> objections against either his attitude or his activities during
> wartime. _Responses_ 475. Pierre de Ligne (another of the
> Belgians asked about de Man's past) reports being let go by the
> military was significant, since they were very strict with
> accused collaborators, while the civilian prosecutors were less
> so. _Responses_ 433.
>
> Say de Man _was_ a Nazi, tho, as you keep insisting. Then
> it's a damn shame there weren't alot more Nazis like him:
> Nazis who weren't anti-Semitic, Nazis who sheltered Jews, Nazis
> who found jobs for Jews banned from work, Nazis who helped
> publish banned Resistance journals, Nazis who slipped approving
> references to Jews and anti-fascists into articles meant to
> serve as Nazi propaganda. If all of the Nazis had been like de
> Man, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
>
Sure thing, Moggy. The Jews would all have been shipped to exile.
That is what De Nazi suggested in his article
> Moggin:
>
> >> ... A Resistance member named
> >> Edouard Colinet says de Man wrote the essay under duress.
> >> "All witnesses agree he did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his
> >> livelihood." (Colinet in _Responses: On Paul de Man's
> >> Wartime Journalism_ 430.) Colinet, who knew de Man even before
> >> the war, also says he never displayed any anti-Semitism:
> >> "nobody had ever noticed" any "hostile feelings versus the Jews."
>
> del Col:
>
> > So he was simply a craven opportunist, eh?
>
> Maybe; or maybe a young man (de Man was college-age at the
> time) trying to support his family, and hoping to keep
> himself out of the German work-camps, which the unemployed were
> herded into.
And maybe your suggestion is just more apologist bullshit.
The only way to make a living was to work for a fascist rag?
Other Belgians managed to find work without groveling to the nazis.
Dream on, Moggy.
J. Del Col
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 18th of April, 2002
Moggin wrote:
de Man's Naziism doesn't seem to exist, although there are
some folks who'd like to conjure it up.
I said:
His moral relativism, however, does seem to exist,
exactly where some folks say it might be.
Gordon:
The demon with which moral absolutism struggles is not moral
relativism but its own poor performance based on its own
standards, an example in this case being the characterization
of De Man as a Nazi.
I guess I don't understand. My impression of the serious charge
against De Man was not that he *was* a Nazi, as Moggin seemed
to want to defend him against, but that he collaborated with
them. More specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed most postmodernisms
yet encountered) left the man with no reason to resist Nazidom.
Like Allan Bloom's j'accuse at Heideggar. Now, again, I write
this as someone who has not read a word of De Man, who has
little if no interest in ever reading any, and who assumes
that identifiable "moral relativists" and "moral absolutists"
both collaborated with the Nazis and resisted them. I merely
was going on what Moggin had to say about De Man, apparently
meant to be in defense of him.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Thursday, the 18th of April, 2002
>
>Moggin wrote:
> de Man's Naziism doesn't seem to exist, although there are
> some folks who'd like to conjure it up.
>I said:
> His moral relativism, however, does seem to exist,
> exactly where some folks say it might be.
>Gordon:
> The demon with which moral absolutism struggles is not moral
> relativism but its own poor performance based on its own
> standards, an example in this case being the characterization
> of De Man as a Nazi.
>
>I guess I don't understand. My impression of the serious charge
>against De Man was not that he *was* a Nazi, as Moggin seemed
>to want to defend him against, but that he collaborated with
>them. More specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
>which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed most postmodernisms
>yet encountered) left the man with no reason to resist Nazidom.
>
Could you give me a quote from de Man's published work that exhibits
this "moral relativism which seems to center his philosophy"? Or
explain what in his work led you to identify him as "postmodern"?
Here's a quote from an interview published in _Blindness and Insight_:
"Rosso: ... you don't look interested at all in a debate somehow
fashionable, the debate about the notion of 'postmodernism.'
de Man: The difficulty for me is that the 'postmodern approach'
seems a somewhat naively historical approach. The notion of modernity is
already very dubious; the notion of postmodernity becomes a parody of
the notion of modernity."
But having studied de Man, no doubt you have some passage in mind
that would support your classification. Let's see it!
Oh, I just see
>I write
>this as someone who has not read a word of De Man
>
Gosh.
s
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 18th of April, 2002
Silke:
Could you give me a quote from de Man's published
work that exhibits this "moral relativism which seems to
center his philosophy"? Or explain what in his work led
you to identify him as "postmodern"?
It would be bizarre, given what I have just wrote,
for you to imagine that I would want to do any such thing.
But, I expect (anticipate, bet) I could do both. I have no intention
of doing either.
Silke:
Here's a quote [snip]
Irrelevant.
I said:
I write this as someone who has not read a word of De Man
Silke trounces:
Gosh.
And so? The issue I wrote about wasn't De Man at all, it was the
mischaracterization of the anti-De Man criticism.
Duh.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
Nonsense. The issue is what you wrote, i.e.:
"the morass of moral relativism
which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed most postmodernisms
yet encountered) left the man with no reason to resist Nazidom"
>
>Duh.
>
Duh my ass. You identified de Man as "postmodern" and a "moral
relativist" and you don't have squat to back up your opinion. The fact
that you yourself acknowledge the disgraceful fact that you make your
pronouncement on the basis of utter ignorance does not make it the least
little bit disgraceful.
s
j del col
The authorities had bigger fish to fry than DeMan. However he did
merit
inclusion in a Resistance Traitors' Gallery in 1943.
> Say de Man _was_ a Nazi, tho, as you keep insisting. Then
> it's a damn shame there weren't alot more Nazis like him:
> Nazis who weren't anti-Semitic, Nazis who sheltered Jews, Nazis
> who found jobs for Jews banned from work, Nazis who helped
> publish banned Resistance journals, Nazis who slipped approving
> references to Jews and anti-fascists into articles meant to
> serve as Nazi propaganda. If all of the Nazis had been like de
> Man, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
>
Yes, yes, and I'm sure he would have waved to his Jewish "friends" as
they were herded into the boats waiting to take them to the
exile DeMan proposed for them. DeMan continued to write for Le Soir
as
the noose tightened around Belgium's Jews. As one commentator on
DeMan's past put it:
" One would have had to live in a plastic bubble to be oblivious to
the massive, open, intense persecution of the Jews then under way, and
which was perfectly evident to someone in de Man's position."
>
> >> ... A Resistance member named
> >> Edouard Colinet says de Man wrote the essay under duress.
> >> "All witnesses agree he did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his
> >> livelihood."
And I suppose someone was twisting his arm again in August 1942
when he repeated his assertions about Jews in --Het Vlaamsche Land--?
In your dreams, Moggy.
J. Del Col
Richard Harter
Duh, your ass indeed. You have quoted Mike out of context, snipping the
material which established the context, and doing it in such a way as to
strongly misrepresent what he wrote. It is shoddy scholarship, Silke,
shoddy. Let me restore the text in question:
BEGIN
I guess I don't understand. My impression of the serious charge
against De Man was not that he *was* a Nazi, as Moggin seemed
to want to defend him against, but that he collaborated with
them. More specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed most postmodernisms
yet encountered) left the man with no reason to resist Nazidom.
Like Allan Bloom's j'accuse at Heideggar. Now, again, I write
this as someone who has not read a word of De Man, who has
little if no interest in ever reading any, and who assumes
that identifiable "moral relativists" and "moral absolutists"
both collaborated with the Nazis and resisted them. I merely
was going on what Moggin had to say about De Man, apparently
meant to be in defense of him.
END
Sentence two establishes his impression of what the charge against
De Man was. Sentence three is a clarification of the charge. Mike
is not making the charge; that should be quite clear. What he says
he was doing was discussing moggin's defence of de Man.
Whether Mike's characterization in the paragraph of his prior postings
is accurate or not is another matter. Offhand I wouldn't put any great
reliance on it being so. However to establish inaccuracy you would have
go back to the prior post. In this instance your appropriate comment is,
"My bad, sorry Mike."
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 18th of April, 2002
S: Could you give me a quote from de Man's published
work that exhibits this "moral relativism which seems to
center his philosophy"? Or explain what in his work led
you to identify him as "postmodern"?
M: It would be bizarre, given what I have just wrote,
for you to imagine that I would want to do any such thing.
But, I expect (anticipate, bet) I could do both.
I have no intention of doing either.
S: Here's a quote [snip]
M: Irrelevant.
M: I write this as someone who has not read a word of De Man
S trounces:
Gosh.
M: And so? The issue I wrote about wasn't De Man at all, it was the
mischaracterization of the anti-De Man criticism.
S: Nonsense.
Nonsense yourself.
S: The issue is what you wrote, i.e.:
"the morass of moral relativism which seems
to center his philosophy (and indeed most
postmodernisms yet encountered) left the man
with no reason to resist Nazidom"
No, I didn't write that. What *I* wrote was:
"I guess I don't understand. My impression of the
serious charge against De Man was not that he *was*
a Nazi, as Moggin seemed to want to defend him
against, but that he collaborated with them. More
specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed
most postmodernisms yet encountered) left the
man with no reason to resist Nazidom."
Note the contextual difference. What *I* said is
that this is *my impression of the serious charge against
de Man*. Not even *my impression* of de Man's writings, fer
cryin out loud! And then, the bit you extracted is in fact
introduced by "more specifically", i.e. it was an explanation,
a rewording, of what *my impression* of the charge against
de Man is. A reading of De Man is transparently and utterly
irrelevant to what I said. Now, if you wish to claim that
I have misrepresented the *critics* of de Man, that I am wrong
in that they really charge de Man with being a Nazi, rather
than an opportunist, that might be another story, but
given my liberal sprinkling of phrases like "my impression"
and "which seems", it would be pretty hard for you to convict
me of anything other than carefully hedging what it is I
have said.
M: Duh.
S: Duh my ass. You identified de Man as "postmodern"
and a "moral relativist" and you don't have squat
to back up your opinion.
No. I identified the criticism of de Man as accusing him
of collaboration with the Nazis out of the trademark
moral relativism of the postmodernist. I also said, based
solely on *Moggin's* testimony, that charge (as opposed to the
charge that de Man *was* a Nazi) *seems* (i.e. is not
conclusively proven, but all the field marks, again on Moggin's
testimony, are in the right place) to be true. You promptly
stepped in with an interview quote from de Man which proves
conclusively to me (and to most people capable of reading between
the lines) that he is in fact a postmodernist (*), and
strengthening my prior suspicion of his moral relativism.
(*) Read the quote. Instead of answering the question
of whether he is a postmodernist or no in the requisite
rational manner of stating some sort of definition of
"postmodernism" and ticking off the points of application
or of non-application of that definition to himself,
he denies being a postmodernist by the sophistical
(and typically postmodern) ploy of claiming an unspecified
quarrel with the whole category of "modernism" in the first
place as a way of undermining any possible definition of
"postmodernism". Yeah, this one quacks like a duck.
Five'll get you ten he considers himself beyond good and
evil, too.
S: The fact that you yourself acknowledge the
disgraceful fact that you make your pronouncement
on the basis of utter ignorance does not make it the least
little bit disgraceful.
Utter ignorance of what, Silke? I was utterly ignorant of
de Man's own writings. But, then, I didn't write anything
about de Man's writings, did I? As opposed to what I did do---write
about the gravamen of the complaint against de Man, which is
the thing Moggin dodged in puportedly "defending" de Man, and
which we *do not* have to read de Man in order to understand
that the charge has more to do with him selling out to the
Nazis than being one.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Richard Harter wrote:
this is Usenet. The context is a click away. The fact is that Mike
identified de Man as a :"moral relativst" and equated him with
"postmodern." He's wrong on both counts, as it happens. You have the
gull to accuse me of "shoddy scholarship" while Morris holds forth on
the "philosophy" of someone he hasn't read? Give me a fucking break.
>and doing it in such a way as to
>strongly misrepresent what he wrote. It is shoddy scholarship, Silke,
>shoddy. Let me restore the text in question:
>
>BEGIN
>I guess I don't understand. My impression of the serious charge
>against De Man was not that he *was* a Nazi, as Moggin seemed
>to want to defend him against, but that he collaborated with
>them. More specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
>which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed most postmodernisms
>yet encountered) left the man with no reason to resist Nazidom.
>Like Allan Bloom's j'accuse at Heideggar. Now, again, I write
>this as someone who has not read a word of De Man, who has
>little if no interest in ever reading any, and who assumes
>that identifiable "moral relativists" and "moral absolutists"
>both collaborated with the Nazis and resisted them. I merely
>was going on what Moggin had to say about De Man, apparently
>meant to be in defense of him.
>END
>
>Sentence two establishes his impression of what the charge against
>De Man was. Sentence three is a clarification of the charge.
>
Yeah. And all you need to do to ascertain whether there's anything _to_
that charge is to read the man.
>Mike
>is not making the charge; that should be quite clear. What he says
>he was doing was discussing moggin's defence of de Man.
>
No, he wasn't. He was merely adding another complaint after moggin, whom
I admire endlessly for taking the trouble, made short work of the first
one.
>
>Whether Mike's characterization in the paragraph of his prior postings
>is accurate or not is another matter. Offhand I wouldn't put any great
>reliance on it being so. However to establish inaccuracy you would have
>go back to the prior post. In this instance your appropriate comment is,
>"My bad, sorry Mike."
>
The "serious charge" against de Man cannot possibly be that he's a
"moral relativist" or somehow associated with "the postmodern." That's
about as serious as alleging that you're an Episcopalian and believe
that Anita Hill was full of crap. If you really can't see the profound
dishonesty of Morris' post, I can't explain it to you. It would be like
Galileo trying to make his Florentine visitors look through the telescope.
s
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
You're so full of it. As I told Harter, neither the charge of being a
"moral relativist" nor being associated with the "postmodern" is even
remotely a "serious charge." And as to resisting Nazi ideology, moggin
has posted enough evidence. Moreover, what de Man did at 21 -- whether
depraved, brave, or somewhere in between -- has no bearing on his work
as a literary critic and theorist in the 70s and 80s. It's amazing to me
how anybody can put out so many red herrings without choking on the
smell of them.
s
Kater Moggin
>> ... In May of '45
>> de Man was questioned by the military prosecutor in Antwerp
>> and released without any charges. In 1988 the Auditeur Général
>> confirmed that de Man hadn't been the object of official
>> objections against either his attitude or his activities during
>> wartime. _Responses_ 475. Pierre de Ligne (another of the
>> Belgians asked about de Man's past) reports being let go by the
>> military was significant, since they were very strict with
>> accused collaborators, while the civilian prosecutors were less
>> so. _Responses_ 433.
del...@ab.edu (j del col):
> The authorities had bigger fish to fry than DeMan.
They also paid attention to small fish like de Man, as you
can see, since he was brought in for a day of questioning.
The interesting thing is that he was let go, unlike many others
who worked for _Le Soir_. The Belgian military authorities
concluded that de Man hadn't done anything objectionable -- and
according to Ligne, military prosecutors were stricter than
their civilian counterparts when they were dealing with accused
collaborators.
> However he did merit inclusion in a Resistance Traitors'
> Gallery in 1943.
de Man merited the confidence of a Resistance member named
Georges Goriely, who testifies that de Man "had no
ideological sympathies with the _Ordre nouveau_," and adds, "He
knew about my life and my clandestine activities, and I
never had any hesitations about expressing my views to him,
which in addition he never contested." _Responses_ 436. I may
have mentioned that before.
Moggin:
>> Say de Man _was_ a Nazi, tho, as you keep insisting. Then
>> it's a damn shame there weren't alot more Nazis like him:
>> Nazis who weren't anti-Semitic, Nazis who sheltered Jews, Nazis
>> who found jobs for Jews banned from work, Nazis who helped
>> publish banned Resistance journals, Nazis who slipped approving
>> references to Jews and anti-fascists into articles meant to
>> serve as Nazi propaganda. If all of the Nazis had been like de
>> Man, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
del Col:
> Yes, yes, and I'm sure he would have waved to his Jewish "friends" as
> they were herded into the boats waiting to take them to the
> exile DeMan proposed for them.
de Man didn't propose herding Jews into exile, not even in
the now-famous newspaper article, where he merely remarked
about the possible effect that would have on European
literature, if it came to pass. He claimed that there would be
no great consequences from a literary perspective. In
context, he's making an argument against anti-Semitic hysteria:
the article contends that Jews _haven't_ caused a decay in
European culture on grounds they've been of "little importance."
According to a Resistance member named Edward Colinet, de
Man wrote the article unwillingly. "All witnesses agree he
did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his livelihood."
_Responses_ 430. Another acquaintance, Gilbert Jaeger, offers
the recollection that "this was an article Paul de Man was
asked to write. For him, it was an exercise - probably a very'
disagreeable one - in what you call 'skating on thin ice."
_Responses_ 435. Witnesses also agree de Man never showed any
signs of anti-Semitism in the years that they knew him, and
wasn't sympathetic with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, he
gave his help, albeit in small ways, to Jews and to the
Resistance. If he was a Nazi, then like I said, it's too damn
bad there were't more like him.
> DeMan continued to write for Le Soir
> as the noose tightened around Belgium's Jews. As one commentator on
> DeMan's past put it:
> " One would have had to live in a plastic bubble to be oblivious to
> the massive, open, intense persecution of the Jews then under way, and
> which was perfectly evident to someone in de Man's position."
All the more reason for him not to have spoken approvingly
about Kafka in a newspaper article. Yet he did.
Kater Moggin
del...@ab.edu (j del col):
> Le Soir was run by Belgian fascists. The Germans were confident
> their toadies would not stray far.
You claimed "The very idea that there ever was any freedom
of statement under German control is absurd" in reply to the
idea de Man left _Le Soir_ when it disappeared. But judging by
the reports above, you were wrong.
> There is no doubt that Le Soir thoroughly conformed with Nazi
> doctrine. The issue with DeMan's "The Jews in Contemporary
> Literature" reveals exactly how throughly nazified the paper was.
Well, no. It reveals the paper was Nazified, which nobody
disputes.
> That's the company DeMan kept until November 1942.
Not so. de Man didn't keep company with the _Le Soir_ eds.
"Paul's work for _Le Soir_ was absolutely exterior,
'free-lance;' he was completely unknown to the editors" (Pierre
Ligne, _Responses_ 433). de Man _did_ associate with
Resistance members like Georges Goriely. _Responses_ 436; more
below.
> And, of, course, your boy also worked for another fascist rag,
> -Het Vlaamsche Land-.
Otrwin de Graef: "It should be noted that, again like _Le
Soir_, _Het Vlaamsche Land_ was certainly not a mere
collaborator's journal." _Responses_ 116. (de Graef -- by the
way -- is the guy who found the articles.)
del Col:
>>> They knew what DeMan was, a fascist and a German collaborator.
And yet they, i.e., the Resistance, knew that de Man was a
trusted friend who didn't sympathize with the occupying
regime. Goriely reports that de Man "knew about my life and my
clandestine activities, and I never had any hesitations
about expressing my views to him, which in addition he
never contested," and adds that he (de Man_) "had no ideological
sympathies with the _Ordre nouveau_" (436). de Man also
helped print a banned journal linked with the French Resistance.
Moggin:
>> Say de Man _was_ a Nazi, tho, as you keep insisting. Then
>> it's a damn shame there weren't alot more Nazis like him:
>> Nazis who weren't anti-Semitic, Nazis who sheltered Jews, Nazis
>> who found jobs for Jews banned from work, Nazis who helped
>> publish banned Resistance journals, Nazis who slipped approving
>> references to Jews and anti-fascists into articles meant to
>> serve as Nazi propaganda. If all of the Nazis had been like de
>> Man, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
del Col:
> Sure thing, Moggy. The Jews would all have been shipped to exile.
Not if the Nazis had been like de Man, who showed no signs
of anti-Semitism outside the articles in question, and went
out of his way to help Jews during the war, once even
sheltering a Jewish couple in his own apartment. Make sure you
keep dodging those points, willya? Thanks.
> That is what De Nazi suggested in his article
That is a falsehood. de Man's article did not suggest the
Jews should be exiled. It merely claimed there would be no
damage to "the literary life of the West" if that plan was used.
In context, de Man is arguing against anti-Semitic hysteria.
The Jews aren't making the West degenerate, he says, since they
have little importance in European culture.
Moggin:
>>>> ... A Resistance member named
>>>> Edouard Colinet says de Man wrote the essay under duress.
>>>> "All witnesses agree he did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his
>>>> livelihood." (Colinet in _Responses: On Paul de Man's
>>>> Wartime Journalism_ 430.) Colinet, who knew de Man even before
>>>> the war, also says he never displayed any anti-Semitism:
>>>> "nobody had ever noticed" any "hostile feelings versus the Jews."
del Col:
>>> So he was simply a craven opportunist, eh?
Moggin:
>> Maybe; or maybe a young man (de Man was college-age at the
>> time) trying to support his family, and hoping to keep
>> himself out of the German work-camps, which the unemployed were
>> herded into.
del Col:
> And maybe your suggestion is just more apologist bullshit.
False premise. Anyway, my points stand. Witnesses are in
agreement that de Man wasn't an anti-Semite, and that he was
forced into writing "The Jews in Contemporary Literature." The
evidence also indicates that he helped both Jews and the
Resistance, albeit in small ways. I've already offered details.
Jeff Inman
> No, I didn't write that. What *I* wrote was:
> "I guess I don't understand. My impression of the
> serious charge against De Man was not that he *was*
> a Nazi, as Moggin seemed to want to defend him
> against, but that he collaborated with them. More
> specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
> which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed
> most postmodernisms yet encountered) left the
> man with no reason to resist Nazidom."
Essay question: can a moral code (of any stripe) ever
provide a *reason* for anything? I mean, my take on
the Nazis (far removed in space and time) would be
something along the lines of "fuck you, you fucking
nazis!". I can conjure up various values that resonate
with such a statement. But where is *reason* in any of
that? (I distinguish reason from rationalization, you
recall.) So, how does a moral absolutist impel his
argument rationally? I am genuinely curious.
(I don't have time for much of a discussion, so you
get the last word.) It's a puzzle that fascinates me.
It seems that a rationalist moral absolutist would have
to assume that his values were logically necessary. We
covered "existential necessity" last time, but I don't
recall it having anything to do with reason. In fact, by
definition, it was what we had in lieu of logical necessity.
I take you to be someone who prides himself on thoughtful
moral argument, and so I want to hear it from you.
How does one do it rationally? [Or does too much rationality
actually serve to *weaken* a moral argument? My suspicion is
that "moral absolutists" sense this as the threat in
"postmodernism", whatever the hell that is. But that suspicion
is perhaps contradicted by the moral absolutists being so
often devotees of capital-R Reason, whatever the hell that is.]
Regards,
Jeff
Kater Moggin
> I guess I don't understand.
Good guess.
> My impression of the serious charge
> against De Man was not that he *was* a Nazi, as Moggin seemed
> to want to defend him against, but that he collaborated with
> them.
No, de Col has repeatedly claimed de Man was a Nazi. He's
twice called de Man "Paul de Nazi," e.g., and he seems
perfectly serious about it, even tho he's failed to provide any
evidence.
> More specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
> which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed most postmodernisms
> yet encountered) left the man with no reason to resist Nazidom.
He did resist the Nazis, albeit in small ways -- I already
gave details.
Kater Moggin
The issue I wrote about wasn't De Man at all, it was the
> mischaracterization of the anti-De Man criticism.
The mischaracterization was yours. You denied he stands
accused of being a Nazi, but del Col has several times
claimed exactly that, for example by twice referring to "Paul
de Nazi." Evidence, none.
You're also misrepresenting your own comments, since you
quite clearly contended that de Man himself was a moral
relativist, contrary to your assertion you had nothing to say
about him.
Kater Moggin
> Duh, your ass indeed. You have quoted Mike out of context, snipping the
> material which established the context, and doing it in such a way as to
> strongly misrepresent what he wrote.
Mike misrepresented himself when he denied that he claimed
de Man was a moral relativist. I'd said that de Man's
Naziism was del Col's fabulation, and Mike answered, "His moral
relativism, however, does seem to exist, exactly where some
folks say it might be." Same old, same old: Mike running from
his own words.
Kater Moggin
> ... What *I* wrote was:
> "I guess I don't understand. My impression of the
> serious charge against De Man was not that he *was*
> a Nazi, as Moggin seemed to want to defend him
> against, but that he collaborated with them. More
> specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
> which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed
> most postmodernisms yet encountered) left the
> man with no reason to resist Nazidom."
> Note the contextual difference. What *I* said is
> that this is *my impression of the serious charge against
> de Man*. Not even *my impression* of de Man's writings, fer
> cryin out loud!
Yet oddly enough, you have exactly the impression that you
deny is yours. You claimed that de Man's moral relativism
"_does seem to exist_, exactly where some folks say it might be."
My emphasis. Now you say that's not your impression. One
minute you have the impression de Man's a moral relativist, the
next you pretend you never thought so.
> Now, if you wish to claim that I have misrepresented the
> *critics* of de Man, that I am wrong in that they really charge
> de Man with being a Nazi, rather than an opportunist, that might be
> another story
You've misrepresented yourself as well as de Man's critics
-- or anyway the one critic here. You first said de Man
seemed to be a moral relativist, then turned around and claimed
that wasn't your impression.
You also denied de Man was accused of being a Nazi, but in
fact del Col has said it over and again. He's called de Man
"Paul de Nazi" (twice) claimed that he praised "hitlerism," etc.
John P David
"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:3CBF8B56...@umich.edu...
> this is Usenet. The context is a click away. The fact is that Mike
> identified de Man as a :"moral relativst" and equated him with
> "postmodern." He's wrong on both counts, as it happens. You have the
> gull [sic] to accuse me of "shoddy scholarship" while Morris holds forth
on
> the "philosophy" of someone he hasn't read? Give me a fucking break.
Ooo. I love it when our dear Ms Professeur talks dirty! Maybe there is yet
some hope left for Academe.
>
> The "serious charge" against de Man cannot possibly be that he's a
> "moral relativist" or somehow associated with "the postmodern." That's
> about as serious as alleging that you're an Episcopalian and believe
> that Anita Hill was full of crap.
Hold the phone. I, JPD, am a confirmed (albeit apostate) Episcopalian, who
does indeed believe Anita Hill to be full of crap. That belief is almost a
religion with me. I have often thought of founding the "Anita Hill is Full
of Crap" conference of the Southern Baptist Convention, in order that
parishes under title of that denomination might spring up on every hill and
in every dale, each with a little white steeple and bells that chime every
Sunday morning calling the beloved to morning prayer, where they might
recite the Anita Hill is Full of Crap Creed, to wit, "I believe that Anita
Hill is Full of Crap, and in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and
Earth and of all things Visible and Invisible . . .etc.". Now, as you see,
in this Best of All Possible Worlds, anything is possible.
--
JPDavid long_go...@nobodyfeelsanypain.com
John's Joint:: http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
On-Line Novel, *Amador Green*, MP3's and Usenet Archive
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. --Friedrich
Nietzsche
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of
tyranny over the mind of man." -- Thomas Jefferson
"I like Vincent because, like me, he has the habit of alienating almost
everyone he meets. --Toulouse Lautrec
James Whitehead
Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com> writes
> In
>context, he's making an argument against anti-Semitic hysteria:
>the article contends that Jews _haven't_ caused a decay in
>European culture on grounds they've been of "little importance."
>
> According to a Resistance member named Edward Colinet, de
>Man wrote the article unwillingly. "All witnesses agree he
>did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his livelihood."
careful moggin - he reluctantly made an argument against anti-Semitic
hysteria implies he was in favour of anti-Semitic hysteria.
But i'm not sure of his own "moral" position re earning a living by
reluctantly writing for a Nazi publication. That he was *reluctant*
implies he thought he was doing something wrong. Which maybe places
himself in a worse position morally than any overtly honest Nazi.
--
James Whitehead
smw
John P David wrote:
>"smw" <s...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:3CBF8B56...@umich.edu...
>
...
>>The "serious charge" against de Man cannot possibly be that he's a
>>"moral relativist" or somehow associated with "the postmodern." That's
>>about as serious as alleging that you're an Episcopalian and believe
>>that Anita Hill was full of crap.
>>
>
>Hold the phone. I, JPD, am a confirmed (albeit apostate) Episcopalian, who
>does indeed believe Anita Hill to be full of crap.
>
And surely, neither one is the most serious charge one can make against
you...
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
Silke:
You're so full of it. As I told Harter, neither the
charge of being a "moral relativist" nor being associated
with the "postmodern" is even remotely a "serious charge."
Great. However, back to Reading 101 with you, since I
didn't say being a "moral relativist" or being
associated with "the postmodern" is a serious charge.
They are, but I didn't say it. What I said is rather
that the serious charge against de Man is that his
moral relativism and postmodernism left him with no
reason to resist.
Silke:
And as to resisting Nazi ideology, moggin
has posted enough evidence.
I'm afraid that Moggin's evidence reads to me that,
no, de Man wasn't a Nazi, but, yes, de Man didn't resist
Nazidom, either. It sounds to me like he was rather like most
people in that respect---not particularly a villain, but
no hero either. Understand here that "no hero"= (to me)
someone maybe not too valuable for his literary criticism.
Silke:
Moreover, what de Man did at 21 -- whether
depraved, brave, or somewhere in between -- has
no bearing on his work as a literary critic and
theorist in the 70s and 80s.
Well, you and I apparently differ on this fundamental
point. I think literature has an ineluctable moral
dimension, and that, therefore, so does insightful literary
criticism.
Silke:
It's amazing to me how anybody can put out so many
red herrings without choking on the smell of them.
Yes, it is, that. Care to provide me a de Man
interview on the subject of ethics?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
I said:
No, I didn't write that. What *I* wrote was:
"I guess I don't understand. My impression of the
serious charge against De Man was not that he *was*
a Nazi, as Moggin seemed to want to defend him
against, but that he collaborated with them. More
specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed
most postmodernisms yet encountered) left the
man with no reason to resist Nazidom."
Jeff:
Essay question: can a moral code (of any stripe) ever
provide a *reason* for anything?
No. The "of any stripe" betrays it as such. It presupposes
there could be more than one, that therefore any one of them
could not be compelling.
Jeff:
I mean, my take on the Nazis (far removed in
space and time) would be something along the lines
of "fuck you, you fucking nazis!". I can conjure
up various values that resonate with such a
statement. But where is *reason* in any of
that?
There is none, as you put it, but post hoc rationalization.
Sure. As post hoc, it is cheap. The real question is what
I would have done had I been in his (or her) shoes. And,
I don't know. But, post hoc I *can* see that "m r" was a
huge chunk of the problem (the problem not of Nazism itself,
but collaboration, cooperation, acquiescence in the same).
Jeff:
(I distinguish reason from rationalization, you
recall.)
And recall that I include first principles, believed in
by faith, as part of reason. I.e. reason is not just
steps of syllogistic logic.
Jeff:
So, how does a moral absolutist impel his
argument rationally?
How does the Pythagorean Theorem impel itself
rationally? I mean, people are perfectly free to
disbelieve it, it would be a safe bet that most
persons on the planet wouldn't be able to tell you
what it is, if asked right now, and yet people who
care about the correct computation of the distance
between two points have to use it.
Jeff:
I am genuinely curious. (I don't have time for
much of a discussion, so you get the last word.)
It's a puzzle that fascinates me. It seems that
a rationalist moral absolutist would have
to assume that his values were logically necessary.
I have no understanding whatsoever of what you expect
to get by insisting on logic and nothing but logic.
With logic *alone* you haven't got a reason for not
stepping off a 12th-story balcony and expecting to
float on air. I've just been reading Augustine, whose mantra
always seems to be that understanding comes by reason
*after* faith. I.e., we believe first, but we do not
stop there and accept that as the end, but we reason
from faith to a rational understanding, or at least
as far as we can go to a rational understanding. Because
reasoning is what we do, what we are.
Jeff:
We covered "existential necessity" last time, but I don't
recall it having anything to do with reason. In fact, by
definition, it was what we had in lieu of logical necessity.
I take you to be someone who prides himself on thoughtful
moral argument, and so I want to hear it from you.
How does one do it rationally? [Or does too much rationality
actually serve to *weaken* a moral argument? My suspicion is
that "moral absolutists" sense this as the threat in
"postmodernism", whatever the hell that is.
Of course it is. "Postmodernism" is a studied programme of
sophistry---wordplay and hyperlogicality. What you don't
seem to understand is that hyperlogicality is not the
same thing as reason. Even with the Pythagorean Theorem,
remember, logic alone is not enough.
Jeff:
But that suspicion
is perhaps contradicted by the moral absolutists being so
often devotees of capital-R Reason, whatever the hell that is.]
I think this is a Nietzschean caricature about moral absolutists
and reason, and not at all representative of the
human alternative to moral relativism.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
I said:
... What *I* wrote was:
"I guess I don't understand. My impression of the
serious charge against De Man was not that he *was*
a Nazi, as Moggin seemed to want to defend him
against, but that he collaborated with them. More
specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed
most postmodernisms yet encountered) left the
man with no reason to resist Nazidom."
Note the contextual difference. What *I* said is
that this is *my impression of the serious charge against
de Man*. Not even *my impression* of de Man's writings, fer
cryin out loud!
Moggin:
Yet oddly enough, you have exactly the impression that you
deny is yours. You claimed that de Man's moral relativism
"_does seem to exist_, exactly where some folks say it might be."
My emphasis. Now you say that's not your impression. One
minute you have the impression de Man's a moral relativist, the
next you pretend you never thought so.
No, you misunderstand. My affirmative impression about de Man's
moral relativism merely came from reading your apologia
for de Man. I.e., *if* I trust what you have to say, *then*
I do come away with the impression of pomo moral relativism.
I don't actually trust what you have to say, however. Obviously,
a reading of de Man could undermine every impression that
I got from reading you. Hence "it does seem to exist" importantly
uses the word "seem", i.e. based on reading *you*, not de Man.
I said:
Now, if you wish to claim that I have misrepresented the
*critics* of de Man, that I am wrong in that they really charge
de Man with being a Nazi, rather than an opportunist, that might be
another story
Moggin:
You've misrepresented yourself as well as de Man's critics
-- or anyway the one critic here. You first said de Man
seemed to be a moral relativist, then turned around and claimed
that wasn't your impression.
No, I first said that *your* defense of de Man gave me the
impression he was a moral relativist. It was response to
your conclusion that de Man wasn't a Nazi. I agreed with it
(based entirely on your evidence, of course), and added
the "but" (also based entirely on your evidence). Now,
it should be obvious (at least it is to me) that reading
Moggin *about* de Man falls far short of reading de Man himself
for the purposes of forming any judgment of de Man.
Moggin:
You also denied de Man was accused of being a Nazi, but in
fact del Col has said it over and again. He's called de Man
"Paul de Nazi" (twice) claimed that he praised "hitlerism," etc.
Del Col gets a little over the top somertimes, but I thought
I had guarded against that by distinguishing between "the
serious charge against de Man" and del Col's effusions.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
G*rd*n
| sophistry---wordplay and hyperlogicality.
Is there any species of philosophy of which this cannot be
justly said?
--
(<><>) /*/
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 11/22/01 <-adv't
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
>
>
> Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
>
>
>Silke:
> You're so full of it. As I told Harter, neither the
> charge of being a "moral relativist" nor being associated
> with the "postmodern" is even remotely a "serious charge."
>
>Great. However, back to Reading 101 with you, since I
>didn't say being a "moral relativist" or being
>associated with "the postmodern" is a serious charge.
>They are, but I didn't say it. What I said is rather
>that the serious charge against de Man is that his
>moral relativism and postmodernism left him with no
>reason to resist.
>
That would be a charge against moral relativism and postmodernism,
however bizarre a charge, not a charge against de Man.
>Silke:
> And as to resisting Nazi ideology, moggin
> has posted enough evidence.
>
>I'm afraid that Moggin's evidence reads to me that,
>no, de Man wasn't a Nazi, but, yes, de Man didn't resist
>Nazidom, either.
>
If you are talking of active Scholl type resistance, no, you're
absolutely right. Are you in the habit of dismissing the work of every
scholar who did not join la resistance in his early 20s?
>It sounds to me like he was rather like most
>people in that respect---not particularly a villain, but
>no hero either. Understand here that "no hero"= (to me)
>someone maybe not too valuable for his literary criticism.
>
I wouldn't call him a hero, either. Even though it seems to me that
sheltering Jews in his apartment is already more than many or most did.
You can pooh-pooh that. Myself, I'll withhold judgment until I've been
in a position to test myself on my courage under totalitarianism.
>Silke:
> Moreover, what de Man did at 21 -- whether
> depraved, brave, or somewhere in between -- has
> no bearing on his work as a literary critic and
> theorist in the 70s and 80s.
>
>Well, you and I apparently differ on this fundamental
>point. I think literature has an ineluctable moral
>dimension, and that, therefore, so does insightful literary
>criticism.
>
So do I, my dear. The question is whether his work as a mature scholar
reflects his thoughts and actions during his early 20s, and if so, how.
You seem to be interested enough in the topic; what exactly keeps
you from informing yourself?
>Silke:
> It's amazing to me how anybody can put out so many
> red herrings without choking on the smell of them.
>
>Yes, it is, that. Care to provide me a de Man
>interview on the subject of ethics?
>
As you yourself say, literature and literary criticism always has an
ethical dimension. Read "The Rhetoric of Romanticism," or "Resistance to
Theory."
s
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
I said:
Of course it is. "Postmodernism" is a studied programme of
sophistry---wordplay and hyperlogicality.
Gordon:
Is there any species of philosophy of which this cannot be
justly said?
There is no species of philosophy for which this can be justly said.
Doesn't mean you have to like philosophy, or that you
ought never to enjoy some sophism, but, no, philosophy is, almost
by definition I'd say, sincere. Wordplay and hyperlogicality are
not sincere.
For example: I have just finished reading one of the more
difficult (for me) texts I have ever read, _De Trinitate_ by
Saint Augustine. Not being Christian myself, I guess I didn't have
a lot of tolerance for what read to me like angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin
argumentation. On the other hand, I *could* appreciate what he
was doing, I could glean many interesting things along the way (there
is, for instance, a very clear statement by Augustine on the relation
between original sin and sex which of course permeates and percolates
through Western history, also his whole schema for the book, in the
latter half to try and come to terms with the Trinity through seeking
a psychological "image" thereof in the mind of man, is quite good.
Anyway, my point is that, even though I disagree with much of what
Augustine says, I would not accuse him of sophism, either of
wordplay or of hyperlogicality. What he is doing is, I think, quite
flawed,
but it is philosophy, and distinct from sophism.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael Zeleny
>Michael S. Morris wrote:
>>It sounds to me like he was rather like most people in that
>>respect---not particularly a villain, but no hero either. Understand
>>here that "no hero"= (to me) someone maybe not too valuable for his
>>literary criticism.
>I wouldn't call him a hero, either. Even though it seems to me that
>sheltering Jews in his apartment is already more than many or most
>did. You can pooh-pooh that. Myself, I'll withhold judgment until
>I've been in a position to test myself on my courage under
>totalitarianism.
Your modesty is most becoming. Would you grant judicial authority
over de Man's kind to those whose courage has been so tested? If so,
neither of you are too valuable for your output of any genre.
--
cordially, -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu
7576 Willow Glen Rd, Hollywood, CA 90046 323-876-8234 323-363-1860
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -- Samuel Beckett
Michael Zeleny
>I said:
> Of course it is. "Postmodernism" is a studied programme of
> sophistry---wordplay and hyperlogicality.
>Gordon:
> Is there any species of philosophy of which this cannot be
> justly said?
>
>There is no species of philosophy for which this can be justly said.
>
>Doesn't mean you have to like philosophy, or that you
>ought never to enjoy some sophism, but, no, philosophy is, almost
>by definition I'd say, sincere. Wordplay and hyperlogicality are
>not sincere.
I'd say you have it exactly backwards:
The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper
sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can
have any reliable access to an objective reality and which
therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly
are. These "anti-realist" doctrines undermine confidence in the
value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what
is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of
objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has
been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the
ideal of _correctness_ to a quite different sort of discipline,
which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of
_sincerity_. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate
representations of a common world, the individual turns toward
trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced
that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to
identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being
true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it
makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore
try instead to be true to himself.
But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are
determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to
incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of
determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As
conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and
we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover,
there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience,
to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about
himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about
ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical
dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial--
notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of
other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself
is bullshit.
-- On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, Princeton University
>For example: I have just finished reading one of the more difficult
>(for me) texts I have ever read, _De Trinitate_ by Saint
>Augustine. Not being Christian myself, I guess I didn't have a lot of
>tolerance for what read to me like angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin
>argumentation. On the other hand, I *could* appreciate what he was
>doing, I could glean many interesting things along the way (there is,
>for instance, a very clear statement by Augustine on the relation
>between original sin and sex which of course permeates and percolates
>through Western history, also his whole schema for the book, in the
>latter half to try and come to terms with the Trinity through seeking
>a psychological "image" thereof in the mind of man, is quite good.
>Anyway, my point is that, even though I disagree with much of what
>Augustine says, I would not accuse him of sophism, either of wordplay
>or of hyperlogicality. What he is doing is, I think, quite flawed,
>but it is philosophy, and distinct from sophism.
--
j del col
> Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com>:
>
> >> ... In May of '45
> >> de Man was questioned by the military prosecutor in Antwerp
> >> and released without any charges. In 1988 the Auditeur Général
> >> confirmed that de Man hadn't been the object of official
> >> objections against either his attitude or his activities during
> >> wartime. _Responses_ 475. Pierre de Ligne (another of the
> >> Belgians asked about de Man's past) reports being let go by the
> >> military was significant, since they were very strict with
> >> accused collaborators, while the civilian prosecutors were less
> >> so. _Responses_ 433.
Yeah, yeah. And the French had even more reason to punish Celine, but
they didn't. DeMan was small potatoes, and he -was-
called in, not ignored.
> del...@ab.edu (j del col):
>
> > The authorities had bigger fish to fry than DeMan.
>
> They also paid attention to small fish like de Man, as you
> can see, since he was brought in for a day of questioning.
> The interesting thing is that he was let go, unlike many others
> who worked for _Le Soir_. The Belgian military authorities
> concluded that de Man hadn't done anything objectionable -- and
> according to Ligne, military prosecutors were stricter than
> their civilian counterparts when they were dealing with accused
> collaborators.
>
> > However he did merit inclusion in a Resistance Traitors'
> > Gallery in 1943.
>
> de Man merited the confidence of a Resistance member named
> Georges Goriely, who testifies that de Man "had no
> ideological sympathies with the _Ordre nouveau_," and adds, "He
> knew about my life and my clandestine activities, and I
> never had any hesitations about expressing my views to him,
> which in addition he never contested." _Responses_ 436. I may
> have mentioned that before.
\
Yes, ad nauseum and to no avail. DeMan was well known as a
collaborator;
your citation is useless.
> Moggin:
>
> >> Say de Man _was_ a Nazi, tho, as you keep insisting. Then
> >> it's a damn shame there weren't alot more Nazis like him:
> >> Nazis who weren't anti-Semitic, Nazis who sheltered Jews, Nazis
> >> who found jobs for Jews banned from work, Nazis who helped
> >> publish banned Resistance journals, Nazis who slipped approving
> >> references to Jews and anti-fascists into articles meant to
> >> serve as Nazi propaganda. If all of the Nazis had been like de
> >> Man, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
>
> del Col:
>
> > Yes, yes, and I'm sure he would have waved to his Jewish "friends" as
> > they were herded into the boats waiting to take them to the
> > exile DeMan proposed for them.
>
> de Man didn't propose herding Jews into exile, not even in
> the now-famous newspaper article, where he merely remarked
> about the possible effect that would have on European
> literature, if it came to pass. He claimed that there would be
> no great consequences from a literary perspective. In
> context, he's making an argument against anti-Semitic hysteria:
Bullshit. He says that Europe wouldn't miss the Jews if they were
deported.
"....despite semitic interference in all aspects of European life, our
civilization has shown that its fundamental nature is healthy. What's
more, one can thus see that a solution to the Jewish problem that
would
lead to the creation of a Jewish colony isolated from Europe would not
have, for the literary life of the West. regrettable consequences. It
would
lose, in all, some personalities of mediocre worth..."
> the article contends that Jews _haven't_ caused a decay in
> European culture on grounds they've been of "little importance."
>
> According to a Resistance member named Edward Colinet, de
> Man wrote the article unwillingly. "All witnesses agree he
> did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his livelihood."
> _Responses_ 430. Another acquaintance, Gilbert Jaeger, offers
> the recollection that "this was an article Paul de Man was
> asked to write. For him, it was an exercise - probably a very'
> disagreeable one - in what you call 'skating on thin ice."
> _Responses_ 435. Witnesses also agree de Man never showed any
> signs of anti-Semitism in the years that they knew him, and
> wasn't sympathetic with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, he
> gave his help, albeit in small ways, to Jews and to the
> Resistance. If he was a Nazi, then like I said, it's too damn
> bad there were't more like him.
>
Oh there were plenty like him.
> > DeMan continued to write for Le Soir
> > as the noose tightened around Belgium's Jews. As one commentator on
> > DeMan's past put it:
> > " One would have had to live in a plastic bubble to be oblivious to
> > the massive, open, intense persecution of the Jews then under way, and
> > which was perfectly evident to someone in de Man's position."
>
> All the more reason for him not to have spoken approvingly
> about Kafka in a newspaper article. Yet he did.
Here's what DeMan says in what you imply was a approving mention of
Kafka
"Gide, Kafka, hemingway, Lawrence--the list could be extended
indefinitely--do nothing but attempt, through methods appropriate
to their own personalities, to penetrate the secrets of the interior
life.
By this shared trait, they show themselves to be not innovators
breaking
with all past traditions, but mere continuators...."
What was the risk in damning Kafka with faint praise?
Your boy was a nazi collaborator who was recognized as one at the
time.
If that makes you uncomfortable, too bad.
J. Del Col
Victor Eremita
news:4dc68fdd.02041...@posting.google.com:
>> Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com>:
>>
>> >> ... In May of '45
>> >> de Man was questioned by the military prosecutor in Antwerp
>> >> and released without any charges. In 1988 the Auditeur Général
>> >> confirmed that de Man hadn't been the object of official
>> >> objections against either his attitude or his activities during
>> >> wartime. _Responses_ 475. Pierre de Ligne (another of the
>> >> Belgians asked about de Man's past) reports being let go by the
>> >> military was significant, since they were very strict with
>> >> accused collaborators, while the civilian prosecutors were less so.
>> >> _Responses_ 433.
>
>
>
> Yeah, yeah. And the French had even more reason to punish Celine, but
> they didn't. DeMan was small potatoes, and he -was-
> called in, not ignored.
But he was ignored. Perhaps you would like to compare him to a theorists
whose theorizing is *actually* relevant to their membership and/or
collaboration with the Nazis (for some reason you've rejected Heidegger as
an example) -- I speak of the political theorist Carl Schmitt:
"Carl Schmitt was arrested by the Russians in Berlin in April 1945,
interrogated and released. In September 1945 he was arrested by the
Americans and held in interment camps until March 1947, when he was
brought to Nuremberg as a potential defendent in the War Crimes Trials.
Although he was released in a matter of weeks without being charged, this
episode has created further suspicion about Scmitt's role in the Thid
Reich..."
What was this reputation:
"From 1933 to 1936 Schmitt did seek to play the role of 'Crown Jurist' of
the Hitler regime. But he never succeeded in playing this role, or in
wielding any influence on Nazi legal theory. More to the point, neither
did he attempt to, nor did he otherwise provide the theoretical impetus
for Nazi foreign policy and aggressive war [the reference is to his works
in the Weimar period, especially _The Concept of the Political_]. From
the end of 1936, and throughout the last eight years of the Third Reich,
Schmitt held no position in the party or the government and consciously
eschewed any attempt to influence Nazi ideology; rather, he confined
himself to his work as a scholar at the University of Berline."
(Both from Bendersky's "Carl Schmitt at Nuremberg" in _Telos_"
So: someone who *attempted* to influence Nazi policy, but was rejected
then retired to a quiet life of scholarship was *questioned* and
*released* (de Man), but was never charged. Note that Schmitt's
internment was nearly two years long -- far longer than de Man's.
What, then, can we conclude from *Schmitt's* declared "innocence" in the
case of de Man? Clearly: de Man's "collobaration" was nearly non-existent
(at worst) and a fiction (at best).
Why do you not hunt *real* targets -- Heidegger and Schmitt to begin with
-- rather than maybe-but-not-likely-targets-at-all?
v.
smw
Michael Zeleny wrote:
>
> smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
> >Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> >>It sounds to me like he was rather like most people in that
> >>respect---not particularly a villain, but no hero either. Understand
> >>here that "no hero"= (to me) someone maybe not too valuable for his
> >>literary criticism.
>
> >I wouldn't call him a hero, either. Even though it seems to me that
> >sheltering Jews in his apartment is already more than many or most
> >did. You can pooh-pooh that. Myself, I'll withhold judgment until
> >I've been in a position to test myself on my courage under
> >totalitarianism.
>
> Your modesty is most becoming. Would you grant judicial authority
> over de Man's kind to those whose courage has been so tested?
I would grant judicial authority to the judiciary within a Rechtsstaat
(what the hell is the English for that)? Everything else is the justice
of the lynch mob, however morally superior the lynchers have at some
point proven themselves to be.
> If so,
> neither of you are too valuable for your output of any genre.
Try that sentence again
s
G*rd*n
| Of course it is. "Postmodernism" is a studied programme of
| sophistry---wordplay and hyperlogicality.
G*rd*n:
| Is there any species of philosophy of which this cannot be
| justly said?
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net>:
| There is no species of philosophy for which this can be justly said.
|
| Doesn't mean you have to like philosophy, or that you
| ought never to enjoy some sophism, but, no, philosophy is, almost
| by definition I'd say, sincere. Wordplay and hyperlogicality are
| not sincere.
|
| For example: I have just finished reading one of the more
| difficult (for me) texts I have ever read, _De Trinitate_ by
| Saint Augustine. Not being Christian myself, I guess I didn't have
| a lot of tolerance for what read to me like angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin
| argumentation. On the other hand, I *could* appreciate what he
| was doing, I could glean many interesting things along the way (there
| is, for instance, a very clear statement by Augustine on the relation
| between original sin and sex which of course permeates and percolates
| through Western history, also his whole schema for the book, in the
| latter half to try and come to terms with the Trinity through seeking
| a psychological "image" thereof in the mind of man, is quite good.
| Anyway, my point is that, even though I disagree with much of what
| Augustine says, I would not accuse him of sophism, either of
| wordplay or of hyperlogicality. What he is doing is, I think, quite
| flawed, but it is philosophy, and distinct from sophism.
You are treating Saint Augustine's work as science fiction.
I doubt if he would appreciate your approach. My impression
of philosophers _qua_ philosophers is that they claim that
their utterances, their language acts, embody or depict or
indicate truth, and are supposed to be taken seriously.
Michael Zeleny
You are equivocating between "judge not, lest ye be judged" and
passing a death sentence. Your commendably modest withdrawal from
pooh-poohing clearly belongs to the former, not the latter practice.
>>If so,
>>neither of you are too valuable for your output of any genre.
>Try that sentence again
You know exactly what it means.
smw
Michael Zeleny wrote:
>smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>
>>>smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Michael S. Morris wrote:
>>>>
>
>>>>>It sounds to me like he was rather like most people in that
>>>>>respect---not particularly a villain, but no hero either. Understand
>>>>>here that "no hero"= (to me) someone maybe not too valuable for his
>>>>>literary criticism.
>>>>>
>
>>>>I wouldn't call him a hero, either. Even though it seems to me that
>>>>sheltering Jews in his apartment is already more than many or most
>>>>did. You can pooh-pooh that. Myself, I'll withhold judgment until
>>>>I've been in a position to test myself on my courage under
>>>>totalitarianism.
>>>>
>
>>>Your modesty is most becoming. Would you grant judicial authority
>>>over de Man's kind to those whose courage has been so tested?
>>>
>
>>I would grant judicial authority to the judiciary within a Rechtsstaat
>>(what the hell is the English for that)? Everything else is the justice
>>of the lynch mob, however morally superior the lynchers have at some
>>point proven themselves to be.
>>
>
>You are equivocating between "judge not, lest ye be judged" and
>passing a death sentence.
>
Not in the least. It's really rather simple -- de Man comes across as
your basic coward, if a bit less cowardly than many. It seems to be
that the ones most likely to condemn him for that are the ones who are
most afraid they'd act similarly or worse under similar circumstances.
I've met a few brave people in my life; none of them seemed especially
eager to score points on their courage.
>Your commendably modest withdrawal from
>pooh-poohing clearly belongs to the former, not the latter practice.
>
>>>If so,
>>>neither of you are too valuable for your output of any genre.
>>>
>>Try that sentence again
>>
>
>You know exactly what it means.
>
No, I really don't. Trying to parse... "if so" -- i.e. if I'd be willing
to let those who've acted more bravely under Nazi rule judge de Man
(since it seems that you mean "judge" rather than "exercise the power of
a judiciary) --, then "neither of you" -- i.e. neither de Man nor I --
"are too valuable for your output of any genre" -- are too valuable for
our output -- i.e. his or my writing? "of any genre" -- writing and
other kind of output? I don't even know what it would mean to be "too
valuable for one's output" in any case, much less in the context of a 21
year old's less than exemplary conduct.
s
But perhaps a kind soul will interfere and give a plausible reading.
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
> Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
>
>I said:
> Of course it is. "Postmodernism" is a studied programme of
> sophistry---wordplay and hyperlogicality.
>Gordon:
> Is there any species of philosophy of which this cannot be
> justly said?
>
>There is no species of philosophy for which this can be justly said.
>
>Doesn't mean you have to like philosophy, or that you
>ought never to enjoy some sophism, but, no, philosophy is, almost
>by definition I'd say, sincere. Wordplay and hyperlogicality are
>not sincere.
>
Boy, Plato and Hegel eliminated from philosophy in one fell swoop, and
that's just for "wordplay."
Onward and upward, as my kids' soccer coach says.
s
Kater Moggin
> DeMan was small potatoes, and he -was-
> called in, not ignored.
de Man was called in by the military prosecutor, subjected
to a day of questioning, and released without any charges.
According to the Auditeur Général, he was not the object of any
official objections to either his attitude or his activities
during wartime. _Responses_ 475. Pierre Ligne claims that the
military prosecutors were stricter than their civilian
counterparts in dealing with accused collaborators. _Responses_
433.
> DeMan was well known as a collaborator
Georges Goriely, an active Resistance member, says he knew
de Man as a trusted friend. "He knew about my life and my
clandestine activities, and I never had any hesitations about
expressing my views to him, which in addition he never
contested." _Responses_ 436. A Jewish couple named Esther and
Nahum Sluzny knew de Man as a guy who sheltered them in his
apartment when they found themselves on the street after curfew.
A Jewish woman named Hilda Rosner knew him as a person who
used his position to give her a job. And a few people knew him
as someone who helped print a banned journal linked to the
French Resistance. References in my earlier posts, if anyone's
looking for them.
> your citation is useless.
Useless to you, since you're trying to present a one-sided
picture. Useful to me and anyone else interested in the
complexities of the story. Did de Man contribute to a Nazi-run
journal? Yes. Did he publish anti-Semitic remarks? Yes.
Was he trusted by some Resistance members? Yes. Did he betray
that trust? No. Did he help print a banned Resistance
journal? Yes. Did he shelter a Jewish couple and give jobs to
Jews banned from working? Yes and yes. Recall Shoshona
Felman's point about the error of reducing history's half-tints
to black-and-white.
Moggin:
>> de Man didn't propose herding Jews into exile, not even in
>> the now-famous newspaper article, where he merely remarked
>> about the possible effect that would have on European
>> literature, if it came to pass. He claimed that there would be
>> no great consequences from a literary perspective. In
>> context, he's making an argument against anti-Semitic hysteria:
>> the article contends that Jews _haven't_ caused a decay in
>> European culture on grounds they've been of "little importance."
del Col:
> Bullshit.
Not a bit. You said de Man proposed herding the Jews into
exile. You were wrong, since he doesn't make any such
proposal. He remarks about the effects that plan would have in
the event it was applied. Details above.
> "....despite semitic interference in all aspects of European life, our
> civilization has shown that its fundamental nature is healthy."
The anti-Semitism is obvious and undeniable; but as I said
back in the beginning, there's more going on. The article
argues _against_ the idea that Jews have caused Western Civ. to
decay, claiming that it's in good health, and that anyway
Jews don't play an important cultural role. Ergo, it's arguing
against anti-Semitic hysteria. It explicitly criticizes
"vulgar anti-Semitism," and fails to give a refined alternative.
Etc.
> "What's more, one can thus see that a solution to the Jewish
> problem that would lead to the creation of a Jewish colony isolated
> from Europe would not have, for the literary life of the West,
> regrettable consequences. It would lose, in all, some
> personalities of mediocre worth..."
There you go: not a proposal to ship off the Jews, as you
falsely claimed, but a comment on the consequences, which
would supposedly be small. Again, the article is disputing the
idea that the Jews are responsible for the decay of Western
Civ. on grounds it's in fine shape, and the Jews don't make any
big contribution.
> Here's what DeMan says in what you imply was a approving mention of
> Kafka
> "Gide, Kafka, hemingway, Lawrence--the list could be extended
> indefinitely--do nothing but attempt, through methods appropriate
> to their own personalities, to penetrate the secrets of the interior
> life. By this shared trait, they show themselves to be not innovators
> breaking with all past traditions, but mere continuators...."
> What was the risk in damning Kafka with faint praise?
What's your excuse for misrepresenting the article? It's
not damning with faint praise -- it's defending Kafka and
those others against the criticism that "modern poetry and the
modern novel were only monstrous outgrowths of the world
war" by contending that the forms which "seem most
revolutionary to us, such as surrealism and futurism have, in
reality, an orthodox ancestry from which they cannot be
detached." Cf. _Mimesis_, where Auerbach offers the same case
regarding Woolf, Proust, and Joyce.
> Your boy was a nazi collaborator who was recognized as one at the
> time.
de Man was also recognized by Jews and Resistance members
as a trusted friend and ally.
Kater Moggin
> I'm afraid that Moggin's evidence reads to me that,
> no, de Man wasn't a Nazi, but, yes, de Man didn't resist
> Nazidom, either.
Work on your reading skills. The evidence I offered shows
that de Man did resist the Nazis, albeit in small ways:
finding jobs for Jews prohibited from work, sheltering a Jewish
couple in his apartment when they found themselves on the
street after curfew, and helping to print a banned journal with
links to the Resistance.
Kater Moggin
> Del Col gets a little over the top somertimes, but I thought
> I had guarded against that by distinguishing between "the
> serious charge against de Man" and del Col's effusions.
You didn't mention del Col's effusions. You falsely said
I mischaracterized the charges against de Man.
Kater Moggin
>> According to a Resistance member named Edward Colinet, de
>> Man wrote the article unwillingly. "All witnesses agree he
>> did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his livelihood."
>> _Responses_ 430. Another acquaintance, Gilbert Jaeger, offers
>> the recollection that "this was an article Paul de Man was
>> asked to write. For him, it was an exercise - probably a very'
>> disagreeable one - in what you call 'skating on thin ice."
>> _Responses_ 435. Witnesses also agree de Man never showed any
>> signs of anti-Semitism in the years that they knew him, and
>> wasn't sympathetic with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, he
>> gave his help, albeit in small ways, to Jews and to the
>> Resistance. If he was a Nazi, then like I said, it's too damn
>> bad there were't more like him.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
> careful moggin - he reluctantly made an argument against anti-Semitic
> hysteria implies he was in favour of anti-Semitic hysteria.
Careful, James, you're illiterate. I said that according
to a Resistance member named Colinet, de Man wrote the
article with reluctance. _Not_ that he was reluctant to argue
against anti-Semitic hysteria.
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
Mikhail:
I'd say you have it exactly backwards:
[Harry Frankfurt quote on _correctness_ v. _sincerity_]
A fine observation on its own, and perhaps the most
interesting thing that's been said in this thread, but I'm
afraid that, having thought it over, I stand by my point. That
is, when I try to apply it against what I said, it doesn't fly
without there being some redefinition of "philosophy" into some tiny
subset of what is commonly understood by the term. I, it
should be clear, am holding out for a common understanding
of that term. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas are
philosophers in that they do sincerely seek truth. In other
words, I am calling them all four philosophers even though
they plainly disagree on fundamental points.
I think my example of Augustine should make it clear that
I use the word "philosophy" to mean something other than
correctness or truth (given that I think Augustine incorrect
on several main points---one being almost a caricature of
a position you once argued with me). Furthermore, the mark
of the sophist isn't so much error but insincerity. It's arguing
to make argument---without hope in (or maybe faith in) truth.
It is true that sincerity is not a sign of correctness,
but I specifically haven't claimed that it was.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
G*rd*n wrote:
You are treating Saint Augustine's work as science fiction.
As a western by Zane Grey, actually, but you get the idea.
Gordon:
I doubt if he would appreciate your approach. My impression
of philosophers _qua_ philosophers is that they claim that
their utterances, their language acts, embody or depict or
indicate truth, and are supposed to be taken seriously.
I don't know about you, but I take my westerns
quite seriously. I cry every time Franco gets it
at the end of "The Dirty Dozen", and when Willis
puts that lighter to the spilt aviation fuel in
"Die Harder" and intones "Whoopee kiy yiy yay, motherfucker!",
I tell you there is no more sublime moment in all
of literature.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
G*rd*n
| You are treating Saint Augustine's work as science fiction.
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net>:
| As a western by Zane Grey, actually, but you get the idea.
Gordon:
| I doubt if he would appreciate your approach. My impression
| of philosophers _qua_ philosophers is that they claim that
| their utterances, their language acts, embody or depict or
| indicate truth, and are supposed to be taken seriously.
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net>:
| I don't know about you, but I take my westerns
| quite seriously. I cry every time Franco gets it
| at the end of "The Dirty Dozen", and when Willis
| puts that lighter to the spilt aviation fuel in
| "Die Harder" and intones "Whoopee kiy yiy yay, motherfucker!",
| I tell you there is no more sublime moment in all
| of literature.
I would say science fiction, because it is in that genre that
notions of alternate worlds may be raised as a normal procedure,
for example a universe whereof the god existed as the Trinity,
something Philip K. Dick might have come up with. It is
true that Westerns posit an alternate reality, but it is not
usually an issue within the text itself or its normal discursive
environment. I'm just trying to point to the disjunction
between your concept of Augustine's work and his.
That being the case, what's the difference to you between
Augustine and Heidegger?
Jeff Inman
>
> Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
>
> I said:
> No, I didn't write that. What *I* wrote was:
> "I guess I don't understand. My impression of the
> serious charge against De Man was not that he *was*
> a Nazi, as Moggin seemed to want to defend him
> against, but that he collaborated with them. More
> specifically, that the morass of moral relativism
> which seems to center his philosophy (and indeed
> most postmodernisms yet encountered) left the
> man with no reason to resist Nazidom."
> Jeff:
> Essay question: can a moral code (of any stripe) ever
> provide a *reason* for anything?
>
> No. The "of any stripe" betrays it as such. It presupposes
> there could be more than one, that therefore any one of them
> could not be compelling.
Not gonna touch that.
> Jeff:
> I mean, my take on the Nazis (far removed in
> space and time) would be something along the lines
> of "fuck you, you fucking nazis!". I can conjure
> up various values that resonate with such a
> statement. But where is *reason* in any of
> that?
>
> There is none, as you put it, but post hoc rationalization.
> Sure. As post hoc, it is cheap. The real question is what
> I would have done had I been in his (or her) shoes. And,
> I don't know. But, post hoc I *can* see that "m r" was a
> huge chunk of the problem (the problem not of Nazism itself,
> but collaboration, cooperation, acquiescence in the same).
>
> Jeff:
> (I distinguish reason from rationalization, you
> recall.)
>
> And recall that I include first principles, believed in
> by faith, as part of reason. I.e. reason is not just
> steps of syllogistic logic.
>
> Jeff:
> So, how does a moral absolutist impel his
> argument rationally?
>
> How does the Pythagorean Theorem impel itself
> rationally?
Well, in it's proper formulation the first word would
probably be "if". No problem there. I think we're agreed
on that.
> I mean, people are perfectly free to
> disbelieve it, it would be a safe bet that most
> persons on the planet wouldn't be able to tell you
> what it is, if asked right now, and yet people who
> care about the correct computation of the distance
> between two points have to use it.
>
> Jeff:
> I am genuinely curious. (I don't have time for
> much of a discussion, so you get the last word.)
> It's a puzzle that fascinates me. It seems that
> a rationalist moral absolutist would have
> to assume that his values were logically necessary.
>
> I have no understanding whatsoever of what you expect
> to get by insisting on logic and nothing but logic.
But I don't insist on that. Maybe I mis-parsed the
words you insisted on, above, but it looked to me
as though you were saying that moral relativism
was enervating to one's capacity for reason, and
that this in turn prevented one from being able to
come up with a moral objection to e.g. Nazism.
From the way you're sounding now, I guess we're agreed
that capacity for reason is pretty much irrelevant
to the ability to come up with a moral objection
(to anything). That the first step is really something
else. You call it faith, I'll call it valuation --
what the heck, I'll call it faith, too. But anyhow,
that is the "given" from which moral argument proceeds.
But now I'm confused about why you would have any
complaints about moral relativism, because, so it seems
to me anyhow, moral relativism derives precisely from
this very recognition we have just made about the
foundations of moral argument.
> With logic *alone* you haven't got a reason for not
> stepping off a 12th-story balcony and expecting to
> float on air. I've just been reading Augustine, whose mantra
> always seems to be that understanding comes by reason
> *after* faith. I.e., we believe first, but we do not
> stop there and accept that as the end, but we reason
> from faith to a rational understanding, or at least
> as far as we can go to a rational understanding. Because
> reasoning is what we do, what we are.
I call that rationalization, but it wouldn't be the first
time that Augustine struck me as a simp. No offense.
(Ah crap, that probably did offend. Go ahead and like him.
Seriously.)
> Jeff:
> We covered "existential necessity" last time, but I don't
> recall it having anything to do with reason. In fact, by
> definition, it was what we had in lieu of logical necessity.
> I take you to be someone who prides himself on thoughtful
> moral argument, and so I want to hear it from you.
> How does one do it rationally? [Or does too much rationality
> actually serve to *weaken* a moral argument? My suspicion is
> that "moral absolutists" sense this as the threat in
> "postmodernism", whatever the hell that is.
>
> Of course it is. "Postmodernism" is a studied programme of
> sophistry---wordplay and hyperlogicality.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. If you're agreeing that a severely rational
examination of moral arguments reduces their sway, it doesn't
seem to be consistent to also have it that such rational
investigation is superficial. If one could brush it aside
with faith, it wouldn't threaten. Would it work to say that
the threatening thing is to have one's faith under scrutiny?
It's the word you picked. It seems to me that the way out
of that threat is to give up presuming to rely on reason.
As you suggest, and I fully agree, reason alone is inadequate
for just about anything. In fact, for anything. It is a
totally useless tool, absent some values, or some givens,
and perhaps an objective, something to defend or destroy.
> What you don't
> seem to understand is that hyperlogicality is not the
> same thing as reason. Even with the Pythagorean Theorem,
> remember, logic alone is not enough.
Well, but as you said, the first step is not rational.
(Fine with me, by the way, since I'm not very rational
myself. Irrational foundations feel a lot more comfortable
to me.) Just as with our discussion re the philosophy of
science, it seems to me that the situation is something
like this: a rational investigator will discover
that the foundations of the ediface are not provable.
This doesn't cause the ediface to crash, but it does
allow an appreciation of the way that the seemingly-necessary
building is integrated with the values of the humans who
investigate it. It's sort of an analogy. The postulates
and axioms that support the Pythagorean Theorem are analogous
to the articles of faith that underly the moral absolutist
case(s) against Nazism.
you said: "[...] the morass of moral relativism [...] left
the man with no reason to resist Nazidom." That was the
thing that caught my attention, that word "reason", as
though a moral absolutist would characteristically have
a *reason* to guide him. But I think we're now clear that
he doesn't have a reason, he has a faith, plus some thinking.
I don't denegrate his faith, mind you, I just resent it
if he tells me that it is a reason, as though to compel
with rational necessity. (Faith can have reason too,
a structure and prinicples of interaction that are guided
by necessity -- maybe I'll find the time and strength to
pick up that thread with James Whitehead, again-- but that
misses the point here.)
> Jeff:
> But that suspicion
> is perhaps contradicted by the moral absolutists being so
> often devotees of capital-R Reason, whatever the hell that is.]
>
> I think this is a Nietzschean caricature about moral absolutists
> and reason, and not at all representative of the
> human alternative to moral relativism.
Maybe I've made myself clearer now. I have no grudge
against your values. But I thought for a moment that
you were claiming to have reason on your side.
Regards,
Jeff
James Whitehead
Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com> writes
>Kater Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com>:
>
>>> According to a Resistance member named Edward Colinet, de
>>> Man wrote the article unwillingly. "All witnesses agree he
>>> did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his livelihood."
>>> _Responses_ 430. Another acquaintance, Gilbert Jaeger, offers
>>> the recollection that "this was an article Paul de Man was
>>> asked to write. For him, it was an exercise - probably a very'
>>> disagreeable one - in what you call 'skating on thin ice."
>>> _Responses_ 435. Witnesses also agree de Man never showed any
>>> signs of anti-Semitism in the years that they knew him, and
>>> wasn't sympathetic with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, he
>>> gave his help, albeit in small ways, to Jews and to the
>>> Resistance. If he was a Nazi, then like I said, it's too damn
>>> bad there were't more like him.
>
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>
>> careful moggin - he reluctantly made an argument against anti-Semitic
>> hysteria implies he was in favour of anti-Semitic hysteria.
>
> Careful, James, you're illiterate. I said that according
>to a Resistance member named Colinet,
>. _Not_ that he was reluctant to argue
>against anti-Semitic hysteria.
>
you said
"he's making an argument against anti-Semitic hysteria:"
and that
"de Man wrote the article with reluctance" according to a resistance
member - and "All witnesses agree he did it reluctantly,"
are you now saying this was *not* true - or irrelevant? if so why bring
it up? In other words you think he wasn't reluctant?
Are you trying to have it both ways - if he was reluctant to write the
article why? if it as you say makes an argument against anti-Semitic
hysteria? Maybe you read the article as such but he didn't write it as
an argument against anti-Semitic hysteria at all!
Your resistance source if true and if you believe it true demonstrates
De Mann was aware of some guilty feeling, but why? if as you say "he's
making an argument against anti-Semitic hysteria:".
--
James Whitehead
Kater Moggin
>>>> According to a Resistance member named Edward Colinet, de
>>>> Man wrote the article unwillingly. "All witnesses agree he
>>>> did it reluctantly, fearing to lose his livelihood."
>>>> _Responses_ 430. Another acquaintance, Gilbert Jaeger, offers
>>>> the recollection that "this was an article Paul de Man was
>>>> asked to write. For him, it was an exercise - probably a very'
>>>> disagreeable one - in what you call 'skating on thin ice."
>>>> _Responses_ 435. Witnesses also agree de Man never showed any
>>>> signs of anti-Semitism in the years that they knew him, and
>>>> wasn't sympathetic with the Nazi regime. On the contrary, he
>>>> gave his help, albeit in small ways, to Jews and to the
>>>> Resistance. If he was a Nazi, then like I said, it's too damn
>>>> bad there were't more like him.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>>> careful moggin - he reluctantly made an argument against anti-Semitic
>>> hysteria implies he was in favour of anti-Semitic hysteria.
Moggin:
>> Careful, James, you're illiterate. I said that according
>> to a Resistance member named Colinet, de Man wrote the
>> article with reluctance. _Not_ that he was reluctant to argue
>> against anti-Semitic hysteria.
James:
> you said ...
I said according to the guy I named, de Man was reluctant
to write the article. You misread, as you so often do, and
claimed I said he was reluctant to argue against anti-Semitism.
I corrected you.
James Whitehead
writes
>I would say science fiction, because it is in that genre that
>notions of alternate worlds may be raised as a normal procedure,
But other worlds are also raised in fables - fairy stories and such
books as Lord of the Rings, which i don't think is science fiction?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
>You are treating Saint Augustine's work as science fiction.
>I doubt if he would appreciate your approach. My impression
>of philosophers _qua_ philosophers is that they claim that
>their utterances, their language acts, embody or depict or
>indicate truth, and are supposed to be taken seriously.
I've often found the philosophers i have met have been less keen to say
what is true but more wishing to point out the inconsistencies of anyone
who does. And hasn't philosophy always had the idea of questioning?
Which rules out Augustine.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
Moggin <mog...@attbiTHORN.com> writes
Where did i say you claimed this? I said be "careful" - but you are it
seems not. You offered evidence that he was reluctant - from a couple of
sources, you didn't say he was - and i didn't say you said he was! But
you gave evidence of his reluctance. And you said that the article made
an argument against anti-Semitic hysteria. So you seem to be arguing
that the article was against anti-Semitic hysteria and that those
around him cited him as being reluctant to write it. Why would he be
reluctant to write what you think is an argument against anti-Semitic
hysteria?
--
James Whitehead
G*rd*n
| >You are treating Saint Augustine's work as science fiction.
| >I doubt if he would appreciate your approach. My impression
| >of philosophers _qua_ philosophers is that they claim that
| >their utterances, their language acts, embody or depict or
| >indicate truth, and are supposed to be taken seriously.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| I've often found the philosophers i have met have been less keen to say
| what is true but more wishing to point out the inconsistencies of anyone
| who does. And hasn't philosophy always had the idea of questioning?
| Which rules out Augustine.
There is a kind of philosophy which is really antiphilosophy;
a critical investigation of the uses to which language and other
symbolic systems can be put. It think is generally refreshingly
destructive, e.g. "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber
musst er schweigen" or Hume's suggestion that metaphysics be
cast into the flames. But we still don't have the ideal
philosophy, one which, having destroyed all the others,
will destroy itself as well. (Perhaps there is somewhere an
as-yet-untranslated Buddhist sutra that will do the trick....)
Besides, we are reminded by Jesus that one who casts out a
devil may simply make room for several worse ones. So -- let
us continue poking around in the dump. How do Augustine and
Heidegger differ, really? "Das Nichts nichtet" -- it sounds
so medieval.
Lee Rudolph
>Besides, we are reminded by Jesus that one who casts out a
>devil may simply make room for several worse ones. So -- let
>us continue poking around in the dump. How do Augustine and
>Heidegger differ, really? "Das Nichts nichtet" -- it sounds
>so medieval.
Stille Nicht, heilige Nicht...
Lee Rudolph
smw
Don't be such a dork. He reluctanty wrote an anti-semitic article in
which he argued against _hysterical_ (or "vulgar") antisemitism.
s
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
>
> Friday, the 19th of April, 2002
>
>Mikhail:
> I'd say you have it exactly backwards:
> [Harry Frankfurt quote on _correctness_ v. _sincerity_]
>
>A fine observation on its own, and perhaps the most
>interesting thing that's been said in this thread,
>
if entirely irrelevant, since the authors under discussion are hardly
the ones who react to the (ancient) thread of scepticism in Western
philosophy by
"turn[ing] toward trying to provide honest representations of himself."
Just another strawtarget, if especially flimsy.
>I, it
>
>I, it
>should be clear, am holding out for a common understanding
>of that term. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas are
>philosophers in that they do sincerely seek truth.
>
Your mistake is to assume that "wordplay" or "hyperlogicality" and
"sincerely seeking truth" are in any way mutually exclusive.
James Whitehead
anti-Semitic hysteria:" You see in moggin's and perhaps your? attempt to
help de man out of his involvement you come up with a ridiculous notion
- that he deliberately writes an article in which he opposes a form of
anti-Semitism in a pro nazi paper, and he does so reluctantly. What was
he reluctant about - association with Nazis or being seen as anti-
Semitic. Two issues here. Maybe - just maybe he was a Nazi sympathizer -
more perhaps he was anti-Semitic - many intellectuals and ordinary guys
were at this time. Many esp. in the states were quite sympathetic to the
Nazis.
Just to show a lack of bias - to the other side of this argument - so
what if he was a Nazi, you can change your ideas you know without being
a moral relativist - e.g. St Paul and St. Peter.
Ho Hum a dork am i and an illiterate one at that? You'll be calling me a
yid next?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
writes
>G*rd*n <g...@panix.com>:
>| >You are treating Saint Augustine's work as science fiction.
>| >I doubt if he would appreciate your approach. My impression
>| >of philosophers _qua_ philosophers is that they claim that
>| >their utterances, their language acts, embody or depict or
>| >indicate truth, and are supposed to be taken seriously.
>
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>| I've often found the philosophers i have met have been less keen to say
>| what is true but more wishing to point out the inconsistencies of anyone
>| who does. And hasn't philosophy always had the idea of questioning?
>| Which rules out Augustine.
>
>There is a kind of philosophy which is really antiphilosophy;
>a critical investigation of the uses to which language and other
>symbolic systems can be put. It think is generally refreshingly
>destructive, e.g. "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber
>musst er schweigen" or Hume's suggestion that metaphysics be
>cast into the flames.
I dont think i'd call the cure destructive :-)
> But we still don't have the ideal
>philosophy, one which, having destroyed all the others,
>will destroy itself as well. (Perhaps there is somewhere an
>as-yet-untranslated Buddhist sutra that will do the trick....)
Isnt Derrida a candidate?
>
>Besides, we are reminded by Jesus that one who casts out a
>devil may simply make room for several worse ones. So -- let
>us continue poking around in the dump. How do Augustine and
>Heidegger differ, really? "Das Nichts nichtet" -- it sounds
>so medieval.
>
I think one or many devils is missing his point, on a desert island you
would want a doctor before a metaphysician i think?
--
James Whitehead
Michael Zeleny
Human modesty is overflowing everywhere you go. But untested bravery
bears no witness. Conversely, putting it to a test comes to scoring
points on courage. Quibbling about the difference made by restricting
the audience for these points to their adversarial target would not
get you very far, "For the Gods are everywhere."
If more needs to be said, I submit that your defense of de Man is a
scrofulous special pleading of the totalitarian herd atoning for
public acts of global odium with private dispensation of local
charity. My credentials for condemning this practice are available
on request.
>>Your commendably modest withdrawal from
>>pooh-poohing clearly belongs to the former, not the latter practice.
>>>>If so,
>>>>neither of you are too valuable for your output of any genre.
>>>Try that sentence again
>>You know exactly what it means.
>No, I really don't. Trying to parse... "if so" -- i.e. if I'd be
>willing to let those who've acted more bravely under Nazi rule judge
>de Man (since it seems that you mean "judge" rather than "exercise
>the power of a judiciary) --, then "neither of you" -- i.e. neither
>de Man nor I -- "are too valuable for your output of any genre" --
>are too valuable for our output -- i.e. his or my writing? "of any
>genre" -- writing and other kind of output? I don't even know what it
>would mean to be "too valuable for one's output" in any case, much
>less in the context of a 21 year old's less than exemplary conduct.
>
> s
>
> But perhaps a kind soul will interfere and give a plausible reading.
You know the jill drill. Keep wiggling your fingers, and you'll get it.
smw
James Whitehead wrote:
This is slow going... he wrote an antisemitic article, reluctantly. In
this article, he argued against hysterical anti-semitism, but not
against genteel, laid-back, dismissive anti-semitism. If this poses
conceptual problems to you, I don't see what they are. The most
plausible assumption given what else appears to be known of him then is
that he didn't have the guts to say, "no, you stinking nazi
collaborators, I'm not going to write anything anti-semitic for you,"
but he had just enough decency to keep it as light as he thought he
could get away with.
>Just to show a lack of bias - to the other side of this argument - so
>what if he was a Nazi, you can change your ideas you know without being
>a moral relativist - e.g. St Paul and St. Peter.
>
>Ho Hum a dork am i and an illiterate one at that? You'll be calling me a
>yid next?
>
I'm calling you a moron, right now.
s
>
smw
Michael Zeleny wrote:
It certainly can't wherever you go.
>But untested bravery
>bears no witness. Conversely, putting it to a test comes to scoring
>points on courage.
>
True enough. So let me rephrase -- the only ones likely to deny that de
Man acted with some, if not with great courage are the ones who have
proven themselves cowards.
> Quibbling about the difference made by restricting
>the audience for these points to their adversarial target would not
>get you very far, "For the Gods are everywhere."
>
The only surviving God is the irony monster.
>If more needs to be said, I submit that your defense of de Man is a
>scrofulous special pleading of the totalitarian herd atoning for
>public acts of global odium with private dispensation of local
>charity. My credentials for condemning this practice are available
>on request.
>
A lot of tedious drivel by you is available on request, and, as the
record shows, without request as well.
s
Michael S. Morris
Saturday, the 20th of April, 2002
G*rd*n wrote:
I'm just trying to point to the disjunction
between your concept of Augustine's work and his.
I thought you were, but I also think that you are just
wrong about it. Augustine, I think, did not expect
me to agree with him. In fact I think he figured
many of his readers would neither understand nor believe
in what it is he is talking about, belief being a
matter of predestined grace from God in the first place, and
understanding being a matter which can only come about
by reasoning from a starting point already in belief.
G*rd*n:
That being the case, what's the difference to you between
Augustine and Heidegger?
I've read a chunk of Augustine (_The Confessions_,
_The City of God_, _On Free Choice of the Will_,
_On Christian Doctrine_, _Encheiridion on Faith, Hope,
and Charity_, and _The Trinity_). I've never read
any Heidegger (I mean other than bits of his
Rektoratsrede sell-out to the Nazi regime as quoted
by Allan Bloom in that famous long chapter).
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Saturday, the 20th of April, 2002
Mikhail:
I'd say you have it exactly backwards:
[Harry Frankfurt quote on _correctness_ v. _sincerity_]
I said:
A fine observation on its own, and perhaps the most
interesting thing that's been said in this thread,
Silke:
if entirely irrelevant, since the authors under
discussion are hardly the ones who react to the
(ancient) thread of scepticism in Western philosophy by
"turn[ing] toward trying to provide honest representations
of himself."
Just another strawtarget, if especially flimsy.
Not at all. Mikhail was twitting *me* for requiring
sincerity before I'd call it philosophy. He was not twitting
"the authors under discussion". Unfortunately for the twit,
what Frankfurt said is not that the appeal to _sincerity_ is
a dodge from philosophy, but a dodge from truth. And, I was
allowing for the promulgation of falsehood and error under
the rubric of what I would call "philosophy".
And, as I think about it, I still consider that insincerity
*is* of a definitional necessity anti-philosophical.
I said:
I, it should be clear, am holding out for a common understanding
of that term. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas are
philosophers in that they do sincerely seek truth.
Silke:
Your mistake is to assume that "wordplay" or "hyperlogicality" and
"sincerely seeking truth" are in any way mutually exclusive.
No, *your mistake* is to assume that my words "wordplay and
hyperlogicality" (N.B., *not* "wordplay or hyperlogicality")
were somehow meant to be carved in stone and defended to
the last man. Sincerity v. insincerity was clearly what I
was after in the philosophy v. sophistry distinction.
I certainly agree that Plato engages in wordplay. I also
know that Augustine does. I don't recall Aristotle ever
doing so, in fact I remember his oevre as being very dry indeed.
But maybe I'm wrong about that, and I am willing to be corrected
by someone with more knowledge of Aristotle in the Greek than
I have---i.e. someone who has made more than just one read-through
of the whole of his writings in English translation, plus
a few repeats of selected works such as the _Politics_
and _Nichomachean Ethics_. However, none of these authors
engage in what I would call "hyperlogicality", and the
"wordplay" seems to me always to be rhetorical finery subservient
to a text which is sincerely pointed at reasoning out something.
Ergo, none of them would actually classify as sophist according
to the criterion I advanced.
In fact, the criterion looks better to me as you ask
me to look at it more closely. For instance, I would
consider Nietzsche a philosopher, not a sophist. He
certainly engages in wordplay. And he engages in
ridicule of others' opinions. But I sense in him that this is not
merely destructive for destruction's sake, that he sincerely
seeks some sort of truth beyond or behind. Doesn't mean I agree
with him, since the half his purported destructions are just
psychological nonsense. But, there did exist (and do exist)
people he targeted fairly, and I don't sense that his logicality
is too much, uprooted from an arguable at least assessment
of what it is he is attacking.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> Saturday, the 20th of April, 2002
>
>...
>I said:
> I, it should be clear, am holding out for a common understanding
> of that term. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas are
> philosophers in that they do sincerely seek truth.
>Silke:
> Your mistake is to assume that "wordplay" or "hyperlogicality" and
> "sincerely seeking truth" are in any way mutually exclusive.
>
>No, *your mistake* is to assume that my words "wordplay and
>hyperlogicality" (N.B., *not* "wordplay or hyperlogicality")
>were somehow meant to be carved in stone and defended to
>the last man. Sincerity v. insincerity was clearly what I
>was after in the philosophy v. sophistry distinction.
>
So, when you said that
"wordplay and hyperlogicality are
not sincere," you meant to say that they are, of course, sincere as long as engaged in by the people you perceive to be sincere?
>I certainly agree that Plato engages in wordplay. I also
>know that Augustine does. I don't recall Aristotle ever
>doing so, in fact I remember his oevre as being very dry indeed.
>
the Aristotle scholars of my acquaintance insist that he jokes a lot,
but they haven't come up with the most convincing examples
>However, none of these authors
>engage in what I would call "hyperlogicality",
>
Well, perhaps you want to elaborate the notion of "hyperlogicality"
then; a dialogue like the _Meno_ strikes me as just that, if, of course,
only for as long as convenient.
>and the
>"wordplay" seems to me always to be rhetorical finery subservient
>to a text which is sincerely pointed at reasoning out something.
>
so perhaps we also need an elaboration of "wordplay" that would, in
itself, point to its own lack of sincerity.
...
>In fact, the criterion looks better to me as you ask
>me to look at it more closely. For instance, I would
>consider Nietzsche a philosopher, not a sophist. He
>certainly engages in wordplay. And he engages in
>ridicule of others' opinions.
>
So, again, we're at a point when wordplay and hyperlogicality are
philosophical if engaged by philosophers and unphilosophical if engaged
by non-philosophers.
>But I sense in him that this is not
>merely destructive for destruction's sake, that he sincerely
>seeks some sort of truth beyond or behind.
>
And who would be on the other side of the fence? Cioran?