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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On August 15 2016 13:10 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +This is why, to Marx, religion is a renversed conciousness of the world, because it's some kind of illusion (due to the consumption of opium, the metaphore is quite beautiful) that makes you struggle for something (the afterlife ?) that does not exist (at least not in this life), and by doing so you actually permit the reproduction of what is the true source of your suffering (the exploitation and the alienation). Marx hates religion because for him the proof of truth lies in power through action, whereas the ideal reflection of man through religion presents him with a contemplative truth immune to both action and power, which for Marx is synonymous with a lie (or at best a scholastic truth.) Marx hates religion for the exact same reason that the poor have always loved it. The difference in their ethical valuations of the same phenomenon is entirely arbitrary; unless you are on the same page as Marx when he identifies the "real" with the "good," of "illusory" with "bad," and when he's essentially a materialist when addressing the mind-body problem.
Why do you need all that palaverous flimflam when you could have gotten to the bolded point in one sentence? I didn't know there were a whole lot of serious Cartesian dualists left.
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Because the things you bolded were shared between Marx and a host of other people. The issue with Marx was that the ability to recognise reality from illusion is secondary, the thing was to change the social conditions by which reality can be recognised, and man can consequently enjoy real happiness rather than his illusory happiness through religion.
And if you ask me what the difference between those two things is, I don't know. One can only deduce that human happiness isn't Marx's ultimate ethical goal, because it would then be absurd to try to distinguish the two. Behind all that happiness talk was the struggle to attain a higher consciousness, and in his generation most Germans still took that as a self-evident task of philosophy. It all went pretty sour a few decades later.
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On August 15 2016 05:44 Koorb wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 04:17 OtherWorld wrote:On August 15 2016 02:46 Koorb wrote:On August 14 2016 23:43 WhiteDog wrote:
I don't really understand why but somehow the decision to ban burkini was accepted by the administrative tribunal of Nice - I was sure that it was going to be rejected. Maybe the state council will refute this. Either way, this is a clear indication that the current tolerance towards muslims is going down in France, now I don't know the specific of Nice so maybe the burkini was a real problem at the beach.
But considering the arguments used (that the burkini was some kind of indirect support for isis) it clearly shows that people are less tolerant. « No freedom for the enemies of freedom » © Louis Antoine de Saint-Just The decision of the court makes sense given how the ban was motivated by the city council. Great thing about that quote is that you can hardly apply it to reality, unless you have a really strict definition of freedom or want to end up with a self-destructive state. It is also based on a wonderful black/white world view where you're either an ennemy of freedom (whatever that means) or a "freedom supremacist". You've got it completely upside-down. In Saint-Just's mind, the definition of freedom is as far as a black and white worldviews as possible. What the quote actually means is that any ideology or system of belief that seek to exist in a secular republic has to coexist peacefully within it, and accept that other ideologies benefit from the same liberty. In return for this acceptance, it earns the right to advocate an infinite range of opinions (under the law). But the moment an ideology starts to deny the right of others to exist and to be expressed, then it should be shunned and denounced. If this ideology (ie. islamism in our discussion) doesn't accept otherness, its freedoms must be revoked. That's the meaning of Saint-Just's words.
Yes, that's all good and nice. Except that it completely misses the point that ideologies are not entities moved by a single will, but that it is only a basis for ideologists, who are many and diverse. In practice, there are no ideologies, only ideologists, and using an ideology or entity as an excuse to deprive people of their rights is both dumb and disrespectful of basic human decency.
In other words, an ideology does not deny the right of others to exist. Individuals do that. Thus, what needs to happen is not shunning and denouncing an ideology (because of the "Extremism breeds extremism" law, that can only be counterproductive, and I bet you'd be hard pressed to find an historical example of this succeeding), but understanding why individuals become ideologists and start to change their behavior.
Seeing the world as "ideologies", "entities", fighting each other and not as individual beings trying - struggling - to live together is a sure way to fuck things up and end up with blood on each side, because as you dehumanize individuals into big groups, you lose touch with reality and start to think that mindless violence is a legit way of doing things. What is true for jihadists - ie, dumping everyone into the "apostate" category is a psychological trick to make it easier to kill people - is just as true for us : dumping everyone wearing religious signs related to Islam or showing signs of being a active believer as "jihadist" is a psychological trick to make it easier to deny people's rights, and that is worrying.
And this is why you end up with a black/white view of the world and of freedom : you forget that within an ideology, everyone's not uniform, and that you'll have various degrees of following. And every time you make the intellectual abuse of giving group responsability where there only exists individual responsability, you push new individuals towards radicalization.
Our Republic's motto is liberté, égalité, fraternité, not laïcité, sécurité, uniformité.
On August 15 2016 05:44 Koorb wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 04:36 TheDwf wrote:On August 15 2016 03:47 TheDwf wrote:
Nope. A significant part of the muslim population is on a crusade (well, on a jihad) against the very concept of secular, liberal republic. And the French society is increasingly fighting back, which rubs the regressive left the wrong way. I find it funny that you fail to see that a “secular, liberal republic” is precisely there to make sure that people can use their freedom. Unfortunately, a combination of bigotry, colonial stereotypes and patriarchal injunctions will make sure that some harmless women will be attacked, banned from the public space and/or insulted in order to expiate some purely French obsessions. (Which, ironically, is exactly how religious fundamentalism proceeds...) Congratulations if you think that the French society won some kind of decisive fight by denying a few women the possibility to enjoy some summer day with her family and/or children. You're a true sentinelle de la République! The French society wins a decisive fight everytime it makes clear to wahhabite and salafite pieces of shit that they won't shape our society like they do in most of the muslim world nowadays. And if a few misguided little soldier of islamism get deprived of their summer day in the process, so be it. These women weren't banned of the public space, they segregated themselves from the rest of us.
"Skoda savait manier les hommes, Semmelweis voulait les briser. On ne brise personne." Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
On August 15 2016 06:34 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 06:32 Nyxisto wrote:On August 15 2016 04:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:
"A swimsuit ostentatiously demonstrating a religious affiliation, while France and places of religious worship are presently the target of terrorist attacks, is likely to create risks of disturbances to public order (gatherings, scuffles, etc.) which it is necessary to prevent."
This ruling, in other words, has a "social" justification rather than one derived from notions of "personal" culpability which Nyxisto believes to be the true fountain of justice:
Then punish the male relatives, because they're the ones committing a crime in that case. This is the same victim blaming logic that happens when people say "I want to ban the burqa because it oppresses women". how about punishing the people who actually oppress the women?
Since I have already been accused of pretentious quotation, I will do no better than the ultimate pretension of quoting from myself:
WhiteDog is French, not German. For him social realities, even in his sociological abstractions, is still a different tier of reality from personal realities, and indeed, for him the social takes precedence over the personal, whereas German culture and especially German literature is inclined to teach the reverse. Yes sure, I think the law in the end should be personal and impartial. Wielding the state and the law like a weapon for culture wars is problematic and corrupts the whole thing. If there's social disagreement about the role of women, public dressing and so on a courtroom isn't the right place to have that battle. Especially if it's, like it is in this case, a majority imposing their ideas on a minority who has no real representation to even defend themselves on the institutional level. In France, we have a very important principle which is that the country only recognize one community. In the face of history it might be a mistake, as it was achieved through the complete domination of all minorities, but that's how we came to be.
How about we dump old, unproductive principles? This is only causing bad policies, whether it be on the "left" where it is used to ignore all problems, or on the (far-)right where it's used to blame whole groups of people.
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In practice, there are no ideologies, only ideologists, and using an ideology or entity as an excuse to deprive people of their rights is both dumb and disrespectful of basic human decency. translated In practice, there are no ideologies, only ideologists, and using an ideology or entity as an excuse to deprive people of their other ideologies is both expected behavior and complies with evolutions natural selection.
human rights are not laws of nature but ideologies which you have the power and/or the will to enforce.
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On August 15 2016 18:40 xM(Z wrote:Show nested quote +In practice, there are no ideologies, only ideologists, and using an ideology or entity as an excuse to deprive people of their rights is both dumb and disrespectful of basic human decency. translated Show nested quote +In practice, there are no ideologies, only ideologists, and using an ideology or entity as an excuse to deprive people of their other ideologies is both expected behavior and complies with evolutions natural selection. human rights are not laws of nature but ideologies which you have the power and/or the will to enforce.
And? Of course (human) rights have to be enforced (or, to be correct, the laws guaranteeing these rights have to be enforced). That doesn't change anything to what I'm saying.
And no, there's no natural way of living for the human being, thus whatever this evolutionary natural selection is it's bullshit.
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you didn't get it.
i have rights and he has rights but they're not the same kind of rights; when one enforces his rights over the other you end up with a predicament - whose rights are more right.
as enforcers only, laws have nothing to do with rights; they'll defend any rights your ideology deems fit to have(ex: the right to be killed by your kin if you shame them).
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On August 15 2016 13:10 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +This is why, to Marx, religion is a renversed conciousness of the world, because it's some kind of illusion (due to the consumption of opium, the metaphore is quite beautiful) that makes you struggle for something (the afterlife ?) that does not exist (at least not in this life), and by doing so you actually permit the reproduction of what is the true source of your suffering (the exploitation and the alienation). Marx hates religion because for him the proof of truth lies in power through action, whereas the ideal reflection of man through religion presents him with a contemplative truth immune to both action and power, which for Marx is synonymous with a lie (or at best a scholastic truth.) Marx hates religion for the exact same reason that the poor have always loved it. The difference in their ethical valuations of the same phenomenon is entirely arbitrary; unless you are on the same page as Marx when he identifies the "real" with the "good," of "illusory" with "bad," and when he's essentially a materialist when addressing the mind-body problem.
There's two things : religion as an ideology (an illusion that hides reality and that should be overthrown to permit the critic of the reality) and religion as an alienation (bad - because it prevents men to achieve what is good for them ; which shows that there is a moral component to his critic). In the contribution to the critic of the philosophy of right, the idea of alienation transpire through the use of the metaphores - the religion is a substance that create illusions (opium and all), but it's also a substance that create a dependancy (alienation) and thus enchain man.
To explain a little what you say here is an interpretation that was broadly made, especially after the work of Ngoc Vu on Marx and religion (in a book called Ideology and Religion after Marx and Engels) where, after others, he argue that Marx let go of the anthropological problematic (religion as an alienation) to progressively go toward a more "scientific" approach centered around ideology. This is supported by the fact that Marx, after the 1844 manuscript indeed stop to use the term alienation and replace it with various concepts such as ideology or division of labor. But more modern lecture of Marx disagree with that, and interpret a lot of Marx's work through the idea of fetichism (there are, in this regard, some page on the "religion of the daily life" in the capital that relates to the idea of religion as a form of alienation).
And I did not say I was a Marxist, I don't see all forms of spirituality as inherently "bad", I said that I judged this specific form of spirituality - radical islamism - as bad and that politic without morals is pointless. My point on Marx was to point out that even the most "scientifical" political philosophy can't actually function without any reference to an anthropological vision or a moral system (even materialist and immanent).
On August 15 2016 12:42 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 12:11 WhiteDog wrote:On August 15 2016 11:28 IgnE wrote:On August 15 2016 11:10 WhiteDog wrote:On August 15 2016 11:05 IgnE wrote:On August 15 2016 10:40 WhiteDog wrote:On August 15 2016 10:32 IgnE wrote:On August 15 2016 09:25 WhiteDog wrote:On August 15 2016 09:21 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Yes, once again, you repeated exactly what I interpreted your core argument to be:
"The argument then, is not about the inherent logic within the justification, but about the assertion of supremacy of state/social interest (or as Rousseau might call it, the volonté générale) over any assertions of independence by its constituent members."
Which I take to be a fair summary of your position. This was not however, the argument to which I raised the issue of parallelism of "right to self-preservation" between the state and religious minority in question. The assertion was rather based on your logic as expressed in the following statement:
In France, we have a very important principle which is that the country only recognize one community. In the face of history it might be a mistake, as it was achieved through the complete domination of all minorities, but that's how we came to be.
By "France" here you either mean the aforementioned set of republican institutions, in which case, either you believe that all republics "only recognize one community," or you are asserting that France is a special republic which "recognizes one community," in which case you are identifying the French Republic with an ideology particular to herself.
Secondly, you realise that this recognition of only one community is a historical, rather than an ethical proposition, i.e. "it might be a mistake," "but that's how we came to be." Therefore, your defense of the "one community" ideology of the French Republic has no ethical component; it has nothing to do with transcendent vs immanent values, nor with the justification of its character as an absolute necessity to freedom, peace, or the resolution of civil conflicts, since, I presume, that you agree that other states who do not have the policy of France, have their own methods of guaranteeing the same benefits.
Your defense of the "one community" character of the French Republic was based on historical succession: "That's the way we were born as a country, so that's the way we are." It is that argument, and that argument alone which can be applied to the woman who continues to wear the thing that she has since the day that she was born, just as well as to France, and it is that argument alone to which my parallel was applied.
Maybe I was not clear enough, I did not disagree with your description of the Republic you are totally right. What I disagreed with is the equivalency you made between this description of the republic and the act of a very small minority that wear the burka or the burkini. And again you don't understand that the people who wear the burka did not wear it since they were born ... It's a rather new thing, that did not exist ten or twenty years ago. It's not the defence of an old custom. I think you are showing your liberal bourgeois roots. Just own the inherent conflict in opposed powers. When it's class struggle yeah, not when the conflicts are based around race or religious. The "renversed conciousness of the world". I think one of the few actual qualities of communism in its actual political form (putting aside theory) was the fact that it permitted many generations to go past their racial identity and find a common ground, which explains why so many jews became communists (and one of the reason why the communist party could never actually exist as a strong political movement in the US is the fact that its entire politics is completly structured around race). This is actually slightly discussed by Richard Sennett in his book Respect. So isn't islamo-fascism an opposing power? I believe so. You could even argue that any kind of religion is an opposing power according to Marx no ? " Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." Then what does this mean?
When it's class struggle yeah, not when the conflicts are based around race or religious. The "renversed conciousness of the world".
Foucauldian power struggle is not restricted to class only, yes? So why not embrace the violence inherent in struggle between French republicanism and islamo-fascism? When you think in foucauldian terms, you only think about "power". To Foucault power has a "productivity" and is basically "everywhere", at every moment. There are powers and what we call "the power" is, to Foucault, nothing but a nominalist term that refer to a "complex strategic situation" at a certain time. Power is omnipresent, and is not negative nor repressive ; it is. And this difuse character of power means, to Foucault, that there are a lot of various place of "resistance" to what we call "the" power, which could be defined as the set of norms and institutions that exist at the moment. It's not about defining what is good or fighting was is wrong, it is about fighting "the" power, the current situation, with the various powers that exist in the society. Such political philosophy lead to the diversification of political fights, as all possible powers, in the right moment, can be "productive" and permit progress (to him, anything can be good for resistance, from neoliberalism to islam). The expression of one's identity is seen, in this regard, as a form of resistance (it is a very individualist vision of politics by the way). [. . .] So to summerize, I think the ideology of islam is not a moral progress and I don't care that it has a revolutionary potential, because the world that they would give birth to should they come in power would not be "better". Foucauldian conceptions can be useful without requiring the ethical maneuver that you describe here of amoralizing the struggle between competing knowledges/norms/institutions. For one they acknowledge the violence intrinsic to resistance, which some liberals seem keen to ignore.
You don't really need Foucault to point out the role of violence - George Sorel is plenty sufficient.
Le's be fair, Foucault is read because he is an amazing writer, and because Survey and Punish is a magnificient book. His philosophy is a complete failure (he argued that Marx was completly useless outside of the XIXth century, something the recent event proved us to be not only false but also stupid, and basically argued that what is true is what is considered to be true).
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Foucault makes more sense without attempting to ascribe a holistic philosophy to his thought any how 
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On August 15 2016 20:37 farvacola wrote:Foucault makes more sense without attempting to ascribe a holistic philosophy to his thought any how
You mean by reading him like he was some kind of sociologue, or some kind of augmented journalist ?
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I just think that philosophy/critical theory ought be approached as though the best thinkers are more wrong than they are right; in the context of Foucault, yes, I think there is a certain sort of "observational" quality to his writings that should be the focus of his criticism. This whole "Foucault overlooked so much, messes up his terms, and is therefore a hack" line of thinking a la Wehler misses the point of postmodern discourse methinks. Mistakes usually teach us more than successes, ehh?
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On August 15 2016 20:48 farvacola wrote:
I just think that philosophy/critical theory ought be approached as though the best thinkers are more wrong than they are right; in the context of Foucault, yes, I think there is a certain sort of "observational" quality to his writings that should be the focus of his criticism. This whole "Foucault overlooked so much, messes up his terms, and is therefore a hack" line of thinking a la Wehler misses the point of postmodern discourse methinks. Mistakes usually teach us more than successes, ehh?
I can subscribe to that.
My point was merely that Foucault is not a great guide for political action.
On August 15 2016 17:11 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 06:34 WhiteDog wrote:On August 15 2016 06:32 Nyxisto wrote:On August 15 2016 04:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:
"A swimsuit ostentatiously demonstrating a religious affiliation, while France and places of religious worship are presently the target of terrorist attacks, is likely to create risks of disturbances to public order (gatherings, scuffles, etc.) which it is necessary to prevent."
This ruling, in other words, has a "social" justification rather than one derived from notions of "personal" culpability which Nyxisto believes to be the true fountain of justice:
Then punish the male relatives, because they're the ones committing a crime in that case. This is the same victim blaming logic that happens when people say "I want to ban the burqa because it oppresses women". how about punishing the people who actually oppress the women?
Since I have already been accused of pretentious quotation, I will do no better than the ultimate pretension of quoting from myself:
WhiteDog is French, not German. For him social realities, even in his sociological abstractions, is still a different tier of reality from personal realities, and indeed, for him the social takes precedence over the personal, whereas German culture and especially German literature is inclined to teach the reverse. Yes sure, I think the law in the end should be personal and impartial. Wielding the state and the law like a weapon for culture wars is problematic and corrupts the whole thing. If there's social disagreement about the role of women, public dressing and so on a courtroom isn't the right place to have that battle. Especially if it's, like it is in this case, a majority imposing their ideas on a minority who has no real representation to even defend themselves on the institutional level. In France, we have a very important principle which is that the country only recognize one community. In the face of history it might be a mistake, as it was achieved through the complete domination of all minorities, but that's how we came to be. How about we dump old, unproductive principles? This is only causing bad policies, whether it be on the "left" where it is used to ignore all problems, or on the (far-)right where it's used to blame whole groups of people.
I don't believe those principle to be unproductive, and I don't believe you can dump them - or you'll possibly face a harsch backlash. It's constitutive of the french identity for many people.
And I like your quotes
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Then we are in agreement.
Some may dislike the sort of discussion that has taken place on these past few pages, but personally, I think it has been swell. Carry on, chaps 
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On August 15 2016 20:09 xM(Z wrote:
you didn't get it.
i have rights and he has rights but they're not the same kind of rights; when one enforces his rights over the other you end up with a predicament - whose rights are more right.
as enforcers only, laws have nothing to do with rights; they'll defend any rights your ideology deems fit to have(ex: the right to be killed by your kin if you shame them).
I think we're not understanding each other at all. My original sentence that you quoted meant to say that one shouldn't use a "spiritual" (immaterial?) thing (in our case, the islamist ideology) to deny one of your own citizen (thus someone who should have, in a Western country, "Western rights" guaranteed by the State) his rights, such as individual freedom. For instance, the thought-process Some women wear veils ; veils are linked to the Islamist ideology ; thus veils should be forbidden is wrong, because you deny to individuals a right that should be guaranteed by the State (dressing as you like is basic individual freedom, really).
It was not meant to say "people shouldn't use Western ideals as an excuse to deny their freedom to people dangerous for these ideals", as you seem to have understood.
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On August 15 2016 21:00 farvacola wrote:Then we are in agreement. Some may dislike the sort of discussion that has taken place on these past few pages, but personally, I think it has been swell. Carry on, chaps
Discussions with Moltke and WhiteDog never disappoint :p.
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On August 15 2016 21:00 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 20:09 xM(Z wrote:
you didn't get it.
i have rights and he has rights but they're not the same kind of rights; when one enforces his rights over the other you end up with a predicament - whose rights are more right.
as enforcers only, laws have nothing to do with rights; they'll defend any rights your ideology deems fit to have(ex: the right to be killed by your kin if you shame them). I think we're not understanding each other at all. My original sentence that you quoted meant to say that one shouldn't use a "spiritual" (immaterial?) thing (in our case, the islamist ideology) to deny one of your own citizen (thus someone who should have, in a Western country, "Western rights" guaranteed by the State) his rights, such as individual freedom. For instance, the thought-process Some women wear veils ; veils are linked to the Islamist ideology ; thus veils should be forbidden is wrong, because you deny to individuals a right that should be guaranteed by the State (dressing as you like is basic individual freedom, really). It was not meant to say "people shouldn't use Western ideals as an excuse to deny their freedom to people dangerous for these ideals", as you seem to have understood.
i understand you well but you keep changing your labeling. in your latest, you introduced "the State" in an argument on ideology vs ideology.
the State is a physical place in which enforcing an ideology happens.
the way i read your latest argument - you're trying to use 'the State' as a commonality between competing ideologies then use that as an excuse for bestowing the same rights on all within that physical space.
am i reading that correct?; and if so, can you not see the problem with that?.
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On August 15 2016 15:49 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Because the things you bolded were shared between Marx and a host of other people. The issue with Marx was that the ability to recognise reality from illusion is secondary, the thing was to change the social conditions by which reality can be recognised, and man can consequently enjoy real happiness rather than his illusory happiness through religion.
And if you ask me what the difference between those two things is, I don't know. One can only deduce that human happiness isn't Marx's ultimate ethical goal, because it would then be absurd to try to distinguish the two. Behind all that happiness talk was the struggle to attain a higher consciousness, and in his generation most Germans still took that as a self-evident task of philosophy. It all went pretty sour a few decades later.
And what would Hegel have said about the Matrix? Isn't The Matrix truly cinema-verite for the post-religious but increasingly illusory present?
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On August 15 2016 22:38 xM(Z wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 21:00 OtherWorld wrote:On August 15 2016 20:09 xM(Z wrote:
you didn't get it.
i have rights and he has rights but they're not the same kind of rights; when one enforces his rights over the other you end up with a predicament - whose rights are more right.
as enforcers only, laws have nothing to do with rights; they'll defend any rights your ideology deems fit to have(ex: the right to be killed by your kin if you shame them). I think we're not understanding each other at all. My original sentence that you quoted meant to say that one shouldn't use a "spiritual" (immaterial?) thing (in our case, the islamist ideology) to deny one of your own citizen (thus someone who should have, in a Western country, "Western rights" guaranteed by the State) his rights, such as individual freedom. For instance, the thought-process Some women wear veils ; veils are linked to the Islamist ideology ; thus veils should be forbidden is wrong, because you deny to individuals a right that should be guaranteed by the State (dressing as you like is basic individual freedom, really). It was not meant to say "people shouldn't use Western ideals as an excuse to deny their freedom to people dangerous for these ideals", as you seem to have understood. i understand you well but you keep changing your labeling. in your latest, you introduced "the State" in an argument on ideology vs ideology. the State is a physical place in which enforcing an ideology happens. the way i read your latest argument - you're trying to use 'the State' as a commonality between competing ideologies then use that as an excuse for bestowing the same rights on all within that physical space. am i reading that correct?; and if so, can you not see the problem with that?.
Well thank the gods you understand me because I don't understand you much. I'm basically saying since the beginning that you should only deprive people of their freedom based on personal guilt and not on some twisted "group/entity/ideology" guilt. I'm not sure what ideology vs ideology, whose rights are more right, or natural selection have to do with that.
And to clarify, I don't see the State as "a physical place in which enforcing an ideology happens". A State is to me an entity, an institution, whose role is to ensure the rule of law prevails. Several ideologies - or, ideally, none at all - can be "enforced" in that State, because the State itself doesn't enforce any ideologies but only laws.
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On August 15 2016 23:40 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 22:38 xM(Z wrote:On August 15 2016 21:00 OtherWorld wrote:On August 15 2016 20:09 xM(Z wrote:
you didn't get it.
i have rights and he has rights but they're not the same kind of rights; when one enforces his rights over the other you end up with a predicament - whose rights are more right.
as enforcers only, laws have nothing to do with rights; they'll defend any rights your ideology deems fit to have(ex: the right to be killed by your kin if you shame them). I think we're not understanding each other at all. My original sentence that you quoted meant to say that one shouldn't use a "spiritual" (immaterial?) thing (in our case, the islamist ideology) to deny one of your own citizen (thus someone who should have, in a Western country, "Western rights" guaranteed by the State) his rights, such as individual freedom. For instance, the thought-process Some women wear veils ; veils are linked to the Islamist ideology ; thus veils should be forbidden is wrong, because you deny to individuals a right that should be guaranteed by the State (dressing as you like is basic individual freedom, really). It was not meant to say "people shouldn't use Western ideals as an excuse to deny their freedom to people dangerous for these ideals", as you seem to have understood. i understand you well but you keep changing your labeling. in your latest, you introduced "the State" in an argument on ideology vs ideology. the State is a physical place in which enforcing an ideology happens. the way i read your latest argument - you're trying to use 'the State' as a commonality between competing ideologies then use that as an excuse for bestowing the same rights on all within that physical space. am i reading that correct?; and if so, can you not see the problem with that?. Well thank the gods you understand me because I don't understand you much. I'm basically saying since the beginning that you should only deprive people of their freedom based on personal guilt and not on some twisted "group/entity/ideology" guilt. I'm not sure what ideology vs ideology, whose rights are more right, or natural selection have to do with that. And to clarify, I don't see the State as "a physical place in which enforcing an ideology happens". A State is to me an entity, an institution, whose role is to ensure the rule of law prevails. Several ideologies - or, ideally, none at all - can be "enforced" in that State, because the State itself doesn't enforce any ideologies but only laws.
A state without any kind of ideology does not exist. Laws reflect a certain equilibrium of powers, a number of representations. You can't create an entirely ideologically neutral state, it does not exist ; it always reflect the dominant value of the society to a certain extent.
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On August 15 2016 23:42 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 23:40 OtherWorld wrote:On August 15 2016 22:38 xM(Z wrote:On August 15 2016 21:00 OtherWorld wrote:On August 15 2016 20:09 xM(Z wrote:
you didn't get it.
i have rights and he has rights but they're not the same kind of rights; when one enforces his rights over the other you end up with a predicament - whose rights are more right.
as enforcers only, laws have nothing to do with rights; they'll defend any rights your ideology deems fit to have(ex: the right to be killed by your kin if you shame them). I think we're not understanding each other at all. My original sentence that you quoted meant to say that one shouldn't use a "spiritual" (immaterial?) thing (in our case, the islamist ideology) to deny one of your own citizen (thus someone who should have, in a Western country, "Western rights" guaranteed by the State) his rights, such as individual freedom. For instance, the thought-process Some women wear veils ; veils are linked to the Islamist ideology ; thus veils should be forbidden is wrong, because you deny to individuals a right that should be guaranteed by the State (dressing as you like is basic individual freedom, really). It was not meant to say "people shouldn't use Western ideals as an excuse to deny their freedom to people dangerous for these ideals", as you seem to have understood. i understand you well but you keep changing your labeling. in your latest, you introduced "the State" in an argument on ideology vs ideology. the State is a physical place in which enforcing an ideology happens. the way i read your latest argument - you're trying to use 'the State' as a commonality between competing ideologies then use that as an excuse for bestowing the same rights on all within that physical space. am i reading that correct?; and if so, can you not see the problem with that?. Well thank the gods you understand me because I don't understand you much. I'm basically saying since the beginning that you should only deprive people of their freedom based on personal guilt and not on some twisted "group/entity/ideology" guilt. I'm not sure what ideology vs ideology, whose rights are more right, or natural selection have to do with that. And to clarify, I don't see the State as "a physical place in which enforcing an ideology happens". A State is to me an entity, an institution, whose role is to ensure the rule of law prevails. Several ideologies - or, ideally, none at all - can be "enforced" in that State, because the State itself doesn't enforce any ideologies but only laws. A state without any kind of ideology does not exist. Laws reflect a certain equilibrium of powers, a number of representations. You can't create an entirely ideologically neutral state, it does not exist ; it always reflect the dominant value of the society to a certain extent.
Hence the "ideally". Of course you'll always have a balance of ideologies within that State.
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There's two things : religion as an ideology (an illusion) and religion as an alienation (bad - because it relates to a certain idea of what is good and bad for mankind). In the contribution to the critic of the philosophy of right, the idea of alienation transpire through the use of the metaphores - the religion is a substance that create illusions (opium and all), but it's also a substance that create a dependancy (alienation) and thus enchain man ("Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.").
To explain a little what you say here is an interpretation that was broadly made, especially after the work of Ngoc Vu on Marx and religion (in a book called Ideology and Religion after Marx and Engels) where, after others, he argue that Marx let go of the anthropological problematic (religion as an alienation) to progressively go toward a more "scientific" approach centered around ideology. This is supported by the fact that Marx, after the 1844 manuscript indeed stop to use the term alienation and replace it with the concept of the division of labor. But more modern lecture of Marx disagree with that, and interpret a lot of Marx's work through the idea of fetichism (there are, in this regard, some page on the "religion of the daily life" in the capital that relates to the idea of religion as a form of alienation).
It is a little too much to give Marx's statements on religion the deep treatment of a biblical exegesis; more important is to see Marx's statements as a product of his time, not at all special or out of place within the Young Hegelian ecosystem.
Marx basically accepts Feuerbach's criticisms of religion and paraphrases it; he accepts that religion is the projection of self in the guise of a divine other, and applies the alienation motif to Christianity because the Christian concept of man is a form of existence without "objective" properties. Marx's entire engagement with the question of religion was an interaction with the higher criticism of his generation. He never engages with classical theological concepts, because social criticism provides him with an intellectual anchor for everything he was concerned with.
And what would Hegel have said about the Matrix? Isn't The Matrix truly cinema-verite for the post-religious but increasingly illusory present?
The only thing I know about the Matrix comes from online memes. As far as I know, the Matrix is a story depicting this world we all consciously experience as something implanted in us by some kind of alien singularity, and the protagonists are the few heroes who are able to access the real, dystopian world where they are waging a desperate war against the said singularity.
Hegel's system seems to be quite different to me, because Hegel's concept of primitive vs. advanced consciousness does not exist via the dichotomy of parallel worlds. Rather it was the unconscious mind which originally drove the evolution of its own development, into ever higher levels of consciousness, towards a finality in which the mind recognises the world as a generation of itself. There was no "blue pill" vs "red pill" in Hegel which ferries you between the two extremes. The entire process happens via evolutionary emanation, and is an inevitable act of "God."
Breaking out of all this, if you are some kind of Hegelian and think that the development of social and cultural criticism, etc. have have not actually led to a reconciliation between people and the world, then you are going to have to decide, like the ancient Israelites, whether it is because the Prophecy has failed, or because the Prophecy has not yet come to pass. Behind the questions asked by the social critics about society there are broader questions about the value of social criticism to society or to individuals. Because not long after the Hegelian revolution in philosophy, people began to notice that smarter people were not necessarily happier, more contented, less restless or less alienated in their lives, indeed, they were apt to be considerably less so. This led to an intellectual reaction against Hegelian progressivism in the late 19th century, which was in a way, as important as the original revolution itself.
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EPT
