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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. |
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.
The difference is that economic alienation supercede religious alienation for Marx, which is not the case for Feuerbach. Anyway it is a form of alienation - not simply an illusion.
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.
Everything and everyone is a "product of its time".
It's not a question of exegesis, it is the effect of the fact that some of Marx's work appeared relatively late (like the 1844 manuscript). For a long time, philosophers used to think that there were basically two Marxs : a post hegelian philosopher that basically just repeated Feuerbach (like you seem to believe), and a "scientist" (with the german ideology as the pivot). Now, with the 1844 manuscript and some other work, most analysis agree that even the young Marx already developped his own ideas and was not simply just repeating Feuerbach. It has a lot to do with the influence of Althusser on Marx's interpretation (the epistemological ceasure between the young and the old Marx).
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On August 16 2016 00:33 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +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. Show nested quote +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.
P.S. A final thought: for those modern Marxist rump who declare that Marxism was a good idea but never properly implemented, Marx would have been the first to deride these sentiments. Marx mocked the philosophers in his own time who analysed the problems in the world and did nothing to fix it. "A good idea in theory" never properly implemented for Marx would have been no different from "religion." If Marx existed today, I wonder if he would have said updated his famous adage to "Marxism is the opium of the people."
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On August 16 2016 01:04 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2016 00:33 MoltkeWarding wrote: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. P.S. A final thought: for those modern Marxist rump who declare that Marxism was a good idea but never properly implemented, Marx would have been the first to deride these sentiments. Marx mocked the philosophers in his own time who analysed the problems in the world and did nothing to fix it. "A good idea in theory" never properly implemented for Marx would have been no different from "religion." If Marx existed today, I wonder if he would have said updated his famous adage to "Marxism is the opium of the people."
What Marx said - not what "he would have said" - was that he was not a marxist - and he did that as a response to Guesde & Lafargue "revolutionary phrase-mongering".
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Firecrackers spark stampede at French Riviera resort
A noise that sounded like gunfire sparked panic at a French Riviera resort as people rushed to flee what they believed was a terror attack, causing a number of injuries, the fire service said.
The noise was caused by firecrackers thrown from a car, local radio France Bleu Azur reported, adding that around 40 people were injured in the incident late Sunday in Juan-les-Pins.
Video footage showed tables and chairs overturned on the terraces of cafes and restaurants near the beach and people screaming in the stampede.
The incident came amid heightened tension in France after a string of attacks claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, including the July 14 massacre in the Mediterranean city of Nice when a Tunisian ploughed a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day, killing 85 people.
A state of emergency was declared in France after November's IS attacks in Paris which left 130 people dead.
The fire service in Juan-les-Pins, known for its vibrant nightlife and annual jazz festival, said a number of people were lightly injured but did not say how many.
Police were examining CCTV footage to determine the exact cause of the incident.
The Nice Matin newspaper quoted witnesses as saying beachgoers rushed into the streets of the busy nightlife area on hearing what they feared was gunfire.
One witness told AFP he saw "a lot of people running" in a "stampede caused by the panic" that "left dozens of people slightly injured".
The injured were treated at the scene, some in the restaurants, and "police cordoned off the town centre," he said.
In New York on Sunday, unfounded reports of shots fired at the city's main John F. Kennedy airport triggered scenes of panic, evacuations and huge flight delays.
(AFP)
http://www.france24.com/en/20160815-firecrackers-stampede-french-riviera-juan-les-pins-terrorism
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The difference is that economic alienation supercede religious alienation for Marx, which is not the case for Feuerbach. Anyway it is a form of alienation - not simply an illusion.
If you apply the word "alienation" to religion, then the word changes its meaning from the "alienation" in the economic sphere. In the former, you are mentally alienated from your objective self via imaginary self-duplication; why this is an inadequate state of affairs, Marx does not really explain. As I said, in the background, he assumes in his Hegelian way that the advance of human consciousness is a self-justifying goal.
Everything and everyone is a "product of its time".
When we say something is a "product of its time" we don't mean it tautologically. We mean that someone has absorbed the fashions and currents of his generation without reacting against it in a way that produces creativity.
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On August 16 2016 01:32 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +The difference is that economic alienation supercede religious alienation for Marx, which is not the case for Feuerbach. Anyway it is a form of alienation - not simply an illusion. If you apply the word "alienation" to religion, then the word changes its meaning from the "alienation" in the economic sphere. In the former, you are mentally alienated from your objective self via imaginary self-duplication; why this is an inadequate state of affairs, Marx does not really explain. As I said, in the background, he assumes in his Hegelian way that the advance of human consciousness is a self-justifying goal.
No it's the exact same.
"As in religion man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalist production he is governed by the products of his own hands." (in the capital)
An individual create its own subjectivity through the loss of his own objects, what is independant of him, that he produced to respond to his needs. In the economic sphere, the production is a form of alienation because the economic organization of labor don't take into consideration the needs of the workers (even in such simple things as "breathing the air", watching the sun, or the need for "cleanliness" - all those are discussed in the 1844 manuscripts) - the production of objects is separated from the producers' need ; the producer in its actual activity is defined independantly from its needs - it is alienated - and then the production (the object) is defined outside of its condition of production (the merchandise).
In the religious sphere, the quality of men are alienated in the exact same way : mankind's subjectivity is produced by the loss of some of its inherent objects (its quality to change the world by producing it, which is given to god instead) and thus has to wait for the afterlife to appease its suffering.
When we say something is a "product of its time" we don't mean it tautologically. We mean that someone has absorbed the fashions and currents of his generation without reacting against it in a way that produces creativity.
I already told you this was wrong.
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On August 15 2016 23:54 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 23:42 WhiteDog wrote: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.
It's unclear what a state without ideology would be, even ideally.
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It's not a question of exegesis, it is the effect of the fact that some of Marx's work appeared relatively late (like the 1844 manuscript). For a long time, philosophers used to think that there were basically two Marxs : a post hegelian philosopher that basically just repeated Feuerbach (like you seem to believe), and a "scientist" (with the german ideology as the pivot). Now, with the 1844 manuscript and some other work, most analysis agree that even the young Marx already developped his own ideas and was not simply just repeating Feuerbach. It has a lot to do with the influence of Althusser on Marx's interpretation (the epistemological ceasure between the young and the old Marx).
My comment on Marx's imitation of Feuerbach applies to his commentary on religion, about which Marx had nothing new to say. Therefore when you contend that
It's not about tearing down what "is", whatever it is, it's about changing what's morally wrong and protect what is dying. This is why, to Marx, religion is a renversed conciousness of the world, because it's some kind of illusion.
this needs to be qualified in its historical context. The alienation idea; that sense of being unable to find oneself in one's relations within society is already present by the end of the 18th century in the form of romantic poetry and literature although it was not yet called alienation. (One early archetype of psychological alienation was Hamlet, who was a literary creation far ahead of his time, in the 17th century.)
To the romantics, it seemed as if it was the enlightenment society's way of defining the individual in terms of his social relations which produced this alienation, whereby the authentic self was subsumed and lost. These early literary archetypes are all the more worth going back to today, because they also reflect the reality of our contemporary experience: there is no solution for human alienation. The only thing we could do, as writers, or poets or artists, is to represent this experience in art, and thereby give catharsis to those who experience it in reality. The Byronic hero's ultimate fate was always death.
It was into this cultural world of "anarchic individualism" that Hegel stepped, and disturbed by. Hegel's ultimate concern was that people had lost connection with society because they no longer felt a sense of collective purpose. In his philosophy he tried to reintroduce a sense of "god without God" into the world and to reassemble the link between man and society. Religious criticism came in from the Young Hegelians because although they shared Hegel's goals of reintegrating man with society, they denied that this was sufficient when confined to the intellectual sphere. Religion is also insufficient, because it is a purely intellectual solution. And why is a purely intellectual solution insufficient? Unlike Hegel, Feuerbach denied the precedence of mind over world. For him, mind was a reality that was formed by the world.
The thing is of course, these are still matters that are being discussed in right in this thread.
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
is a question not underivative of these old battles. Marx's selection of economic relations as the fountain of man's alienation is just one attempt to account for what the world had known for a long time. In a way, via economics he married a new intellectual system to an old social problem.
No it's the exact same.
"As in religion man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalist production he is governed by the products of his own hands." (in the capital)
An individual create its own subjectivity through the loss of his own objects, what is independant of him, that he produced to respond to his needs. In the economic sphere, the production is a form of alienation because the economic organization of labor don't take into consideration the needs of the workers (even in such simple things as "breathing the air", watching the sun, or the need for "cleanliness" - all those are discussed in the 1844 manuscripts) - the production of objects is separated from the producers' need ; the producer in its actual activity is defined independantly from its needs - it is alienated - and then the production (the object) is defined outside of its condition of production (the merchandise).
In the religious sphere, the quality of men are alienated in the exact same way : mankind's subjectivity is produced by the loss of some of its inherent objects (its quality to change the world by producing it, which is given to god instead) and thus has to wait for the afterlife to appease its suffering.
No, there is no equivalence in the two, and your argument recognises this: in both, there is a disconnect between agency and need, but in the case of production, the agency exists without reference to need, and in the case of religion, the satisfaction of a need robs man of his agency.
I already told you this was wrong.
You must learn the elementary art of reading in which the basic rules of syntactical coherence are properly respected. If I say that "A chimpanzee is akin to a zebra in the respect in which they are both warm-blooded mammals," I can no doubt expect the objection from you that "no, you are wrong because one has stripes and the other doesn't."
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You did not argue that Marx and Feuerbach were all mammals, you said Marx didn't add anything to Feuerbach's philosophy on religion. So tell me, when is it that Feuerbach talks about the religion of the everydayy life and fetichism ?
"there is a disconnect between agency and need, " yeah that's what Marx define as alienation, both are.
"the agency exists without reference to need" due to the alienation, also true for religion (religions is the object and exist outside of one's brain, it is instituted, it has laws, it is produced and structure the daily life of men outside of any anthropological needs for salvation).
"In the case of religion, the satisfaction of a need robs man of his agency" are you saying that men litterally lose their brain due to religion ? It is just the usage of their brain which is structured by the idea of god, much like capitalism restrict the usage of one's hand through wage labour and the private property of the means of production. People can still think, they just think through the religious lens, much like they still produce through the division of labour. Men then fetichise the product of their activity, by confering the necessary qualities to respond to the needs of men to gods and merchandises, without any reference to their condition of production. It's exactly the same.
Your use of agency conflate mankind and its qualities and the object created by men.
Everything can be contextualized ; here, in regards to the subject at hand, it has no real value to do so.
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France266 Posts
On August 15 2016 17:11 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 05:44 Koorb wrote: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.
But that is exactly what islamism (and some other forms of organised religion to a wider extent) is about. It's a big machine that seeks to remove every inch of individuality from the people who adhere to its tenets, and to make sure that everyone fall in line with the creed. Diversity is haram is this worldview. Islamism fits the profile of a totalitarian system of beliefs in the sense that everything that is not mandatory is forbidden. It's not a mere school of thought that admits a broad array of interpretations, and that restricts itself to a narrow and specific part of people's lives. It's a way of life that requires a complete obedience to a set of worldviews,of political views and of personnal beliefs, that are written in stone and don't let any room for diversity.
It is not us, the non-muslims, who came up with the concept of Ummah. It's not us who made it loud and clear that observant muslims must be part of this big community of indistinguishable and interchangeable individuals, where people are expected to police one another.
In your previous message, you stated that "within an ideology, everyone's not uniform". But when the people who adhere to a certain ideology start to actually wear an actual uniform that erases their individualities and marks their segregation with the wider population (ie. face-covering veils, burkinis, ...), you can legitimately wonder is these people .are really able to dissent from the creed or not.
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I read an interview from a journalist recently who interviewed Western girls who went to fight for ISIS. Many stated that their motivation was something along the lines of "my father tells me what to do, my brother tells me to stay a virgin while he whores around.." etc.. So for those girls the radical interpretation of their religion was actually a liberation because they stated that "as soon as the caliphate exists my brother and father are going to have to live by the rules as well!" (obviously not true of course as it's just IS propaganda)
So for them the bad part wasn't the oppression, it was that everybody wasn't held to equal standards and that they perceived their half-religious/non religious environment as morally corrupt.
If you're going to employ Richard Dawkins level of religious criticism you're never going to understand why this stuff is attracting Western followers. The problems run much deeper.
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On August 16 2016 04:15 Koorb wrote:
But that is exactly what islamism (and some other forms of organised religion to a wider extent) is about. It's a big machine that seeks to remove every inch of individuality from the people who adhere to its tenets, and to make sure that everyone fall in line with the creed. Diversity is haram is this worldview. Islamism fits the profile of a totalitarian system of beliefs in the sense that everything that is not mandatory is forbidden. It's not a mere school of thought that admits a broad array of interpretations, and that restricts itself to a narrow and specific part of people's lives. It's a way of life that requires a complete obedience to a set of worldviews,of political views and of personnal beliefs, that are written in stone and don't let any room for diversity.
Must be why “islamist” is applied to things as varied as the Hamas, the Hezbollah, the AKP, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS or Ennahdha. How come people who use the word “islamism” specifically talk about “radical islamism” when they want to make a distinction between… between what and what, since you said “islamism” admits neither diversity nor interpretations?
If there is unity in what you call “islamism,” then how come it regroups movements whose goals, methods, priorities and alliances differ? How can a monolithic ideology include currents which are contradictory to each other?
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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.
Foucauldians are attacking :
Five reasons to wear a burkini – and not just to annoy the French
So in defence of the burkini, here are five reasons for defying the idiocy and trying one out:
1. Launch a media frenzy
The next time you fancy a swim, remember that a burkini will ensure your doggy paddle becomes a Twitter sensation. So why not take the world’s focus away from the stuff that really matters? The rise of food banks, doctor shortages and human rights abuses just don’t get people lathered up as much. [...]
5. Celebrate freedom
Though some are falling over themselves to restrict freedom of dress, celebrate the meaning of true democracy by buying one of many choices available to you in swimwear, and remind Monsieur le Mayor that égalité is also about diversité. They may take our lives, but they will never take our burkinis.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/15/five-reasons-wear-burkini-annoy-french-cannes-mayor-muslim?CMP=fb_gu
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You have to admit that banning the burkini is pretty stupid.
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On August 16 2016 06:45 IgnE wrote:
You have to admit that banning the burkini is pretty stupid.
The birkini is banned in some place in morocco too. It's stupid, and I'm seriously surprised that the interdiction stand in regards to french laws, but well that's how it is. I have to say tho that in regards to what happened in Corse, it might be good to ban it just to prevent more conflicts.
But tell me, do you think wearing the burkini or the burka to protest against its interdiction is good ? Because that's exactly what we were talking about previously.
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On August 16 2016 06:45 IgnE wrote:
You have to admit that banning the burkini is pretty stupid.
The decision can still be cancelled by the Conseil d'État.
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On August 16 2016 06:54 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2016 06:45 IgnE wrote:
You have to admit that banning the burkini is pretty stupid. The decision can still be cancelled by the Conseil d'État.
Considering recent event and the fact that more mayor are doing it, I'm not sure that the conseil d'état will prevent it. Makes me think about the Dieudonné affair : the conseil d'état has no real autonomy in regards to political power (the prime minister or the ministry of justice can decide whatever they want).
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On August 16 2016 04:15 Koorb wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2016 17:11 OtherWorld wrote:On August 15 2016 05:44 Koorb wrote: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. But that is exactly what islamism (and some other forms of organised religion to a wider extent) is about. It's a big machine that seeks to remove every inch of individuality from the people who adhere to its tenets, and to make sure that everyone fall in line with the creed. Diversity is haram is this worldview. Islamism fits the profile of a totalitarian system of beliefs in the sense that everything that is not mandatory is forbidden. It's not a mere school of thought that admits a broad array of interpretations, and that restricts itself to a narrow and specific part of people's lives. It's a way of life that requires a complete obedience to a set of worldviews,of political views and of personnal beliefs, that are written in stone and don't let any room for diversity.
In addition to Downfall's (brilliant) post, I'll say that you're falling into the trap I just described. Yes, Daech's ideology is very much about denying individuality and establishing something that looks fairly totalitarian - at least that's what we can conclude from the few informations we have of what's going on inside. Now, if we build from here : can you conclude that everyone who lives under this regime necessarily approves of it? Clearly no, since we just had images of liberated people in some recently liberated city openly showing their happiness of not living under this regime anymore. Can you also conclude that anyone who follows its main ideology is necessarily responsible for it? No, if we look at the Nazi regime, we see that in case of totalitarian societies you'll have a good chunk of people who are following out of necessity (Muss-Nazis), or out of social pressure (Mitläufer). Can you blame people for not going against peer pressure, when the drawbacks of doing that heavily outweigh the advantages?
It is not us, the non-muslims, who came up with the concept of Ummah. It's not us who made it loud and clear that observant muslims must be part of this big community of indistinguishable and interchangeable individuals, where people are expected to police one another.
Same trap. I don't know if you do, but I know many muslims to whom the idea of being an interchangeable and indistinguishable individual is no more attractive than to me or you. Also, grats on clearly stating your us vs them mentality. If you think any problems are going to be resolved by thinking like that...
In your previous message, you stated that "within an ideology, everyone's not uniform". But when the people who adhere to a certain ideology start to actually wear an actual uniform that erases their individualities and marks their segregation with the wider population (ie. face-covering veils, burkinis, ...), you can legitimately wonder is these people .are really able to dissent from the creed or not.
This is actually a rather interesting bit, the value of the uniform. I think you're missing out on what a "uniform" can mean. To me uniforms have two purposes that are not mutually exclusive. The first is to de-individualize individuals in order to reinforce their social purpose in the eyes of themselves and others. That's the reason why doctors, or English schoolboys, or office workers, etc, all wear the same stuff ; and that's also why nurses wearing a veil have been a hot subject - by the way, notice how, here, the wearing of a religious sign becomes a sign of individuality and not of uniformity. It's to make sure you don't see "Jean Girard, doctor in medecine" in Dr. Girard's face when he's talking to you, but "The Doctor", uniform and interchangeable with any other doctor.
The second purpose of the uniform, however, is simply to identify with a group ; the major difference is that it's an expression of freedom and not something that is forced upon you by hierarchical superiors, like in the previous cases. Gothic kid X won't come to school clothed in gothic style because it's been forced upon him ; football fan X won't come to the stadium wearing his team's jersey because it's been forced upon him ; Rolland Garros spectator X won't put the white bourgeois hat on their heads because it's been forced upon them. All these people are, ironically enough, making a statement of individuality by adopting the codes of a given group. You could even go further and say that they're expressing a belief in their clothing - eh, doesn't that remind you of anything? Yes, in a sense they're "marking their segregation with the wider population". That's kind of the point. Yes, in a sense they're having a herd mentality of adopting a group's codes instead of their own. Yet it is still a statement of free will, free will of following a group. What is the difference with a woman wearing a burkini?
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On August 16 2016 06:45 IgnE wrote:
You have to admit that banning the burkini is pretty stupid.
Well, you'd think people who went through the Ecole de la République with the highest honors, and who then went on to the most elitist administration schools in Europe, would know how to govern stuff intelligently. Sadly that's not the case.
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On August 16 2016 07:07 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2016 06:45 IgnE wrote:
You have to admit that banning the burkini is pretty stupid. Well, you'd think people who went through the Ecole de la République with the highest honors, and who then went on to the most elitist administration schools in Europe, would know how to govern stuff intelligently. Sadly that's not the case.
Are you talking about the mayors ? Because they're the one who made the decision to forbid the burkini. They mostly did it out of security concern : people are getting less and less tolerant (for obvious reasons) and the government wants to do everything it can to prevent violence.
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EPT
