i was also thinking about something rorty talks about, which is that trying to reconcile private concerns with public purposes is probably never going to work, and mouffe's sort of take on that from a more poststructuralist view. mouffe doesn't really buy the public/private in the same way, she says that the social field is political but that our views are incommensurate. we can't therefore try to instantiate one view of justice but rather negotiate our individual viewpoints in a shared framework. and she's like that shared framework is always going to be contentious, and will probably constantly threaten to spill over into violence, but we might want to try to shape those debates into ones that fit democratic forms, as part of a general ethic against oppression and hierarchy.
on top of that, it seemed to me, via althusser's critique of it, that a lot of socialist views depend on an idea of humanity sort of coming into a position of non-alienation, like we're going to have communism and then our private interests and public purposes will coincide, and properly political concerns will dissipate. that socialist economic planning often is framed as the rational ordering of society, taking the sum of individual labourers and turning them into a sort of abstract social labour that can be applied in a perfect unity to needs. and this sort of unity is common in all humanisms, even though they don't usually call for socialist planning. for example, capitalist technocracy views social problems largely as technical problems for management by elites in such a way that enlightened self-interest will bring about a rational unity.
as althusser says, marxism isn't really theoretically humanist, in that marx moved away from alienation and to move towards commodity fetishism in theory. that is, marxism focuses on a particular historical process, but this process does not fundamentally depend on some unrealized transhistorical human nature, but rather contingent factors within actual history. to put it like bertrand russell did, then, socialism is more about adjusting to machine production than some proletarian revenge fantasy.
but if a sort of unity of humanity is impossible at the level of political ontology, and human history has no real teleology, while valuing insights and belief, then i thought about it for a while and had a sort of "oh, i get it now" moment with respect to religion.
for example, the theologist barth says that every true humanism is god's humanism. and what he means is sort of that christianity sort of creates the possible conditions for a reconciliation of humanity. that is, we are intrinsically unable to unite ourselves in a world where division is the rule due to our fallen nature, but jesus interrupts this and creates a new unity around his sacrifice. so it's still true that it is impossible through our own actions to instantiate justice, there is a supernatural intervention that suspends god's judgment and therefore saves humanity from itself. now that's just a paradoxical teleology, but it has such a beautiful symmetry to it that it sort of clicked. not so much as a truth that you can verify in a scientific way, but rather just as an insight that has a lot of beauty.
once that clicked into place i was like oh i get it, i want to learn about theology. so i'm slowly starting to think about. but i want to tie it into arguments surrounding christian social doctrine. for example, i'm not sure i'd buy liberation theology if it turns out to be argued in such a way that focuses on a sort of marxist humanism. if the purpose of politics is not so much to instantiate justice as simply to live together in faith while accepting that there will always be that troubled nature due to worldliness, then trying to build a united, transparent, frictionless society isn't really the point. and maybe they recognize that, i dunno. which doesn't mean that socialism is wrong, not at all, that might be the best way to manage things, it might be more just in a much different sense of a process and virtue rather than a state of being, but there isn't the same historical necessity involved as in marxism.
getfiscal posted:hello gang. a big jumble o' thoughts sort of occurred to me last month. i was thinking about wittgenstein and his idea that what matters more is situated insight, and that trying to ground things in some sort of prior truth tends to end up as gibberish.
i was also thinking about something rorty talks about, which is that trying to reconcile private concerns with public purposes is probably never going to work, and mouffe's sort of take on that from a more poststructuralist view. mouffe doesn't really buy the public/private in the same way, she says that the social field is political but that our views are incommensurate. we can't therefore try to instantiate one view of justice but rather negotiate our individual viewpoints in a shared framework. and she's like that shared framework is always going to be contentious, and will probably constantly threaten to spill over into violence, but we might want to try to shape those debates into ones that fit democratic forms, as part of a general ethic against oppression and hierarchy.
on top of that, it seemed to me, via althusser's critique of it, that a lot of socialist views depend on an idea of humanity sort of coming into a position of non-alienation, like we're going to have communism and then our private interests and public purposes will coincide, and properly political concerns will dissipate. that socialist economic planning often is framed as the rational ordering of society, taking the sum of individual labourers and turning them into a sort of abstract social labour that can be applied in a perfect unity to needs. and this sort of unity is common in all humanisms, even though they don't usually call for socialist planning. for example, capitalist technocracy views social problems largely as technical problems for management by elites in such a way that enlightened self-interest will bring about a rational unity.
as althusser says, marxism isn't really theoretically humanist, in that marx moved away from alienation and to move towards commodity fetishism in theory. that is, marxism focuses on a particular historical process, but this process does not fundamentally depend on some unrealized transhistorical human nature, but rather contingent factors within actual history. to put it like bertrand russell did, then, socialism is more about adjusting to machine production than some proletarian revenge fantasy.
but if a sort of unity of humanity is impossible at the level of political ontology, and human history has no real teleology, while valuing insights and belief, then i thought about it for a while and had a sort of "oh, i get it now" moment with respect to religion.
for example, the theologist barth says that every true humanism is god's humanism. and what he means is sort of that christianity sort of creates the possible conditions for a reconciliation of humanity. that is, we are intrinsically unable to unite ourselves in a world where division is the rule due to our fallen nature, but jesus interrupts this and creates a new unity around his sacrifice. so it's still true that it is impossible through our own actions to instantiate justice, there is a supernatural intervention that suspends god's judgment and therefore saves humanity from itself. now that's just a paradoxical teleology, but it has such a beautiful symmetry to it that it sort of clicked. not so much as a truth that you can verify in a scientific way, but rather just as an insight that has a lot of beauty.
once that clicked into place i was like oh i get it, i want to learn about theology. so i'm slowly starting to think about. but i want to tie it into arguments surrounding christian social doctrine. for example, i'm not sure i'd buy liberation theology if it turns out to be argued in such a way that focuses on a sort of marxist humanism. if the purpose of politics is not so much to instantiate justice as simply to live together in faith while accepting that there will always be that troubled nature due to worldliness, then trying to build a united, transparent, frictionless society isn't really the point. and maybe they recognize that, i dunno. which doesn't mean that socialism is wrong, not at all, that might be the best way to manage things, it might be more just in a much different sense of a process and virtue rather than a state of being, but there isn't the same historical necessity involved as in marxism.
catchphrase
getfiscal posted:if the purpose of politics is not so much to instantiate justice as simply to live together in faith while accepting that there will always be that troubled nature due to worldliness, then trying to build a united, transparent, frictionless society isn't really the point. and maybe they recognize that, i dunno. which doesn't mean that socialism is wrong, not at all, that might be the best way to manage things, it might be more just in a much different sense of a process and virtue rather than a state of being, but there isn't the same historical necessity involved as in marxism.
now i gotta say, i know you asked me about some reading stuff and i didn't really have anything to say. my late theologian grandmother or (living) sister would be better at answering this stuff. like i really love god and the idea of christian love and such but even still, my primary interest in actually studying religion stems from an interest in leftist thought, so i then seek out writings to back that thinking up, which makes what i know not an optimal or full vision of religion or truth or love.
but ill try here anyway, of course coming from a christian left position. first off, by "politics" there did you mean to say "christianity". i mean maybe im out to lunch but i definitely dont think the point of politics would be to live together in faith.
althusser says for the church to be reconverted to the service of the workers, the myth of the united christian community would have to disappear, because it prevents the division of sociey into classes. which prevents recognizing class struggle. the leftist, liberation theology style response to this criticism would be that a "unity" of the faithful cannot be a true unity, an authentic unity, unless it is represents the oppressed and exploited.
1. all people are children of god, and thus brothers and sisters
2. "family" unity (your remark to "live together in faith") cannot be achieved without the unity of the world
3. we therefore must struggle against the causes of division among people
4. so unity will be attained not thanks to people who say "praise jesus" but through people who do the true will of God our father
5. thus unity is achieved through class struggle, which can lead to true brotherhood. QED.
and yes we do need to struggle in terms of building systems that are better to live in, but not with a utopian expectation within the existing system. like we might want to build socialism, but this isn't like some total solution to our problems, it doesn't somehow reconcile us and liberate us fully, we'll never build a full unproblematic brotherhood on this basis alone. it might be a precondition for a higher level of living, such that we focus on other things than just food and shelter and shit, but we'll still have sin and big problems and such.
getfiscal posted:well i'm a beginner but i guess i meant that the aim of a christian left politics isn't to create a fully just social system on earth, which is impossible due to our flaws and divisions, but rather to live together as best we can while accepting that we'll always disagree about fundamental things. that is, we aren't trying to produce consensus so much as live together, especially given the fact of religious pluralism.
Where did you get the idea that this is the aim of the christian left?
i can see why huey gets frustrated with you
i guess the view i'd be wary of is the idea that revolution itself is capable of building brotherhood. i guess no one really argues that, maybe it's a strawman. i mean that class struggle cannot create the conditions for transcending our sins in itself, only faith (combined with acts) can.
http://library-genesis.com/Atheism%20%26%20Philosophy.918772.html
Zen_Punk posted:just going to leave this here
http://library-genesis.com/Atheism%20%26%20Philosophy.918772.html
Nigger.
stegosaurus posted:I'm going to post a vanity thread about productivism soon.
GIMME