Authenticity/violence/torture: 1
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -
--
"...it struck me that, as you all recall I'm sure, one of
the most famous--and productive--mis-readings of H. on
authenticity is Sartre's "bad and good faith." (This was
on my mind having just written a piece on, believe it or
not, Sartre and street gangs, and also Richard Rorty
approvingly mentions Satrean ethics in a nice piece in
the latest NEW REPUBLIC that reviews Feyerabend's
autobiography--did you know he was an officer in the
German army in WWII? BTW, if you want, the NEW REPUBLIC
is on the web and you could get the review online for
free.) At any rate, the way the problematic was always
presented to me was one of Sartre in the resistance (he
was, as I recall, a minor courier, after imprisonment)
wondering why some people break down under torture and
some don't. Everyone was wondering how THEY would hold
up. For S, the inauthentic bad faith move is to say
"they made me tell" because, it seems, there was always
that millisecond longer you could have held out, so it
was YOU that made the choice. Very rigid on
responsibility! Authenticity has a lot to do with owning
up to your own responsibility for the choice, in all
areas of life. There's a heck of a lot more to be said
here, of course, but I'll wait to see if this line of
inquiry resonates at all; it's certainly a way, a la Tom
B., of tying authenticity and violence together (though
the torture example is just that, an example, of a more
general phenomenon). "
--- This is a very interesting theme. As a student of
attribution theory in psychology, and having in certain
ways either deconstructed this rubric or complicated it
to the extreme in some theoretical work, I'm very, very
suspicious of this rigid kind of formulation and example.
This is a rich "in" to the discourse on violence.
The theme you suggest is "tying authenticity and violence
together". My inclination on this is to say that it is
not authenticity per se which is to be "tied" to
violence, but various conditions concerning something
like the discourse on authenticity. I am tempted to
proceed with an example, and most facile here of course
would be one of torture. I think such examples might be
fully necessary, but I have been finding that the issue
of example and the question of violence are connected in
very intimate and perhaps essential ways. For this
reason, I want to stop for a moment and bring notice to
the *very being* of the example.
The example of the Situation is projected in within the
horizon of the question of violence. The example
constitutes the projected/virtual actuality which is put
forward to be understood in light of the question. In the
condition of making an example, there is a certain
freedom to develop many different examples, counter
examples, etc. This amounts to: variation and the
intution of essence. For example: a person tortured for
one hour, two hours, one day, two days, not fully
tortured, tortured to the extreme. Those are all
variations. They themselves are not torture. They are not
the violence that is torture. We are not going to rush
out and actually torture in order to learn of choice, the
limits, the "hows" of confession under torture, etc. Why
not? It would be violent.
We are not asking "what is violence?" But we are moving
within the horizon of the question of violence. We
interpret events and situations according to this
question while we are always already in the condition of
maintaining ourselves according to the possibility of
violence (as bad). More of the lived-world hermeneutic
circle. Nothing surprising here.
I am *activating* the theme of violence. When a theme is
raised as activated, other things are in a certain
subordination to this theme. For example, the question of
authenticity. We can hope to tie the question of
authenticity to the question of violence, so long as we
do not hope that the very discourse on authenticity and
good/bad faith will itself constitute the very thematic
horizon of violence itself.
My claim is that Heidegger, and let me add, Sartre, do
not give violence itself a fully substantive engagement
and independent thematization in their analytics of
Dasein/human reality. I alluded to this, or said so
directly as well, I think, in previous posts. I suggested
that a suspension of "the moral" constituted a kind of
ladder which enabled an ascension into a certain "plane",
while at the same time suggesting a return to the ground
from which this ascension took place. The products of the
work on that plane, upon such a return, would be
something like a "residue" of adequate, essential
definitions, groundworks, topologies, and so forth. The
return to the ground of the existential analytic would be
a certain immersion in the "moral". The moral as such
constitutes the world as it is bound by and caught up in
the ongoing condition of the possibily of violence. The
immoral is or may be: violence. For Levinas, injustice
*is* violence. I tend to agree with this.
I call this return to the "moral ground" a "return to the
positivities". The plane of remove constituting the
existential analytic is one which converts the actual
into example. For example: Dionysus is converted
categorically to: a god. A die is converted into an
example of an object, per se, in order to subject it to
variation to clarify the structures of subject-object
consciousness, for Husserl. When Heidegger supposedly
returns the die to the crap table, to determine all the
better the structures of Dasein, not either to gamble or
to address the moral conditions of gambing. Yet this
address has some considerable motivation lying in the
good of authenticity and the potential violence of
inauthenticity, the danger of the loss of inauthenticity,
the "unheahty" of authencity not being able to find
itself out of inauthenticity. It does not constitute a
"return to the world" but a most extreme elevation and
expansion of the psychism inhereing in Descartes' moment,
Husserl's transcendental ego, etc. The selfworld is taken
as example for Heidegger to give the structures of
Dasein. Again, the moral tenor of his addressing this
problem operates behind his text, though its "first
sweep" is a neutral commitment to the western
philosophical project: here's a question to pursue:
Being. Why pursue it? This question and its answer is not
really developed until later, when the development of
Heidegger's thought is brought into contact with
conditions like homelessness, technology, the condition
of internationalishm, humanism, the manufacture of
corpses, and so forth. That the question has not shown
its moral raison d'etre papers is not a fault in my
opinion, but goes into the very problem of authenticity
and Being. In other words, that is, to a certain extent,
how it is with such major aspects of being, the "State of
Being", so it is not necessary to ask for a moral
grounding of the "State of Being", though it may be
*possible* to do so. We preserve here a certain
independence and autonomy of philosophy.
We can say here that Satre brings the analysis of human
reality more quicly and more concretely back in certain
ways in order to interpret the conditions of his world.
He was much more able then Heidegger to address actual
conditions and to "operationalize" his "theory" of human
reality by showing how it *handles* specific examples and
provides a ground or abground for Situations.
We take Heidegger as representing an "unreturned"
analytic of Dasein, and Sartre as representing a
"returned" analysis of Human Reality. Sartre's examples
are more specific, but Heidegger gives simple and
plausible examples from time to time as well, such as
Dasien finding its head after the disruption of a fire in
a house.
I am, in a very provisional way, "backtracking" in order
to situate this post in the horizon of the question of
violence. I am trying to lay out a context of the actual
and the example, a situation of "remove" and thought
within which the freeplay of variation is possibile for
the sake of clarification along the path of developing
understanding.
In the condition of the direct, the direct relation to
the positivities in the world, I do not so much speak of
the torturer thematically: I face the torturer, I face
torture. More than that: I *am* tortured. Or I have the
option to torture, to act, to do, I torture. And not only
torture, of course, which as a magnificently extreme
example, but: eat breakfast, make love, take my dog for a
walk, etc. Facing, let me select "torture", I or others
my speculate on when I might "break down". I am in the
actual condition of *choice*, but to be sure, as well, of
violence, pain, terror, disruption, trauma, rupture. But
at the same time as well, politics, society, war,
alliance, secrecy, etc.
There is not, we are told time and again, time to think
in the face of such pressing conditions. "We must act!"
We must: resist torture, remain silent in great pain,
make war against torturers, torture the enemy or adhere
to human rights codes, etc. We have a *choice* and the
choice must be made. We do not have time for a *discourse
on choice*, on the *conditions of choice*. We must
confront violence. Likewise, we will be given to
understand, we do not have time for a *discourse on
violence*. We're talking about *real* violence and we do
not have time to sit around and philosophize. We do not
even have time, in such a condition as torture or some
will say, in the condition of any pressing realities, to
pursue *even this discussion admitting the possibility of
its own impossibility*. Some might say that instead of
pursuing this discussion, I should really be writing
letters to the editor concerning Mumia Abu-Jamal. While
that man faces nearly certain execution in likely corrupt
circumstances, I'm sitting around and philosophizing.
We are *thrown* into the conditions of violence and must
act and choose. Choice is: a decision concerning action
in and among conditions. We must choose our action from
among possible actions. We are to be judged according to
such actions, but even before judgment, we are already
submitted to the effects of such actions. If I choose,
given the opportunity, to shoot my torturer, even before
I am judged (a hero, perhaps), the torture is dead, and I
am not tortured. There is no exit from this condition
into the freedom to turn examples around like a die which
is as meaningless to us as any simple thing present at
hand. We are not free, but at the same time we are free
to choose, among conditions and opportinies, and possible
actions. We have the freedom of the moment of decision.
This has been called a "mad" moment: mad because we must
drop thinking altogether and *decide*.
We must do so because the possibility of violence presses
immediately. It is positively necessary to act and
choose. If we choose not to decide, we are told, we have
in fact chosen whatever condition ensues in that absence
of decision. We are, supposedly, even responsible for
that. If, when being tortured, we choose not to decide
whether to resist the torture and remain true to our
countrymen by not revealing information, the force of
torture itself will bring us into some response. In our
unmindful lack of decision, we will likely end up
revealing secrets. So if we refuse to choose, we are,
supposedly, *choosing* to reveal secrets. We are in the
condition of action. We must act, right away!
"And yet", Heidegger cautions us, "it may be that
prevailing man has acted too much and thought too
little." (not exact quote)
Let us go back to the theme of "tying violence and
authenticity together". Provisionally, I will suggest
that such a tying is not really possible in any simple
way, any more than for Heidegger it is possible to
discussion authenticity without in the process laying
open the entire existential anlytic. So, I have a choice
here: to either work to develop a full-blown discussion
of violence or to hastily tie the questions of violence
and authenticity together. If I make a bad choice, I will
load myself up with some guilt. I don't want to be
guilty. It's gross. I am first and foremost responsible.
Guilt constitutes the situation of judgement according to
the effects of my free decisions. I am free to decide
whether or not to pursue the question of violence in
various ways. And I am responsible. But even now, I am
already bound in the condition of choice, in that I must
choose whether or not to pursue the question of choice
and the question of violence. If I don't pursue this,
there will be no such discourse forthcoming from me. I
will be responsible for its absence. Perhaps such a
discourse could change the conditions by which Mumia's
fate is being decided. This is unlikely at best, unless
something dramatically different from the usual division
between thought and action takes place.
But it could be that prevailing man has observed the
prevailing distinction between action and thought to
much, and has stood in the activated difference between
the two too little.
A certain freedom of synthesis will permeate what is to
follow. I initiate the activation between thought and
action within this thinking on violence and authenticity.
I will call this progression a "thoughtaction", with some
empahsis, in this case, on thought. I suggest that the
question in question can not in fact be addressed
adequately at all without the very activation of the
difference between thought and action. The question, of
violence, constitutes and independent thematic-
substantive.
In order to *activate* the theme of violence the very
condition of that within which any "theme" occurs must
itself be an *activated difference between thought and
action*. We must ask, then: but why? Why can't we just
think freely about the theme of violence? Shouldn't we be
able to develop and essential definition of violence?
Determine its conditions of possibility? After all, we
have the torture example, plenty examples, really, of
violence, which we could study infinitely. Given the
violences of this century, and really all the centuries
before this one, it might seem like one of the best
things to do to pursue the question of violence with a
certain independence.
An easy response here would be to note the observations
of respectable thinkers that philosophy has often set up
its home of thought by means of a certain violence. But
it is not clear enough to me that a violently obtained
research space/institution/tradition/ground can not never
the less adequately pursue the question of violence. It
is plausible, but I'm looking for something different
than that kind of grounding for the reason for
thoughtaction because it seems to me that there is
something more essentially constitutive for the question
of violence that determines why thoughtaction, and
neither thought nor action alone, can serve as a proper
ground.
The circular hermeneutic condition is such that what we
question is something of which we already have some kind
of understanding. This condition can lead quickly to a
general theme of *acquaitance* and *competence*. One
pursuing the question of violence should perhaps have
more than a passing acquaintance with violence, for
example. Doing so in conjunction with the writing of
Heidegger requires, at the very least, that one has an
intellectual competence to make one's way through his
forest of thought. We presume Heidegger to be wise as
acquainted and competent when we must expect that
Heidegger had more than a passing acquaitance with Being
toward Death, and all of the other major themes of his
phenomenology and thinking. When I first read Heidegger,
I found myself positing a kind of "wise man" who wrote
his texts, bringing into relief and articulation what
were robust experiences for him. And yet, of course, we
ourselves must either be wise or become wise in order to
grasp the movement of his thought. Sartre's discussion,
and even much of his trajectory in "existentialism" was
born out of his acquaitance with things like the Nazi
occupation of France, his military service (as is borne
out by his notebooks from that period), etc.
But to be acquainted with violence is to be in its
proximity in certain ways, and to be in its proximity is
to be in its conditions of dilemma. How do we know this?
The suspended discourses of the positivies give answers
which, presumably, we all already know: love thy
neighbor, no man is an island, I am my brother's keeper,
the discourse on fates, the call of the other, stories of
action, politics, war, peace, a time to love, stories of
revenge, etc. We know, though perhaps in certain ways it
is little spoken of, that if one near is in trouble, we
should act to help him or her. A mother loves her child,
as does a father, or should. For Gandhi, a cow's heart
fills with love at the approaching calf who comes to
suckle. Thou shalt not kill. The Rights of Man.
If we are to question concerning violence, we must enter
into its proximity and we must attain to wisdom. Our
acquaitance means at the same time either our action in
response to violence, or some justified inaction or
alternative action. If we seek a master discourse to
determine that action in proximity is possible or
necessary, we will of course fall right into the very
problems which have created the scandals of the moral
whose fame have arisen slowly in moral consciousness and
lead to the death of God. We are no more have the freedom
to appeal to textual resources as absolute guides or
producers of master narratives than Dasein's
responsibility can be adequately accessed via guilt as
interpretive condition or principle. Yet, the thrown
individualization of Dasein in its capacity for guilt,
for having a conscience, constitutes a certain and
definite radicalization of the ownmost condition
regarding responsibility, and hence regarding violence.
As primarily futural, Dasein projectively anticipates and
chooses, according to Heidegger, among potentialities for
being and has as its guide and grounding principle guilt
as: being a perpetrator of violence as responsible for a
lack. If Dasein is always guilty, then Dasein is always
violent. Guilt is not the falling of Dasein in the sense
of inauthenticity, though it is the falling of Dasein in
the sense of violence. In this sense Heidegger
recapitulates a thorough Aristotelian gesture of
complicity with the state, in that someone who has failed
to properly lynch a "nigger" may well feel guilty in that
Dasein. The morality of Being and Time, far from being
Fundamental in the central sense implied by the work is,
in this sense, a regional appropriation of the moral
force/condition.
Guilt in the first instance means: responsible for a lack
in another. Violence. The "nigger" may or may not be an
other, depending on the Dasein and the status of the
movement to include all humanity in the conception of
what is, in certain ways, "the same", and hence what can
be "another". Before this first instance of guilt is
responsibility as a part of a fundamental relation to the
other: being with others, which may or may not be
essentially love of various kinds (erotic, filial, agape,
etc.), or contractual, or something else. Guilt is both
"how it goes" and at the same time the *understanding* of
how it has gone with regards to this moral ground in
conjunction with a certain independent condition, if
itself *conditioned*, of freedom.
The discourse concerning violence must arise within the
primordial relation to the other if it is to have
veracity and sufficient date for its development. If the
positings of existentialia in Being and Time are even
moderately correct we can presume provisionally that
Beings who speak will maintain themselves understandingly
within this relation and will develop this understanding
through discourse. This is of course a somewhat
artificial formulation, since we already know that this
is the case.
The discourse concerning morality and hence violence has
made reference to the Being of "man/humanity/men and
women" en route to accomplishing itself. The discourse on
the Being of "man/humanity/men and women" has developed
the clarification of this Being in an independence from
the pressing dilemma, this "en route" of the moral
(within a certain range of action) in order to pursue its
question with regional freedom. With regards to the
moral, fundamental ontology, which is the ontology that
can say "regional ontologies" is itself regional in a
certain sense. This is possible only if in some
fundamental way Being is already given, if in a certain
way, Being "leads", already "is". This is the final
development of Heidegger's thought, which is considered
by some to be something more "mystical" in Heidegger's
writings.
When we characterize the freedom to pursue the question
of Being as free from the actional demands of the moral,
we may never the less be speaking of another kind of
action, and another moral situation, albeit one which
does not appear, which may in fact systematically not
appear, in certain ways. What is actional will say that
this freedom is the choice of non-action, the non-
activity of thought, and that even thinkers themselves
are guilty of certain inactions. And the thinker will
accuse the actional of being thoughtless, of ploughing
forward en route to ends.
In any event, the discourse concerning violence must have
some contact with violence, just as the discourse on sex
and sexuality gains credibility when its participants are
themselves sexually wise in at least some minimal sense.
This does not mean that in the case of violence one
should actually be violent; one should be in some active
and experienced contact with what is violence if
necessarily in the role of working to prevent and
ameliorate violence. It is interesting that Foucault, who
taught us to identify the violence of the confessional,
proceeded never the less to embark on a prolonged study
of sexuality. Ostensibly the better to ameliorate a
certain violence through the revelation of the
genaeological anlysis. What neither Foucault nor
Heidegger undertook was a straightforwad discussion of
violence. I see Foucualt as trapped in a certain way in
the distension of thought. The "moral force" is
systematically rendered in certain ways impotent, and
operates behind the scenes. I think the same is true for
Heidegger.
Is it possible that what what lies closest to us is the
question of violence? But of course along with this
possibility is any number of "positivities" such as love,
our relationships to those we love, etc. We know the
primary loci of the discourses on love, notably, but not
exhaustively, psychoanalysis and Christianity. These are
at the same time the primary sites of institutional
activity, and in a certain, often truncated way, thought
concerning violence. The activation of the question of
violence as the opening to free discourse the conditions
of possiiblity of violence in the grossest senses, the
conditions of love, relation to the other, etc., might
necessarily involve stepping into spaces which are in
certain ways "staked out" by these and other such
institutions.
---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
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--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -
--
"...it struck me that, as you all recall I'm sure, one of
the most famous--and productive--mis-readings of H. on
authenticity is Sartre's "bad and good faith." (This was
on my mind having just written a piece on, believe it or
not, Sartre and street gangs, and also Richard Rorty
approvingly mentions Satrean ethics in a nice piece in
the latest NEW REPUBLIC that reviews Feyerabend's
autobiography--did you know he was an officer in the
German army in WWII? BTW, if you want, the NEW REPUBLIC
is on the web and you could get the review online for
free.) At any rate, the way the problematic was always
presented to me was one of Sartre in the resistance (he
was, as I recall, a minor courier, after imprisonment)
wondering why some people break down under torture and
some don't. Everyone was wondering how THEY would hold
up. For S, the inauthentic bad faith move is to say
"they made me tell" because, it seems, there was always
that millisecond longer you could have held out, so it
was YOU that made the choice. Very rigid on
responsibility! Authenticity has a lot to do with owning
up to your own responsibility for the choice, in all
areas of life. There's a heck of a lot more to be said
here, of course, but I'll wait to see if this line of
inquiry resonates at all; it's certainly a way, a la Tom
B., of tying authenticity and violence together (though
the torture example is just that, an example, of a more
general phenomenon). "
--- This is a very interesting theme. As a student of
attribution theory in psychology, and having in certain
ways either deconstructed this rubric or complicated it
to the extreme in some theoretical work, I'm very, very
suspicious of this rigid kind of formulation and example.
This is a rich "in" to the discourse on violence.
The theme you suggest is "tying authenticity and violence
together". My inclination on this is to say that it is
not authenticity per se which is to be "tied" to
violence, but various conditions concerning something
like the discourse on authenticity. I am tempted to
proceed with an example, and most facile here of course
would be one of torture. I think such examples might be
fully necessary, but I have been finding that the issue
of example and the question of violence are connected in
very intimate and perhaps essential ways. For this
reason, I want to stop for a moment and bring notice to
the *very being* of the example.
The example of the Situation is projected in within the
horizon of the question of violence. The example
constitutes the projected/virtual actuality which is put
forward to be understood in light of the question. In the
condition of making an example, there is a certain
freedom to develop many different examples, counter
examples, etc. This amounts to: variation and the
intution of essence. For example: a person tortured for
one hour, two hours, one day, two days, not fully
tortured, tortured to the extreme. Those are all
variations. They themselves are not torture. They are not
the violence that is torture. We are not going to rush
out and actually torture in order to learn of choice, the
limits, the "hows" of confession under torture, etc. Why
not? It would be violent.
We are not asking "what is violence?" But we are moving
within the horizon of the question of violence. We
interpret events and situations according to this
question while we are always already in the condition of
maintaining ourselves according to the possibility of
violence (as bad). More of the lived-world hermeneutic
circle. Nothing surprising here.
I am *activating* the theme of violence. When a theme is
raised as activated, other things are in a certain
subordination to this theme. For example, the question of
authenticity. We can hope to tie the question of
authenticity to the question of violence, so long as we
do not hope that the very discourse on authenticity and
good/bad faith will itself constitute the very thematic
horizon of violence itself.
My claim is that Heidegger, and let me add, Sartre, do
not give violence itself a fully substantive engagement
and independent thematization in their analytics of
Dasein/human reality. I alluded to this, or said so
directly as well, I think, in previous posts. I suggested
that a suspension of "the moral" constituted a kind of
ladder which enabled an ascension into a certain "plane",
while at the same time suggesting a return to the ground
from which this ascension took place. The products of the
work on that plane, upon such a return, would be
something like a "residue" of adequate, essential
definitions, groundworks, topologies, and so forth. The
return to the ground of the existential analytic would be
a certain immersion in the "moral". The moral as such
constitutes the world as it is bound by and caught up in
the ongoing condition of the possibily of violence. The
immoral is or may be: violence. For Levinas, injustice
*is* violence. I tend to agree with this.
I call this return to the "moral ground" a "return to the
positivities". The plane of remove constituting the
existential analytic is one which converts the actual
into example. For example: Dionysus is converted
categorically to: a god. A die is converted into an
example of an object, per se, in order to subject it to
variation to clarify the structures of subject-object
consciousness, for Husserl. When Heidegger supposedly
returns the die to the crap table, to determine all the
better the structures of Dasein, not either to gamble or
to address the moral conditions of gambing. Yet this
address has some considerable motivation lying in the
good of authenticity and the potential violence of
inauthenticity, the danger of the loss of inauthenticity,
the "unheahty" of authencity not being able to find
itself out of inauthenticity. It does not constitute a
"return to the world" but a most extreme elevation and
expansion of the psychism inhereing in Descartes' moment,
Husserl's transcendental ego, etc. The selfworld is taken
as example for Heidegger to give the structures of
Dasein. Again, the moral tenor of his addressing this
problem operates behind his text, though its "first
sweep" is a neutral commitment to the western
philosophical project: here's a question to pursue:
Being. Why pursue it? This question and its answer is not
really developed until later, when the development of
Heidegger's thought is brought into contact with
conditions like homelessness, technology, the condition
of internationalishm, humanism, the manufacture of
corpses, and so forth. That the question has not shown
its moral raison d'etre papers is not a fault in my
opinion, but goes into the very problem of authenticity
and Being. In other words, that is, to a certain extent,
how it is with such major aspects of being, the "State of
Being", so it is not necessary to ask for a moral
grounding of the "State of Being", though it may be
*possible* to do so. We preserve here a certain
independence and autonomy of philosophy.
We can say here that Satre brings the analysis of human
reality more quicly and more concretely back in certain
ways in order to interpret the conditions of his world.
He was much more able then Heidegger to address actual
conditions and to "operationalize" his "theory" of human
reality by showing how it *handles* specific examples and
provides a ground or abground for Situations.
We take Heidegger as representing an "unreturned"
analytic of Dasein, and Sartre as representing a
"returned" analysis of Human Reality. Sartre's examples
are more specific, but Heidegger gives simple and
plausible examples from time to time as well, such as
Dasien finding its head after the disruption of a fire in
a house.
I am, in a very provisional way, "backtracking" in order
to situate this post in the horizon of the question of
violence. I am trying to lay out a context of the actual
and the example, a situation of "remove" and thought
within which the freeplay of variation is possibile for
the sake of clarification along the path of developing
understanding.
In the condition of the direct, the direct relation to
the positivities in the world, I do not so much speak of
the torturer thematically: I face the torturer, I face
torture. More than that: I *am* tortured. Or I have the
option to torture, to act, to do, I torture. And not only
torture, of course, which as a magnificently extreme
example, but: eat breakfast, make love, take my dog for a
walk, etc. Facing, let me select "torture", I or others
my speculate on when I might "break down". I am in the
actual condition of *choice*, but to be sure, as well, of
violence, pain, terror, disruption, trauma, rupture. But
at the same time as well, politics, society, war,
alliance, secrecy, etc.
There is not, we are told time and again, time to think
in the face of such pressing conditions. "We must act!"
We must: resist torture, remain silent in great pain,
make war against torturers, torture the enemy or adhere
to human rights codes, etc. We have a *choice* and the
choice must be made. We do not have time for a *discourse
on choice*, on the *conditions of choice*. We must
confront violence. Likewise, we will be given to
understand, we do not have time for a *discourse on
violence*. We're talking about *real* violence and we do
not have time to sit around and philosophize. We do not
even have time, in such a condition as torture or some
will say, in the condition of any pressing realities, to
pursue *even this discussion admitting the possibility of
its own impossibility*. Some might say that instead of
pursuing this discussion, I should really be writing
letters to the editor concerning Mumia Abu-Jamal. While
that man faces nearly certain execution in likely corrupt
circumstances, I'm sitting around and philosophizing.
We are *thrown* into the conditions of violence and must
act and choose. Choice is: a decision concerning action
in and among conditions. We must choose our action from
among possible actions. We are to be judged according to
such actions, but even before judgment, we are already
submitted to the effects of such actions. If I choose,
given the opportunity, to shoot my torturer, even before
I am judged (a hero, perhaps), the torture is dead, and I
am not tortured. There is no exit from this condition
into the freedom to turn examples around like a die which
is as meaningless to us as any simple thing present at
hand. We are not free, but at the same time we are free
to choose, among conditions and opportinies, and possible
actions. We have the freedom of the moment of decision.
This has been called a "mad" moment: mad because we must
drop thinking altogether and *decide*.
We must do so because the possibility of violence presses
immediately. It is positively necessary to act and
choose. If we choose not to decide, we are told, we have
in fact chosen whatever condition ensues in that absence
of decision. We are, supposedly, even responsible for
that. If, when being tortured, we choose not to decide
whether to resist the torture and remain true to our
countrymen by not revealing information, the force of
torture itself will bring us into some response. In our
unmindful lack of decision, we will likely end up
revealing secrets. So if we refuse to choose, we are,
supposedly, *choosing* to reveal secrets. We are in the
condition of action. We must act, right away!
"And yet", Heidegger cautions us, "it may be that
prevailing man has acted too much and thought too
little." (not exact quote)
Let us go back to the theme of "tying violence and
authenticity together". Provisionally, I will suggest
that such a tying is not really possible in any simple
way, any more than for Heidegger it is possible to
discussion authenticity without in the process laying
open the entire existential anlytic. So, I have a choice
here: to either work to develop a full-blown discussion
of violence or to hastily tie the questions of violence
and authenticity together. If I make a bad choice, I will
load myself up with some guilt. I don't want to be
guilty. It's gross. I am first and foremost responsible.
Guilt constitutes the situation of judgement according to
the effects of my free decisions. I am free to decide
whether or not to pursue the question of violence in
various ways. And I am responsible. But even now, I am
already bound in the condition of choice, in that I must
choose whether or not to pursue the question of choice
and the question of violence. If I don't pursue this,
there will be no such discourse forthcoming from me. I
will be responsible for its absence. Perhaps such a
discourse could change the conditions by which Mumia's
fate is being decided. This is unlikely at best, unless
something dramatically different from the usual division
between thought and action takes place.
But it could be that prevailing man has observed the
prevailing distinction between action and thought to
much, and has stood in the activated difference between
the two too little.
A certain freedom of synthesis will permeate what is to
follow. I initiate the activation between thought and
action within this thinking on violence and authenticity.
I will call this progression a "thoughtaction", with some
empahsis, in this case, on thought. I suggest that the
question in question can not in fact be addressed
adequately at all without the very activation of the
difference between thought and action. The question, of
violence, constitutes and independent thematic-
substantive.
In order to *activate* the theme of violence the very
condition of that within which any "theme" occurs must
itself be an *activated difference between thought and
action*. We must ask, then: but why? Why can't we just
think freely about the theme of violence? Shouldn't we be
able to develop and essential definition of violence?
Determine its conditions of possibility? After all, we
have the torture example, plenty examples, really, of
violence, which we could study infinitely. Given the
violences of this century, and really all the centuries
before this one, it might seem like one of the best
things to do to pursue the question of violence with a
certain independence.
An easy response here would be to note the observations
of respectable thinkers that philosophy has often set up
its home of thought by means of a certain violence. But
it is not clear enough to me that a violently obtained
research space/institution/tradition/ground can not never
the less adequately pursue the question of violence. It
is plausible, but I'm looking for something different
than that kind of grounding for the reason for
thoughtaction because it seems to me that there is
something more essentially constitutive for the question
of violence that determines why thoughtaction, and
neither thought nor action alone, can serve as a proper
ground.
The circular hermeneutic condition is such that what we
question is something of which we already have some kind
of understanding. This condition can lead quickly to a
general theme of *acquaitance* and *competence*. One
pursuing the question of violence should perhaps have
more than a passing acquaintance with violence, for
example. Doing so in conjunction with the writing of
Heidegger requires, at the very least, that one has an
intellectual competence to make one's way through his
forest of thought. We presume Heidegger to be wise as
acquainted and competent when we must expect that
Heidegger had more than a passing acquaitance with Being
toward Death, and all of the other major themes of his
phenomenology and thinking. When I first read Heidegger,
I found myself positing a kind of "wise man" who wrote
his texts, bringing into relief and articulation what
were robust experiences for him. And yet, of course, we
ourselves must either be wise or become wise in order to
grasp the movement of his thought. Sartre's discussion,
and even much of his trajectory in "existentialism" was
born out of his acquaitance with things like the Nazi
occupation of France, his military service (as is borne
out by his notebooks from that period), etc.
But to be acquainted with violence is to be in its
proximity in certain ways, and to be in its proximity is
to be in its conditions of dilemma. How do we know this?
The suspended discourses of the positivies give answers
which, presumably, we all already know: love thy
neighbor, no man is an island, I am my brother's keeper,
the discourse on fates, the call of the other, stories of
action, politics, war, peace, a time to love, stories of
revenge, etc. We know, though perhaps in certain ways it
is little spoken of, that if one near is in trouble, we
should act to help him or her. A mother loves her child,
as does a father, or should. For Gandhi, a cow's heart
fills with love at the approaching calf who comes to
suckle. Thou shalt not kill. The Rights of Man.
If we are to question concerning violence, we must enter
into its proximity and we must attain to wisdom. Our
acquaitance means at the same time either our action in
response to violence, or some justified inaction or
alternative action. If we seek a master discourse to
determine that action in proximity is possible or
necessary, we will of course fall right into the very
problems which have created the scandals of the moral
whose fame have arisen slowly in moral consciousness and
lead to the death of God. We are no more have the freedom
to appeal to textual resources as absolute guides or
producers of master narratives than Dasein's
responsibility can be adequately accessed via guilt as
interpretive condition or principle. Yet, the thrown
individualization of Dasein in its capacity for guilt,
for having a conscience, constitutes a certain and
definite radicalization of the ownmost condition
regarding responsibility, and hence regarding violence.
As primarily futural, Dasein projectively anticipates and
chooses, according to Heidegger, among potentialities for
being and has as its guide and grounding principle guilt
as: being a perpetrator of violence as responsible for a
lack. If Dasein is always guilty, then Dasein is always
violent. Guilt is not the falling of Dasein in the sense
of inauthenticity, though it is the falling of Dasein in
the sense of violence. In this sense Heidegger
recapitulates a thorough Aristotelian gesture of
complicity with the state, in that someone who has failed
to properly lynch a "nigger" may well feel guilty in that
Dasein. The morality of Being and Time, far from being
Fundamental in the central sense implied by the work is,
in this sense, a regional appropriation of the moral
force/condition.
Guilt in the first instance means: responsible for a lack
in another. Violence. The "nigger" may or may not be an
other, depending on the Dasein and the status of the
movement to include all humanity in the conception of
what is, in certain ways, "the same", and hence what can
be "another". Before this first instance of guilt is
responsibility as a part of a fundamental relation to the
other: being with others, which may or may not be
essentially love of various kinds (erotic, filial, agape,
etc.), or contractual, or something else. Guilt is both
"how it goes" and at the same time the *understanding* of
how it has gone with regards to this moral ground in
conjunction with a certain independent condition, if
itself *conditioned*, of freedom.
The discourse concerning violence must arise within the
primordial relation to the other if it is to have
veracity and sufficient date for its development. If the
positings of existentialia in Being and Time are even
moderately correct we can presume provisionally that
Beings who speak will maintain themselves understandingly
within this relation and will develop this understanding
through discourse. This is of course a somewhat
artificial formulation, since we already know that this
is the case.
The discourse concerning morality and hence violence has
made reference to the Being of "man/humanity/men and
women" en route to accomplishing itself. The discourse on
the Being of "man/humanity/men and women" has developed
the clarification of this Being in an independence from
the pressing dilemma, this "en route" of the moral
(within a certain range of action) in order to pursue its
question with regional freedom. With regards to the
moral, fundamental ontology, which is the ontology that
can say "regional ontologies" is itself regional in a
certain sense. This is possible only if in some
fundamental way Being is already given, if in a certain
way, Being "leads", already "is". This is the final
development of Heidegger's thought, which is considered
by some to be something more "mystical" in Heidegger's
writings.
When we characterize the freedom to pursue the question
of Being as free from the actional demands of the moral,
we may never the less be speaking of another kind of
action, and another moral situation, albeit one which
does not appear, which may in fact systematically not
appear, in certain ways. What is actional will say that
this freedom is the choice of non-action, the non-
activity of thought, and that even thinkers themselves
are guilty of certain inactions. And the thinker will
accuse the actional of being thoughtless, of ploughing
forward en route to ends.
In any event, the discourse concerning violence must have
some contact with violence, just as the discourse on sex
and sexuality gains credibility when its participants are
themselves sexually wise in at least some minimal sense.
This does not mean that in the case of violence one
should actually be violent; one should be in some active
and experienced contact with what is violence if
necessarily in the role of working to prevent and
ameliorate violence. It is interesting that Foucault, who
taught us to identify the violence of the confessional,
proceeded never the less to embark on a prolonged study
of sexuality. Ostensibly the better to ameliorate a
certain violence through the revelation of the
genaeological anlysis. What neither Foucault nor
Heidegger undertook was a straightforwad discussion of
violence. I see Foucualt as trapped in a certain way in
the distension of thought. The "moral force" is
systematically rendered in certain ways impotent, and
operates behind the scenes. I think the same is true for
Heidegger.
Is it possible that what what lies closest to us is the
question of violence? But of course along with this
possibility is any number of "positivities" such as love,
our relationships to those we love, etc. We know the
primary loci of the discourses on love, notably, but not
exhaustively, psychoanalysis and Christianity. These are
at the same time the primary sites of institutional
activity, and in a certain, often truncated way, thought
concerning violence. The activation of the question of
violence as the opening to free discourse the conditions
of possiiblity of violence in the grossest senses, the
conditions of love, relation to the other, etc., might
necessarily involve stepping into spaces which are in
certain ways "staked out" by these and other such
institutions.
---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.
Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
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