>Return-Path: <@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu:owner-derrida@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>X-Delivery-Notice: SMTP MAIL FROM does not correspond to sender.
>X-Sender: s2442@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 00:07:00 GMT+0100
>Reply-To: A discussion of Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction
> <DERRIDA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sender: A discussion of Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction
> <DERRIDA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>From: Peter Krapp <hydra@xxxxxxx>
>Subject: histoire du mensonge
>To: Multiple recipients of list DERRIDA <DERRIDA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>Reg Lilly <rlilly@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>>>New School for Social Research, Oct 6.
>>
>>Under the auspices of the Hannah Arendt/Reiner Schuermann Memorial Symposia,
>>which takes as its theme "The Legacy of Hannah Arendt," Derrida will give a
>>paper entitled "History of Lies," Friday October 6, 4:00-5:30 pm in Room
>>242, Graduate Faculty Building. Normally these are open to the public, but
>>they may need to devise some principle of exclusion for crowd control.
>>Derrida's paper is in the midst of a series of papers beginning in the
>>morning, so there will be plenty of jockying for position.
>>R. Lilly
>>Skidmore College
>
>Sorry, I would have written in earlier but I was on the road. On Monday (2nd)
>JD gave a paper on Michel Deguy under the title Comment Nommer, at the
>Maison Francaise. The History of the Lie I think he is reading that at the
>Hannah Arendt/Reiner Schuermann Memorial Symposia right now, but for
>those (like me) who are not there, here are some notes.
>
>"At this moment", as it were (timetable permitting), JD will have been
>introducing the paper by referring to Nietzsche before launching the first
>conceptual qualifications: the lie in its classical determination is not an
>error; to tell the true history of the lie is to presuppose absolute knowledge;
>but lies cannot be reappropriated by true history. To formulize an approach
>which will try to be true (no lie) thus ought to give the lie to the lie...
>
>The lie is an intentional act, a series of statements that the liar knows to
>be false (in view of the addressee). This intentional act aims to deceive, to
>make belief. Assuming that "we" have at "our" disposal a reliable concept of
>the lie, it would not suffice to distinguish it from its status in other
>cultures,
>it is to be distinguished also from its own historicity. A history of the
>concept
>of the lie must be supplemented by a history of the lie in its effects and
>by a true
>history of lies in general.
>
>Before beginning to begin, JD will have admitted just about now that he is not
>capable of telling the whole truth. Moreover, he will not even tell all
>that he could
>tell about what he can think of lie and truth.
>
>Then, two epigraphs. One from Hannah Arendt's essay Truth and Politics which
>appeared in the New Yorker, one from her later text Lying in Politics of 1971,
>printed in the New York Review of Books. "Lies have always been considered
>important tools in politics." - "It is only in our modernity that the lie
>[...] has
>become complete and finite."
>
>But if history is full of lies, how can the lie itself have a history? It
>would have
>been too simple (even for somebody like me who is not JD) to oppose
absolute lie
>and absolute knowledge as ends of history. (Bite me, Fukuyama.) The terms of
>sanctity (it is a duty not to tell a lie) used by Reiner Schuermann
>indicate what
>is at stake: the lie is both historical and not historical. Kant will be
>inevitable
>in this nexus, and you can remember what JD has had to say about Kant, so I
>won't type that in right here, nor all the contemporary (French-American)
>exemplification about Chirac, the WWII and the veracity of States.
>
>If ethical responsibility resides in performativity, we need a problematic not
>of truth but of testimony. Interestingly enough, some years before Arendt,
Koyre
>suggested that the distinction of true and false is important, but reversible.
>Totalitarian regimes are founded on the lie, but the more a political
>machine lies,
>the more it makes the love of truth its programme.
>
>There will follow some incisive remarks about the Machiavellian concept of
>second-degree lying (telling the truth to those who will not believe it because
>one knows they won't and wants to deceive them in this manner), about the
>secret as threat to the res publica, and about the demand that everybody tell
>the truth by which totalitarianism dons a democratic face.
>
>One ought then to remove history from moral denunciation, address the media
>in their mechanisms of iconic substitution, delimit the other of the political,
>and sketch programmatically the performativity of lying in view of political
>action. If, as Arendt has it, the politician is a man of action, he needs
>the capacity
>to lie. To tell the truth is what has been and what is, but not what will be.
>The politician as actor wants change. If our ability to lie is fundamental to
>human freedom, there would be no history without the possibility of the lie.
>
>In Arendt, however, JD will have found by now no concept of witnessing;
>he will say around this time (t)here that he finds her psychologically confused
>and logically incompatible with classical concepts of truth (the self-deception
>theme for instance is treated without any reference to Freud or Heidegger).
>Truth, for Arendt, is stable, and must always be revealed; truth is the
>indefinite survival of the stable. Evidently, this calls for a number of
>deconstructive readings. Is the lie an absolute vice? JD will soon worry
>publicly, (t)here in New York, about the banalisation of all this by Hannah
>Arendt's certainties.
>
>Be that as it may, nothing and no-one will be able to prove th existence and
>necessity of a history of the lie. Thus far JD, my notes. You will have read it
>in real time, should you have been online while he was speaking. This is the
>stricture of media: though they always lag, their speed is still
increasing. And
>as the speed increases, it becomes less and less and less evident which to
>believe: because there is no time to react, filter, assess, analyse. Can you
>believe your eyes?
>
>Watch out for the electric monk, though.
>
>10pm (GMT), Peter K
>
>
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
>X-Delivery-Notice: SMTP MAIL FROM does not correspond to sender.
>X-Sender: s2442@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 00:07:00 GMT+0100
>Reply-To: A discussion of Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction
> <DERRIDA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sender: A discussion of Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction
> <DERRIDA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>From: Peter Krapp <hydra@xxxxxxx>
>Subject: histoire du mensonge
>To: Multiple recipients of list DERRIDA <DERRIDA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>Reg Lilly <rlilly@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>>>New School for Social Research, Oct 6.
>>
>>Under the auspices of the Hannah Arendt/Reiner Schuermann Memorial Symposia,
>>which takes as its theme "The Legacy of Hannah Arendt," Derrida will give a
>>paper entitled "History of Lies," Friday October 6, 4:00-5:30 pm in Room
>>242, Graduate Faculty Building. Normally these are open to the public, but
>>they may need to devise some principle of exclusion for crowd control.
>>Derrida's paper is in the midst of a series of papers beginning in the
>>morning, so there will be plenty of jockying for position.
>>R. Lilly
>>Skidmore College
>
>Sorry, I would have written in earlier but I was on the road. On Monday (2nd)
>JD gave a paper on Michel Deguy under the title Comment Nommer, at the
>Maison Francaise. The History of the Lie I think he is reading that at the
>Hannah Arendt/Reiner Schuermann Memorial Symposia right now, but for
>those (like me) who are not there, here are some notes.
>
>"At this moment", as it were (timetable permitting), JD will have been
>introducing the paper by referring to Nietzsche before launching the first
>conceptual qualifications: the lie in its classical determination is not an
>error; to tell the true history of the lie is to presuppose absolute knowledge;
>but lies cannot be reappropriated by true history. To formulize an approach
>which will try to be true (no lie) thus ought to give the lie to the lie...
>
>The lie is an intentional act, a series of statements that the liar knows to
>be false (in view of the addressee). This intentional act aims to deceive, to
>make belief. Assuming that "we" have at "our" disposal a reliable concept of
>the lie, it would not suffice to distinguish it from its status in other
>cultures,
>it is to be distinguished also from its own historicity. A history of the
>concept
>of the lie must be supplemented by a history of the lie in its effects and
>by a true
>history of lies in general.
>
>Before beginning to begin, JD will have admitted just about now that he is not
>capable of telling the whole truth. Moreover, he will not even tell all
>that he could
>tell about what he can think of lie and truth.
>
>Then, two epigraphs. One from Hannah Arendt's essay Truth and Politics which
>appeared in the New Yorker, one from her later text Lying in Politics of 1971,
>printed in the New York Review of Books. "Lies have always been considered
>important tools in politics." - "It is only in our modernity that the lie
>[...] has
>become complete and finite."
>
>But if history is full of lies, how can the lie itself have a history? It
>would have
>been too simple (even for somebody like me who is not JD) to oppose
absolute lie
>and absolute knowledge as ends of history. (Bite me, Fukuyama.) The terms of
>sanctity (it is a duty not to tell a lie) used by Reiner Schuermann
>indicate what
>is at stake: the lie is both historical and not historical. Kant will be
>inevitable
>in this nexus, and you can remember what JD has had to say about Kant, so I
>won't type that in right here, nor all the contemporary (French-American)
>exemplification about Chirac, the WWII and the veracity of States.
>
>If ethical responsibility resides in performativity, we need a problematic not
>of truth but of testimony. Interestingly enough, some years before Arendt,
Koyre
>suggested that the distinction of true and false is important, but reversible.
>Totalitarian regimes are founded on the lie, but the more a political
>machine lies,
>the more it makes the love of truth its programme.
>
>There will follow some incisive remarks about the Machiavellian concept of
>second-degree lying (telling the truth to those who will not believe it because
>one knows they won't and wants to deceive them in this manner), about the
>secret as threat to the res publica, and about the demand that everybody tell
>the truth by which totalitarianism dons a democratic face.
>
>One ought then to remove history from moral denunciation, address the media
>in their mechanisms of iconic substitution, delimit the other of the political,
>and sketch programmatically the performativity of lying in view of political
>action. If, as Arendt has it, the politician is a man of action, he needs
>the capacity
>to lie. To tell the truth is what has been and what is, but not what will be.
>The politician as actor wants change. If our ability to lie is fundamental to
>human freedom, there would be no history without the possibility of the lie.
>
>In Arendt, however, JD will have found by now no concept of witnessing;
>he will say around this time (t)here that he finds her psychologically confused
>and logically incompatible with classical concepts of truth (the self-deception
>theme for instance is treated without any reference to Freud or Heidegger).
>Truth, for Arendt, is stable, and must always be revealed; truth is the
>indefinite survival of the stable. Evidently, this calls for a number of
>deconstructive readings. Is the lie an absolute vice? JD will soon worry
>publicly, (t)here in New York, about the banalisation of all this by Hannah
>Arendt's certainties.
>
>Be that as it may, nothing and no-one will be able to prove th existence and
>necessity of a history of the lie. Thus far JD, my notes. You will have read it
>in real time, should you have been online while he was speaking. This is the
>stricture of media: though they always lag, their speed is still
increasing. And
>as the speed increases, it becomes less and less and less evident which to
>believe: because there is no time to react, filter, assess, analyse. Can you
>believe your eyes?
>
>Watch out for the electric monk, though.
>
>10pm (GMT), Peter K
>
>
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------