At 10:36 29/09/97 -0700, Ricardo wrote: >You cannot emancipate yourself from the dogmas of reason except >through the employment of reason: to deconstruct reason you must >employ reason. If deconstruction wants to make any claims to >validity, it must make claims to truth. ________________ How can reason be dogmatic, if it is reasonable? ;) I'm not against "critical reason", if by which you mean a critical attitude. I don't think you need any claim to "truth" to critique others claims to truth though. All we need is some strategy of conviencing others, which would be different in different socio-cultural circumstances. It does not have to be a claim to "truth". Since all the claims to "truth" are arbitrary, it may be a particularly poor strategy to follow in order to convience the others of the fallsity of someone's claim to "truth". Hegel, on the other hand, is quite problematic in my opinion. My sense is that a lot of fundamental ideas on which Hegel's philosophy of morality and ethics are built are extra-theoretical. For example, the very idea that a person's right to life and free staus is inalienable and imprescriptible is by itself extra-theoretical, which is not to say that I disagree or oppose it. My sense is that Hegel's notions of 'individuality', 'rationality', 'freedom', etc., all of which hold central place in his philosophy, are extra-theoretical in character. They are not derived from some universal tenet of reason. Though my understanding of Hegel is quite superfecial, my general attitude towards him is of suspicion. Hegel is a totalizing thinker. Once you get inside of it, there is no way out--there is nothing outside of it. I also think that there will be no scope for 'multiculturalism' in Hegel's world-- the state of freedom is an unicultural state, the universal destiny of 'mankind', to which somehow orientals don't belong. My sense is that in the present cultural and political enviorenment of the western societies, Hegel would lend support to the conservative, if the word conveys any meaning, political movement as he did in his own time. I know I'm making assertions, and not elaborating. The main reason for this is that I don't have much time right now to start studying Hegel seriously, and he is a bloody complex and extremely difficult thinker. So I'm only thinking aloud some of the problems I feel I have with Hegel. _________ > >Your comments on Freud need clarification; still, let me say this: >psychoanalysis implicitly recognizes the ability of a person to self- >reflect on their unconscious; therefore it does not (cannot) reject >critical reason. > >ricardo _______________ Well, I referred to Freud as an off hand critique of Kant's philosophy of morality. Kant's morality, which is based on 'reason' and 'reason' alone, completely supresses desire. Hegel, of course, deals with the dialectics of desire and reason. However, non of the Enlightnment philosophers knew of 'unconscious' and its relation to desire. My reference to Freud was not about the pathological state that results due to supression of certain unpleasant event which could be recalled. It was more to do with civilization built upon the supression of desire. Cheers, ajit sinha >
