Political Ontology of Destruction Azad V. Sabbah 2014
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Political Ontology of Destruction Azad V. Sabbah
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Please share this e-book with your friends 窶的f you still have one under this nihilistic state of existence imposed by global capitalist trinity. Feel free to e-mail it or print it in its entirety or in part. If you wish to translate it into another language, to make multiple copies for wider distribution, or to reprint portions in a newsletter or periodical, just do it! If you wish to publish it as it is or in any other language, just email me. Please do not reproduce it for money, without asking me, of course-if you are kind enough to deign to do so. If you do, please spend it all in accordance with the Code Duello: smoke pot, eat chicken and drink tea so that you would also live and write other things in the process of clutching rapaciously first and then ruthlessly wringing the malefic neck of the capitalist trinity.
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Political Ontology of Destruction And when you read what's written in it, go to him and tell him that I'm dead, and that I haven't forgiven him. Tell him, too, that I've been reading the Gospel lately. There it says we must forgive all our enemies. Well, I've read that, but I've not forgiven him all the same; for when mother was dying and still could talk, the last thing she said was: 'I curse him.' And so I curse him, not on my own account but on mother's. Tell him how mother died, how I was left alone at Mme. Bubnov's; tell him how you saw me there, tell him all, all, and tell him I liked better to be at Mme. Bubnov's than to go to him..." Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Insulted and The Injured, 'Epilogue' The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission it is to preach and to teach. These are the gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don't ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. What you do with your petty life is of no concern to them. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that? Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion 1 – Sexus
Death in the dead shit-pit:The end of a fucking-shitting-pissing life What an obnoxious and agonizing dream was that! It was a dream of high caliber, one which if I continued to live in it I would have never dreamt of the existence of any other world. I would have believed in it as powerfully and confidently as I believe in the existence of this reality I live in. But since I have waken up, I powerlessly, diffidently and somewhat indifferently realize that it was a dream and not a piece of shit, excuse me, I meant, a piece of this reality I live in. As a matter of fact, I have another dream story that I used to crown as the most horrifying dream I have ever recorded in my glorious memory and that – if I am allowed to egg a few pieces of niceties and subleties – I may interject here. I was in a veranda, sitting and looking at the people most of whom I know and whom were 5|Page
conversing with each other calmly and in a some way seriously. I did not have a bug in my head, nor up my ass and was in a good mood; not the one, for instance, in which I feel like my balls are being squeezed by a thousand of whorish fingers. I was certainly not eavesdropping because they seemed having no trouble at all with what I hear. I soon realized – with a light dose of an anticipation of a state of consternation – that I was hearing words that include 'me', 'death', 'coffin', 'shroud' 'burying'. I do not remember at all how long I stayed – or to be honest whether or not I felt it at all – in the mentioned state of consternation. I was aghast. I, of course, at first and at once, denied the fact that it is my death; that it is the shroud that will wrap my naked body; it is the coffin that will box my own shrouded naked body and it is my own shrouded and naked body that will be buried in a shit-pit. A shit-pit! I hopelessly and dejectedly asked myself: is not the death a state in which you see nothing, you feel nothing, you hear nothing? – Digression: I am now proud of myself for the reason that I even in my terrific dream I am narrating had never taken refuge in the soul superstition to explain the dark quagmire in which I was drowned to death. Without any beating about the bush, I never even for a moment believed that I have a soul. But my balls would have soul; and since I have fortunately two balls, they must have two souls: souls that have vanished away in the spectacular aura of juicy vortexes which briskly appeared behind or under the bushes as the elusive moments of a corrosive blissfulness. – God, I blurted out, what a dreadful disaster I am obliged to endure! I squalled to death that I am not death! Nobody heard me. They kept preparing the shroud and the coffin; someone else, I reasoned, should have already dug the shit-pit in which I will lie down and where I will never lay nobody. It was as if there was something – as destructive as a missile and as vitriolic as the steel in the liquid state – that was stuck in my throat. I could not vomit it, nor could I swallow it and send to my bowels. I guilelessly gulped as if I had long been a victim of crusades of psychological traumas and terrors. Okaay, I roared hawkishly, Okaaay,– no, this was not a roar; nor was it a whimper though I croaked mawkishly: they will bury me, throw me in the shit-pit and cover me with the muddy, sticky and stinky soil. I will rot there! I will decompose there! But you must be dead 6|Page
first to be decomposed whispered somebody into my ear devilishly. A tremendous shiver cuddled me, a sympathetic cudgel pierced me. I felt the sticky and stinky mud and wriggling and jiggling worms in my armpits, in my nostrils, and in my throat. I, at last, yielded as soft as dough to fatalistic and fantastic beliefs that death is something which is experienced in this way; that I will not be able to move even a finger during the process of shrouding, boxing and burying me; that they will bury me anyway despite my protestations; that they will cover me with the filthy soil; that they will let me cower there – with all my vulnerability, my defenselessness and my unpreparedness – in fear of... in fear of...in fear of... and...and... and that they will go back to their Ahs!-Ohs! and their fucking-shitting-pissing lives. They will leave! And they will live, and not me. Yes, I will then die the second time in there; right there in the shit-pit which cavernously, ravenously, chancrously, and cantankerously opens its maw like a stretch of emptiness and awaits for me to devour me, to suck me up, and to gobble me up. This must be the death! This is my death! First, you are alive, seeing and hearing things but nobody sees and hear you. This must be the first death! Then, you really die when they bury and leave you. So, this is the second death! What an injustice, I whispered myself terrified and petrified, that you live just once and die twice! What a nonsense! What a cruelty! What?...How?...Why?...What if ?... I woke up. My head, my chest, my balls, my ankles, and my toes, respectively and at the same time all together, were all throbbing painfully; as though I have been forced to swallow hundreds of mini-grenades and as though the grenades were about to explode respectively first and at last all together, along with my own precious body and along with the tactile qualities of my own precious body! So, this is the dream that I used to crown as the horrible of the horrible, as this short interjection narrated, of my nightmares. What was I saying? Ok...the dream...Ok...the dream I will relate and narrate in a moment is as obnoxious as amputating an arm of mine for the reason that I had used it during the act of spanking the monkey and is as agonizing as seeing the flag of a country you detest, you curse and you abhor everywhere—every day—every night. 7|Page
Is the proposition 'I am a human being' a belief or a faith? With regard to terms 'belief' and 'faith' a distinction has to be made for the sake of clarity of this study in which the distinction will be emphasized and followed without exception. Although, in English the both term have been and are being used in place of another respectively, the term 'faith' has more religious connotations than the term 'belief '. Among others, Oxford Dictionary of English gives this definition for 'faith': 'Belief in the truths of religion; belief in the authenticity of divine revelation.' On the contrary, the term 'belief' will be used as that which takes something as true. In this sense, believing in Christ or Allah is a matter of 'faith', while believing in the fact that I am a human being is a matter of 'belief. But what a strange thing is that! What does it mean to say 'I am a human being'? How are you able to attribute the quality of being human to yourself? You are a human being because your mom, your teacher – or someone you do not recall now – told you so. Really? You are a human being because you have money. Good. You are a human being because you can breathe. Exactly. You are a human being because you can fuck. Congratulations!
I am not a Schizo and I am not a decent philosopher either As I am thinking of writing about possible interpretations on interpretation, as I am understanding the possibility of interpretable character of interpretations, as I am falling into a deep introspection over my own capacity for a possibility of understanding the act of interpretation, as I am abstracting away from the impossibility of a concrete interpretation, as I am rationalizing the irrationality of a rational interpretation, as I am translating from what I had constructed about interpretation in my own tongue to the language through which I am interpreting the act of interpretation, as I am representing models, images, forms and symbols through my own interpretation of interpretations, as I am speculating on the question of interpretation through what the others have already interpreted, as I am juxtaposing the interpenetration of possibility and of impossibility of the act of 8|Page
interpretation, as I am conceptualizing the concept of interpretation that is itself a culmination of the very act of interpretation, as I am examining the details that are neither appurtenances for nor deficiencies of the act of interpretation, as I am intuiting the impossibility of interpreting an intuition, a feeling, and an emotion etc., as I am apprehending the possibility of being duped by a particular interpretation in the course of interpreting the act of interpretation, as I am articulating disconnected interpretations on the act of interpretation as if they have something to do with each other, as I am presuming the act of interpretation is an act without knowing what kind of thing an act is, as I am cognizing that language within and through which interpretations are acted out is not 'an adequate expression of all realities', as I am perceiving the miasma where specific characteristics and functions of interpretations are determined, as I am observing the battlefield of history of philosophy where the hierarchical order of interpretations oscillates, as I am describing how disheveled it is to interpret the act of interpretation, as I am demonstrating the 'nonsense' character of the act of interpretation, as I am considering to abandon interpreting the act of interpretation from time to time, as I am reflecting on the relationship between the time superstition and the act of interpretation, as I am realizing with such a horror that interpreting the act of interpretation is like trying to catch an urchin in the narrow streets of a slum, as I am comprehending interpreting the act of interpretation requires much more concentration than poking my nose in some kind of business of someone else, as I am proposing a variety of ways of approaching the problem of interpretation as if I am trying to jerk off while I am in an epileptic fit, as I am predicting the end of this essay where the act of interpretation still needs interpreting it, as I am predicating of the subject 'I' in the sentence 'I am the one who interprets', as I am judging the act of interpretation as if I have nothing to do else, – At the same time, I am sitting on this chair, looking at the street thorough the window, listening to Brahms’ Clarinet Trio, drinking the tea, rolling a cigarette, talking to my lady, and thinking about the fact that I must go to the work in forty minutes...
The eyes, the paws, and the teeth of a lonely beast of prey A few admonitions are necessary for the addicts (for the vulgar and refined sybarites) – 9|Page
who always already welcome pleasure at the expense of a despicable submission to the capitalist trinity (– to make them understand that philosophy is that which is not suited them, that philosophy is that which has nothing to do with the textbooks, with mollycoddling stupidity of moralizing, with the cowardly resignation in the face of the socalled necessities of financial security and of comfort, with the so-called social capital that is promoted as the only desiderata to exist in the rat race; and that philosophy is not a leisure time activity but an activity that makes one's all time a leisure along with an ambivalent dosage of suffering per se, and nothing at all with ridiculing yourself in company with great names, with well-known titles, with worshiping decomposed doctrines and idols, with conforming to eternally damned resurrected gods, with sheer herd convictions, with a naive cultural and cultured sensation of belonging to a particular interpretation, with a silly national pride, and with a numb religious vanity. The artist who is prodigious, autonomous, non-compliant, and aristocratic adorned with self- command1 is a lonely beast of prey. He has done away with the despicable title of intellectual, stripped of the mantle of meek scholar, thrown away the ID, the credit card and the research funds of the domesticated and pusillanimous academician, spat at the opportunities of the institutions of parliamentary democratic prostitution, reserved an unconditioned hospitality in the face of a series of hostilities, resisted against his vices, – his submission to authority, his commitment to philistinism, his lecherousness for fame – tamed his lust for power, ridiculed the rhetoric of self-advertisement, kept his promise at the expense of deep and venomous wounds, licked his wounds in the nooks and on the peaks, and finally shared his blood through words, through a bullet-proof dialectic and through a fusillade and a blitzkrieg of epistemological violence.
Aristotle is perhaps not a two-footed animal Parmenides said: 'One does not think that which is not'. I do not think so. To state that 1
'Be that as it may, attacks on existing prejudices and defense of existing institutions threaten at present to sink into one and the same commonplace familiarity. Soon, I believe, we shall once more receive a lively impression that art cannot rest content with ideas and ideals for the average mediocrity, any more than with remnants of old catechisms; but that great art demands intellects that stand on a level with the most individual personalities of contemporary thought, in exceptionality, in independence, in defiance and in aristocratic self-supremacy.', George Brandes.
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that which is is an interpretation qua epistemological violence inasmuch as to state that that which is not. Suppose that this is a true proposition. Take, then, these other two: ‘Aristotle is a two-footed animal qua philosopher’ and ‘Aristotle is not a two-footed animal qua philosopher’. Whether or not Aristotle is a two-footed animal qua philosopher is that which can only be decided by means of the law of non-contradiction –along with the principle of identity (A = A) and the principle of excluded middle (either A is true or A is false) – which was concocted by Aristotle himself.
Schizophrenic wild skepticism and existential brutish realism But what is to interpret? Is it possible not to interpret? Is it possible not to exist while I question my very existence? Is it possible to question my very existence? Leaving aside these monstrous questions, to interpret, to me, primordially means to deal with something as an entity within and through a language, though I am perfectly aware of the fact that terms such as 'dealing with', 'entity', 'language' immediately invite countless interpretations in the form of questions which certainly have no mercy and no end. But who fears the wolf should never enter the forest, is not that so? So allow me to content myself with stating that that the proposition of interpretation is only possible as epistemological violence would mean to acknowledge and to accentuate the existential value of interpretations. But what is existential? What is value? What is the existential value of interpretations? What if I replace the term existential with the term schizophrenic and put the question thus: What is the schizophrenic value of interpretations? But what is schizophrenia? 'Any of several psychotic disorders characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact.' This is what dictionary says for the term schizophrenia. As I think of the words such as 'psychotic', 'disorder', 'distortion of reality', 'disturbances of thought and language' and of the act of 'withdrawal from social contact', I come up with nothing but the questions that appear in the form of a tender hunt to be chased by my methodological strategies of wild skepticism and of brutish realism. So let’s get the battue started. What is psychotic? Characteristic of psychosis. What is psychosis? Any severe mental disorder in which contact with reality is lost or highly distorted. What 11 | P a g e
is disorder? A physical condition in which there is a disturbance of normal functioning. What kind of thing is this disturbance? Activity that is not normal functioning. What is abnormal functioning of thought? Thought that is not in accordance with the conventional laws and activities. What is abnormal functioning of language? Language that is not in accordance with conventional interpretations. What is reality? The affirmation of a real that is in accordance with conventions. What is real? The affirmation of a reality that is in accordance with conventions. What then about withdrawal from social contact? Not to get in contact with a social that surrounds the individual who is forced to surrender him/herself to it. What is to withdraw from social contact? To stay away from a crowd that functions normally in accordance with conventional interpretations. What is convention? Interpretations that are no longer doubted and questioned but are taken for granted and because of this or in spite of this or it has nothing to do with both conditions- are acted upon.
Learning and fornication seriously effect your brain 'Here is one hand, and here is another', 'The earth existed for a long time before my birth', and 'I have never been far from the earth’s surface'. These three propositions were offered by George Edward Moore as 'Proof of the External World' and 'Defense of Common Sense'. Ludwig Wittgenstein dissected these three propositions – through a series of aristocratichumorous-baleful-language-game-excavations that must have ashamed Moore to a paralyzing-amputated-disoriented-non-existent-diffident death – during the last eighteen months of his life i.e., 1950-1. In his confrontation with Moore about 'external world' and 'common sense' Wittgenstein does not only shows that 'external world' is simply an illusion operated within and through language-games, which are also interpretations qua beliefs, but also that there is no 'common' in 'common sense' as well as there is no any 'sense' in saying 'common': ' 'We are quite sure of it' does not mean just that every single person is certain of it, but we belong to a community which is bound together by science and education.'2 The implications of the current positions of science, education, power, capital, 2
Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, Eds., G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. Von Wright, Trans., Denis Paul and
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and religion and an absolute and faithful belief in them would make you let out a howl. One thing may and ought to be mentioned here: the jargon of capital has never been this much jubilant, that is, the power of capital, which is worshiped as the only unquestionable desiderata by all, has never leaked into the recesses of power, science, and education to this extent. But this is not as sickening as the parasitic and inchoate hegemony of religion over power, science, education, and capital. If in a world such us ours the 'scientific character' of 'education' is valuable as only in terms of its 'profitability', then the 'education' of the 'scientific character' will inevitably become a valuable business; that is, a very profitable business. So the slogan of the advertisement used by Aalborg University, i.e., 'Learning seriously affects your brain', may sound as trivial as 'Fornication seriously affects your body'. However, the position of education, in general, and university, in particular, is subjected to critique if it is to be nothing else than the marketing of learning for the sake of profitability inasmuch as the marketing of fornication and exploitation for the sake of the invisibleceaseless-apoplectic free market economy. One of the salaried lumpen-prophets of the 'critical class', Wallerstein, has recently summarized the contemporary condition of universities: 'In addition, because of the financial squeeze, universities have been moving in the direction of becoming actors in the market place – by selling their services to enterprises and governments, and by transforming their professors’ research results into patents they can exploit (if not directly, then at least by licensing). But to the extent that universities have been moving down these lines, individual professors have been taking their distance from, and even moving out of, university structures – either in order to exploit their research findings themselves or out of distaste for the commercial 'ambiance of the universities.'3 Exactly. But what about Wallerstein himself? Has he ever taken his distance from and moved out of university structures? No.
Assumed subsumed forms of interpretation Regardless any kind of hierarchical order with regard to their specific characteristics and
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G.E.M. Anscombe, Basic Blackwell, Oxford 1969, 298. Immanuel Wallerstein, European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power, The New Press, 2006, p. 66.
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functions, interpretation should encompass the linguistic activities such as:
thinking – understanding – introspection representation – speculation, juxtaposition abstraction – rationalization – translation conceptualization – examination, intuition apprehension – articulation – presumption reflection – realization – comprehension cognition – perception – observation description – demonstration, consideration proposition – prediction – predication – judgment. If these linguistic activities are not possible without dealing with something as an entity or a concept within and through a language and if it is not possible to construct an entity or a concept without the act of interpretation, then they should be subsumed within the act of interpretation.
Homage to Hegel: May God illuminate the Notion, and its personality 'The notion (begriff) is not merely soul, but free subjective Notion that is for itself and therefore possesses personality –the practical objective notion determined in and for itself which as person, is impenetrable atomic subjectivity – but which, nonetheless, is not exclusive individuality, but explicitly universality and cognition, and in its other has its own objectivity for its object. All else is error, confusion, opinion, endeavor, caprice, and transitoriness; the absolute idea alone is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and is all truth.'4
In the name of the Father who is compassionate and merciful, of the Son who had no sins and was slayed for us, and of the Holy Spirit which is a gift of the spirit of the Father and of the Son. The notion is a free soul that is utterly subjective and precisely because of this 4
G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, Trans., A. V. Miller, Routledge, (1969-2002), p. 824
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subjectivity it is for itself. Since it is for itself, it possesses a personality that is not only practical but also objective; determined not only for itself but also in itself as person. It is a subjectivity that is atomic. Nothing can penetrate this subjective atom. Yet this nothingproof atomic subjectivity is not exclusively individual, as the quality of being universal and being cognitive is certainly explicit. In its other produces its own objectivity for its abject object. Whoever objects to this commits an error, is confused, states a shallow opinion, endeavors in vain, acts with caprice, and exists in the turbulence of transitoriness. There is no being but the absolute idea that lives. Nothing would ever perish that, since it is not only a truth but also a truth that knows itself. Amen.
The shock, the doubt and the decency Now I suddenly stop and ask: What am I doing? What is the meaning of all these concepts, of this computer or that book, of facts, of things, of theories, of perspectives, of theses? Am I really doing all these? Do they really exist?5 Do I really exist? Why do I have to go to the work soon? Can I answer all these questions satisfactorily? Can I be sure about what I am doing if I am not acknowledging the a priori character of time and space as Kant proposed? Do I really know what makes me wear my clothes, ride my bike and work for three hours? If I simply answer all these questions with an 'I don’t know' or a 'No', writ large, does this mean that I am just spewing some skeptical gibberish as some analytic philosophers would claim?
The sane and the same old decent interpretation What I am doing is simply called writing for which I have read thousands pages written by different tinker-thinkers in different ages. I have understood or I have thought that I 5
"Nature's music has no existence outside things. The various apertures, pipes, flutes, all living beings together make up nature. The "I" cannot produce things & things cannot produce the "I," which is self-existent. Things are what they are spontaneously, not caused by something else. Everything is natural & does not know why it is so. The 10,000 things have 10,000 different states, all in motion as if there were a True Lord to move them--but if we search for evidence of this Lord we fail to find any." (Kuo Hsiang) Quoted in, Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Poetical Terrorism, 'Chaos Myths'
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have understood a plethora of concepts, facts, things, theories, perspectives, and theses. This is a computer that I am using to write these lines and for a number of other things. That is a book that I have by choice read, underlined, and I have by accident spilled coffee on it. It is illogical and irrational to think whether or not I am really doing all these and whether or not this is a computer and that is a book. If I am saying that I am doing all these and if I am using and touching this computer and that book, then what is happening is simply that I am doing all these and I am using this computer and touching that book; though I am aware of the fact that this is simply a tautology. The actuality and non-actuality of my deeds, the existence and non-existence of the objects are not my business. I am repeating emphatically: I am doing what I am doing and ‘this is a computer; and that is a book.’ I do not have time to bother myself with all these. I have to go to work to pay my rent and my bills; to buy the food and the tickets etc. I cannot survive otherwise.
The pseudo-prognostication of bastardization of belief and of dastardliness of faith In spite of all confusion, hesitation, doubt and peevishness I had been assailed by, I keep writing in the computer, reading the book, and go to the work. What I have done is, if I am allowed to reveal a simple truth, simply that I have interpreted in a certain way and made the time pass by relying on certain interpretations. If I have relied on certain interpretations, then I have also believed in these interpretations, that is, I have taken them to be true since I have not kept questioning. So interpretations through which I endure to exist are also my beliefs. Unlike faith, which by no means allows itself to be questioned but
only demands a suspension of questioning by means of a tamed submission to itself for the sake of itself, which is thus no longer ‘in’ itself nor ‘for’ itself, beliefs can be questioned.
The substantial and unconscious logos of Da-sein in a state of jouissance Writing is madness. The distance between the reader and the author; between the author and the text, and between the reader and the text cannot be overcome. The barrier of 16 | P a g e
historicity and language which stands between the reader and the author is like the Great Wall of China in each side of which the barbarians and the civilized ones are altogether jumbled. It is not possible at all to understand a single concept that has been coined by a philosopher in a different age. Even in the same age! Take for example 'substance', 'logos', 'the unconscious', 'Da-sein', 'jouissance' and so on so forth. Writing is an invitation to an abandoned cemetery for a debauchery where better thus bitter concepts are consumed greedily and where self-aggrandizement and braggadocio of others and authors are unabashedly consummated. 'This is not a computer; and that is not a book'. If I do not know at all how and why I was born and why I still do not commit suicide, how can I know that this is a computer and that is a book? Am I really listening to the third symphony of Haydn now? So, then, is this a chair I am sitting on? What if I deny the Law of Gravity? Shall I be proposed to jump from this window then? What if I am ready to jump? If I jump and fall down, the Law of Gravity will not be justified but simply I will break my leg. Shall I be told ‘break a leg’ if I really decide to jump? What? The reality is not a theater? Why then do I have to change my clothes when I go to the work? Why is it written ‘Smile!’ on the inner side of the door and not for the customers? What if I do not go to the work tomorrow? Shall I starve? Shall I not be able to survive at all?
Absolute circles, objective chains, scientific subjectivities, fetish spirits 'By virtue of the nature of the method just indicated, the science exhibits itself as a circle returning upon itself, the end being wound back into the beginning, the simple ground, by the mediation; this circle is moreover a circle of circles, for each individual member as ensouled by the method is reflected into itself, so that in returning into the beginning it is at the same time the beginning of a new member. Links of this chain are the individual sciences [of logic, nature and spirit], each of which has an antecedent and a successor −− or, expressed more accurately, has only the antecedent and indicates its successor in its conclusion.'6 I just quoted this for those who are not convinced by the scientific character of Hegel's 6
Hegel, Science of Logic, 1814
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own subjective logic and by his own logical accuracy of his own absolute and objective science. I am myself absolutely convinced by that as I am absolutely convinced by the fact that 'I am a human being'.
The illusion of an illusion of an illusion of an illusion It is said that 'Time changes, people change.' I vociferously disagree. If 'Time' is an illusion, that time has something to do with change is an illusion too. If 'People' is an illusion, it follows that people has something to do with change is an illusion too. So, the nouns 'Time and People', and the verb 'Change' are excruciatingly problematic in this sentence. But what is it that is not problematic as soon as I enter into the realm of language or as soon as I am dragged into the realm of language? Is not 'Time' , then, a mental construction, an anthropomorphic solace, if not a self-deception, for me to forget the meaninglessness I am trapped in for the sake of self-preservation, for the sake of enduring life? So the nouns 'people', 'subject', 'self ' and so on. This state of affairs is indeed a tiring riddle that philosophers have been trying to solve since the time immemorial and that they will always fail to unravel. Yet this does not mean that they will ever relinquish to pretend as if they know it all; as if there is no riddle. What? Have I just said 'forever' and the 'time immemorial'? Yes, alas, I have. I, then, need some kind of beginning and some kind of end to render meaningful what I experience. (By this I do not mean that I experience anything at all.) First, I assume that if there is a world, –the first illusion – then there must be a beginning of it – the second illusion. And if there is a beginning, I maintain, then, there must be an end of it – the third illusion. So the relationship between the ' I ' and the 'world' is (and between the ' I ' and the word ' is ' ) nothing but an illusion of an illusion of an illusion. And finally, If I am desperately in need of assuming I am the ' I ' that assumes, then that ' I ' is nothing but an illusion of an illusion of an illusion of an illusion. Am I not, in this case, as naïve and innocent as a fish that is found of worms attached to the bait to the extent that I allow myself to be indulged by all these illusions by relying on a 'self ', or in Hegelese, a 'subject', a 'person' a 'free being', which respectively is an illusion of another illusion, that is, like Hegel’s circle of circles? But what is an illusion? An illusion, in the simplest sense, is that which does not exist but it is taken for granted as if it exists. 18 | P a g e
Time is stuck into my consciousness; – I assume again that I possess a consciousness along with assuming I am the one who is in need of a possession, a possession of a consciousness, and a consciousness of a possession of a consciousness – like a leech, as exactly as God is stuck into my conscience through grammar. If there is a God, there is reason, either pure or practical, as well. And reason can only be pure and practical if and only if it declares that there is no God.
The existential somersaults of the dumb oxen that climb up and rappel in vain Is it not too hasty to claim that 'time changes, people change', then? If I am capable of concocting a 'time' and a 'self' out of 'nothing' then I will always be able to interpret all these illusionary constructions as something valuable and name as 'change.' (By this change i.e., motion, Thomas Aquinas, 'The Dumb Ox', had fabricated a God and by this proved his own dumbness despite a number of books that a human being cannot carry but only an ox can.) '(i)t is simply a mess’, Dostoevsky writes, 'no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.'7 In other words: As my hands are stained with the slippery notions of time and space, I try to rope down a mountain to which I do not know how I had climbed up once. And as my muscles are intoxicated with illusionary hopes and anticipations, I try to climb up the same mountain from which I do not know how to rappel.
Can a god which is absent save us who are absent and founder along with Heidegger? 7
Fyodor Dostoevsky, , Notes from the Underground , Trans., Contance Garnett, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/modeng/modengD.browse.html
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'Let me respond briefly and somewhat ponderously but from long reflection: philosophy will not be able to affect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking a poetizing, for the appearance of the god in the time of foundering (Undergang); for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder.'8 It is rascality of existence in the face of which not only god but also we ourselves who are absent at all founder. A god who is absent and does founder cannot save us. The only soil, which is absent, and on which a god may dwell is thinking and poetizing in which a god only might have existed. A world which is absent cannot be our world but a world and empty words of philosophy which are absent. Philosophy itself founders. Time itself which is absent founders. There is neither ethical, nor ontological suspension of rascality of existence in the face of which faith in Da-sein which is absent founders.
The knights of faith who smear Jesus' ass with cow poop Interpretation qua epistemological violence is a quest about interpretation as such i.e., inand-for-itself (an und für sich). However, this hopelessly ridiculous Hegelese gesture neither does intend any absolute nor any ‘absolute absolute’ at all. For ‘absolute’ is a curse on the act of interpretation. It is a curse in the sense that it cunningly denies its own dogmatism by defining dogmatism as a 'belief that the true consists in a proposition which is obtained as a rigid result'9, as though Hegel's own precious Absolute is a non-rigid result. Hegel’s Absolute and his 'spirit' cannot be redeemed from being solely a superstition unless I surrender myself to an abominable moment of self-deception, which is the origin and outcome of all kind of superstitions either religious or secular, thus I render my own existence abominable. The Hegelese 'absolute' is not distinguishable from any kind of religious divinity i.e., any kind of transcendental fiction. In other words, Hegelese ‘absolute’ ‘Only a God can save Us': Der Spiegel's interview with Martin Heidegger’, Philosophy Today, 20:4 (1976: Winter) 9 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel’s Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Translation and Running Commentary by Yirmiyahu Yovel, Princeton University Press, 2005, p.142 8
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and Kierkegaardian faith, for example, despite Kierkegaard’s all detestation toward Hegel’s System, turn out to be a sublation ( Aufhebung) where there is an absolute night in which all cows are black and where the cows faithfully graze with a good spirit.
The decent truth of error, confusion, opinion, endeavor, caprice, and transitoriness To me, decency basically means to be-coming (If I am allowed to invent such an existentialist crap) in accordance with the conventions of a morality or a series of conventional moralities that are approved and promoted in a human community. Thus the decency of interpretations qua beliefs should not be a quality with which existential value of interpretation can be investigated. Take, for example, a firmly belief that you act in accordance with and that you believe in its truthfulness. Try to determine to what extent it is a firm belief. You will see no sooner that that firm belief relies on another belief that relies on the other and so on. This was perhaps what Wittgenstein had in his mind when he argued that 'At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded.'10 So all modes of interpretations qua beliefs are bound to be vulnerable to be determined and operated within and through subjectivity, incomprehensibility, uncertainty, arbitrariness, et cetera. In this sense, interpretations qua beliefs are constituted through error, confusion, opinion, endeavor, caprice, and transitoriness as opposed to Hegel’s 'absolute idea' which is, according to Hegel, alone is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and is all truth.
Existentialists: the bitchiness of an existential nothingness Suppose that I am an existential philosopher, like Kierkegaard or Heidegger, I determine myself to philosophize about a specific mood, say, angst. Do I first determine what angst itself is and then compare it with a specific mood of mine and finally reach the conclusion that 'Yes, what I have right now is angst, let me philosophize about it now!'? Or do I just sit on my academic chair à la Heidegger or my rentier chair à la Kierkegaard and wait for 10
Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 253
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the coming of the mood which I call angst? Do I ask someone else, another academics or a coachman in the streets of Copenhagen, that I had had a mood at a specific time in such a way; so whether he has ever experienced the same mood in the same way? So the celebrated angst concocted by Kierkegaard and conserved, modified and disgorged again by Heidegger does not only bear witness to their dogmatism but also to their ineptitude and inebriety in the process of the gratification of the jargon of capital by jerking gently the neck of it. The both agree that angst or despair always comes from nothing, as though the Lutheran theology has bestowed them an ability to identify a specific mood called angst which comes from nothing. Perhaps I must have been a rentier or a salaried academic to understand what kind of privilege to receive such a divine revelation which comes from nothing as exactly angst comes from nothing. But I have failed in both, i.e., being a reinter and becoming a salaried academic, as I have failed in the first due to my father, God bless him, the second due to the son of my father whom I disown; as I disown the unique mood called angst which comes from the bitchiness of an existential nothingness which disowns itself in the cosy but soon garroting lap of material security and comfort. Since I already disowned myself; No one would expect me to remember what specific mood I had when I just said the bitchiness of an existential nothingness, for which I am unable to give a definition.
Is this too an interpretation my dear hedgehog? The hedgehog: This too will pass Suppose that a philosopher utters the statement 'this is an interpretation too' just after another statement 'There are no facts, only interpretations.' uttered by another philosopher, say, 150 years ago. Now let’s consider potential responds for this statement regardless its context: 'There are no interpretations, only facts.' 'There are neither facts, nor interpretations.' 'There are facts, and there are interpretations.' 22 | P a g e
'This is a hedgehog too.' 'This is an interpretation too.' If I want to negate the statement 'There are no facts; only interpretations', and if I want to pose a counter-argument also, then I will use the first one. If I want to negate the statement, and if I do not want to pose a counter argument, then I will use the second. If I do not want to negate the statement at all and if I want to affirm the both, then I will use the third. If am drugged, I will use the forth. If I am a salaried philosopher, I will use the fifth. If I am drugged or if I isolated myself in a cave for a few days with a piece of bread, some dates and some water I might maintain: 'The hedgehog is invisible.' 'The hedgehog is talking to me.' 'The hedgehog is stronger than me.' 'The hedgehog is wiser than me.' 'The hedgehog is holy.' If I am not drugged and if I am still uttering these, then I am a prophet fabricating a new religion; or I am in an epileptic fit; or I am really a prophet hatching a new religion during, before or after the epileptic fit. Since a prophet is what a philosopher is not, it follows that a philosopher ought to say what a prophet does not. So if the hedgehog is used as a metaphor for life, a philosopher, as Hobbes did, might say: 'The hedgehog is solitary.' 'The hedgehog is poor.' 'The hedgehog is nasty.' 'The hedgehog is brutish.' 'The hedgehog is short.' Yet Vattimo, the salaried philosopher, is not a prophet. Nor is he addicted to opium. Vattimo simply says: 'this is an interpretation too' as a response to the statement 'there are 23 | P a g e
no facts only interpretations.' Here is the whole context: 'Against positivism, which halts at phenomena-- 'There are only facts'-- I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. We cannot establish any fact 'in itself ': perhaps it is folly to want to do such a thing. 'Everything is subjective,' you say; but even this is interpretation. The 'subject' is not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is. –Finally, is it necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even this is invention, hypothesis. In so far as the word 'knowledge' has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings. –'Perspectivism.' It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all other drives to accept as a norm.'11 To this Vattimo’s response is as follows: 'That, as Nietzsche writes, 'there are no facts, only interpretations.' is not an objective, metaphysical proposition. This proposition too is 'only' an interpretation.' 12 Now suppose that one, a philosopher, say, Hussein, responds to Vattimo’s lines by saying: 'That, as Vattimo writes, - 'there are no facts only interpretations' is not an objective, metaphysical proposition – is not an objective, metaphysical proposition. This proposition too is 'only' an interpretation.' And suppose that another philosopher, say, Casper, responds to Hussein’s lines by saying: 'That, as Hussein writes, – 'there are no facts, only interpretations' is not an objective, metaphysical proposition, as Vattimo writes, is not an objective and metaphysical proposition- is not an objective, metaphysical proposition. This proposition too is 'only' an interpretation.' If a 'layman' hears this conservation, and if I explain the situation by saying: 'Vattimo, Hussein, and Casper are doing philosophy', then how would that 'layman' react? Do you still believe that you have a brain, even though you never shattered your head by smashing into a wall and see it with your own very eyes outside your own very skull at least and at last in a mirror? 11 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Trans., Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Vintage Books, 1968, 481, p. 267 12 Gianni Vattimo, 'The Age of Interpretation', In Gianni Vattimo and Richard Rorty, Future of Religion, ed., Santiago Zabala, Columbia University Press,2005, pp. 43-54
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The philosophy-doers who know well what they are doing 'I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that's a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy.'13 I go to a transsexual prostitute called K. who the second time introduces me with another one called A; both of whom share an apartment to endure their existence. The drinks come; we start to chat. I find A. much more intelligent and intellectual than K. who despite her stupidity has beautiful legs, a legendary ass, bony and luscious shoulders and delicious fake tits. A., it seemed to me, likes me too. I begin to think of screwing A. this time instead of K. who by the way begins to groan. K. asks me whether I am interested in some kind of weird activity. I say that I am interested in philosophy. K. stares at me weirdly. A. certainly does not like the way the conversation proceeds; s/he grabs my John Thursday and starts dragging me to the other room. I look at K. helplessly. K. tells me while gulping and chewing her lower lip: 'That's all right philosopher, go and do some philosophy.'
A petty quarrel with a philistine whore who is adorned with an imperfect bourgeois respectability When I was working in a hostel in Istanbul, I did a survey and asked the ladies from different countries how many shoes they have. I directed the question to approximately 50 ladies. I did not make statistical calculations and did not use any qualitative method. I am so sorry for this. I was too busy with keeping these blessed women and men pleased all the time, with robbing them as much as possible in the name of the fat fuck –excuse me – in the name of the boss, and with trying to enlighten and fuck some of them. But the average, according to my poor knowledge of mathematics, was something between 20 and 30. An 13
Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 467
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American lady said she has 82 pairs of shoes, while gulping an enormous piece of Turkish salami. Immediately after this, I directed the question to the poor in health and old in age Turkish lady who prepares breakfast for these civilized ladies who own 20-30 pair of shoes. She said that she has only a pair of shoes. So, the one who has more than one or two pair of shoes is a philistine whore without the honor of letting his-her own body to be spoiled for a while instead of prostituting his-her own talents for an entire life for the sake of material security and of material comfort. I am sorry if I offended any philistine whore with a hypocritical bourgeois respectability. How sorry I am! Upon my remarks concerning shoes and whores, this is what a philistine whore with a bourgeois respectability who prostitutes herself within and through the bowels of the art market told me: '' I feel sorry for you and your pathetic life. You are trapped in your own ideas, pretending to be liberal and anti capitalist where in reality you are worst(sic) than the most fanatic Muslim. Shame and pity.'' A liberal? Me? I prefer to be stigmatized as a sodomite rather than being called as a liberal! And I take it as a delicate compliment that I am worse than the most fanatic Muslim. Oh! How ashamed I am! How pitiful I am!
Is god death? Yes, but we cannot not call ourselves assholes '(H)ermeneutics –expressed in its most radical form in Nietzsche’s statement and in Heidegger’s ontology'-, Vattimo writes, 'is the development and maturation of the Christian message.' Amen! But if philosophy is not what a faith is, it follows that such a statement cannot be responded by saying 'Amen!' Nor can it be responded by saying 'this is not a metaphysical and objective proposition; this too is 'only' an interpretation.' What is needed is to ask how Vattimo supports his thesis. 'Just as Western literature would not be thinkable without its Homeric poems, without Shakespeare and Dante', Vattimo maintains, 'our 26 | P a g e
culture in its broadest sense would not make sense if we were to remove Christianity from it.' Second, Vattimo alludes to a hallucinatory similarity between Nietzsche’s the death of God and the death of Christ on the cross told by the Gospels.14 Third, Vattimo refers to Benedetto Croce’s statement 'We cannot not call ourselves Christians.' Fourth, Vattimo refers to Heidegger’s statement 'Only a God can save us' which would not save Vattimo and his already decomposed God, when it is read in its context. All these, according to Vattimo, necessitate and justify 'an explicit appropriation of Christian historicity' and make Christian commandment of charity the only chance for human survival. For the sake of brevity, the first one will be questioned here. Vattimo first of all must have clarified what he means by 'our' culture. It seems that by ‘our’ culture Vattimo refers to the 'European' one, one which, according to a historian, is a product of three elements: Greek thought, Roman law and government, and Christianity.15 The same historian maintains that it is possible to add Germanic folk culture as a fourth element and that this description was formulated in the nineteenth century, the one in which the concept of 'Middle East' was invented also, and finally that Greek thought, German(Aryan)culture and Christianity were only tributaries which flowed into the history of Rome and were embodied and developed in Roman institutions. Thus to bestow such a priority on Christianity does not seem as plausible as Vattimo thinks. So if the thesis that Christian commandment of charity is only chance for human survival is that which cannot be grounded at a historical and philosophical basis, then what is it which makes Vattimo trump up such a thesis? Is Vattimo a prophet? As far as his statements in the public are concerned, he is not. Is he an epileptic? I have no idea. Is he addicted to opium? As far the discourse which he operates in the “Age of Interpretation’ is concerned, Yes, he is. It is the opium of Marx that he is addicted to. Which is called religion, as is well known by those who knows well a good stuff, i.e., a Vattimo’s allusion to Nietzsche’s ‘death of God’ and Gospels’ ‘death of Christ’ is as idiotic as alluding to Nietzsche's interpretation of the concept of 'pity' as a moral imperative and the quality of being 'merciful' (Al-Rahim) attributed to Islam's Allah. Even the Pope himself would find this allusion as an affront not to mention those who have slightest familiarity with Nietzsche’s philosophy: 'The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding-at bottom there was only one Christian and he died on the cross. The 'Gospels' died on the cross.', Friedrich Nietzsche, Antichrist, Trans.,H. L. Mencken, 39 (Full text is available at: http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/tkannist/Etexts/Nietzsche/AntiChrist.htm) 14
15
M. E. Yap p, 'Europe in Turkish Mirror', Past & Present, 1992, 137(1):134-155.
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particular interpretation. A faith.
The paradoxical knight of faith who pokes his nose in the incestuous affairs Once upon a time Kierkegaard woke up in a shiny but cool -almost chilly- Copenhagen morning, had his breakfast and matutinal coffee, and strolled along the damp streets of arrogant Copenhagen with a cheerful mood. He came back at afternoon and wrote thus: 'It is now my intention to draw out in the form of problems the dialectical factors implicit in the story of Abraham in order to see what a prodigious paradox faith is – a paradox that is capable of making a murder into a holy act well pleasing to God, a paradox that gives Isaac back again to Abraham, which no thought can lay hold of because faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.'16 But it is a land where there is no water, only rocks among which one cannot think.17 It is this 'waste land' which is as arid and wretched as Mount Moriah where Abraham attempts to devour his son like Saturn who, in spite of his exhausted body, devours his son for the sake of preserving his own life as astonishingly painted by Rubens. Abraham even does not know what he is doing and where the command which commands the sacrifice of his son comes from. Abraham's’ is not a paradox but paranoia, paranoia of a criminal whose will is not accompanied with thinking at all but with a pathological vice that an absolute belief in his all criminal activities, begets and extols.18 It is this paranoia that is common in all 'knights of faith' or in all 'mujahids of faith.' Whereas rascality of existence lacerates all that lives equally. It is as if an atrocious crime that nobody would want to perpetrate. It cannot be disclosed. It is here or there; up and down: a feeling of constant regurgitation; 16
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Trans., Sylvia Walsh, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.46 'If there were water we should stop and drink – Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think', T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land 18 ' He (Raskolnikov) was only a few steps from his lodging. He went in like a man condemned to death. He thought of nothing and was incapable of thinking; but he felt suddenly in his whole being that he had no more freedom of thought, no will, and that everything was suddenly and irrevocably decided.' , Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 17
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perpetual wincing. It is a secluded place where no compass works; where there is no sail, no anchor, and no light. This is why knights and mujahids of faith always claim to be the cleanest and the most innocent. It is they who promote truth the most. 'My truth is only truth; the rest is untruth!'; which is tantamount to say: 'I believe in this or that because of this or that...' If a man says this at the street hundred times in a few hours while slightly annoying the public, then it is highly probable that the police will arrest him and give him to the psychiatrists to be stigmatized as a mad man. But if a man whispers this to himself thousand times every day – and every next day, and whole his life – while, at the same time, constantly lying to himself thus to his neighbor and to his God – , then the public will call him a faithful man, that is, a man who has faith.
The father of whores, the son of housewives and the holy spirit of brothels Someone who has faith, who acts in accordance with that faith, or who does not include that faith in his practical life but keeps doing lip-service to his unpractical faith is a product of misinterpretations that is the one and the only product s/he possesses. S/he first fabricates a truth without fabricating a 'self' for his/her self i.e., without knowing what s/he is; then believes that this truth is the one and only truth without knowing truthfulness of his/her own truth, i.e., why it is; and finally condemns other truths by being untruth without remembering what truths s/he had i.e., who s/he was. This is an abortive dialectics; a castrated deduction, a clumsy and hasty misjudgment. Faith is a blind paradox which is a paranoid state of existence within and through itself. The idiocy does not lie in repeating to himself several times such as 'Christ is truth'; one would still be called an idiot if one repeats to himself several times such as 'Flesh is truth' or 'Love is truth'. As soon as one owns even one single truth, i.e., the moment of resignation he assumes that which exists as truth, the other truths will immediately follow. Truth is like a whore who cannot make business alone. To identify himself/herself as a whore, to endure his/her existence, s/he needs other whores so that s/he would realize that s/he is a whore and not a housewife. Or truth is like a housewife who is not paid by cash but by a whole life. To identify himself/herself as a 29 | P a g e
housewife, s/he needs whores so that s/he would realize that s/he is a housewife and not a whore. Is truth a woman? Or is a woman truth, then? If there is single whore in a place, one cannot call this place as a brothel, but a house. And if there is more than one whore in a place, one cannot call this place as a house, but a brothel.
The indecent truth of untruthfulness of fleshy and lovely herd human As long as that which I consider as a truth of its own truthfulness, either I name it by this or by that, this will change nothing as nothing will change this. If you believe, – at this moment; the moment you are reading and understanding these lines – that it is only I who writes these lines possess ‘truth of truthfulness’; then if I say: 'Christ is flesh' or 'Christ is love', you will not ask me where truth is in these two statements. You will know it. It is there: 'We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth.'19 But he arrives at that in which the goldfinches have already flown out of their nest. Thus it is not,as Vattimo argues, interpretation that is like a virus and 'that affects everything it comes into contact with.'20 Rather, it is truth, i.e., faith in a particular interpretation, that is like a virus through which the specter of faith haunts the minds of crusaders qua ‘Knights of faith ’as well as 'assassins' qua 'Mujahids of faith' in spite of their different means and different ends, they both bow down to the same categorical imperative: 'you shall believe in this truth not that!' which is tantamount to say: 'I believe in this truth but not that because of this or that…' Suppose that your most beloved, your father, wife, fiancé, son, friend 19 20
Friedrich Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', trans., Walter Kaufmann. Vattimo, 'The Age of Interpretation'
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whatever, commands this to you, say, hundred times in a day. The next day would hardly be a comfortable day – if not a bloody day. Your most beloved will no longer be most beloved in the least. If you are one of those who would say: 'I will be pleased if my most beloved commands this to me hundred times in a day and I will confirm it every time by serenity and tranquility', then you are ready to be a good believer i.e., someone who has faith in something for the sake of itself. Now suppose that one commands this categorical imperative to himself hundred times in a day and every time confirms it by serenity and tranquility. If you are not one of those who would say: 'It is a good exercise to lie to myself a hundred times in a day', then you will at least suspect whether or not this man is a paranoiac. Kierkegaard believes that this paranoia is the highest passion in a human being, as far as the conclusion of Fear and Trembling is concerned. Kierkegaard, of course, does not call it paranoia. He calls it faith. It is this passionate faith that is not reachable for the majority of generations but nobody goes further.21 It is true that nobody, even nor Hegel, goes further from faith in the sense that it (faith) makes one stuck into a passion which is not passionate enough to stimulate one to take a further step in an illusionary road which is constructed by faith itself like a castle in the air and which, therefore, goes nowhere. This is to say: something that comes from nowhere; somewhere a road that is constructed by a faith through which one, the one who has faith, tries to take a further step which is triggered by an illusionary passion. It is this frenetic passion that makes itself manifest in the form of a ‘holy act’ that was ‘murder’ once à la Kierkegaard.
Bourgeois Philistinism in Denmark: the Rats and the Race of the Rats Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, – who remained as the most glorious philosopher, despite his death more than a century ago, the Danish society ever witnessed up until the beginning of the twenty-first century, who, despite his singularity, was condemned to a lonely and despaired death by the untruthful Danish crowd in the shade of the inglorious Danish crown and who, despite his individuality, was even abused by the salaried priests of the Danish Lutheran Church in his own funeral – several times in a severe fashion, accused of 21
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, p. 108
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those of his contemporaries who have no faith at all in becoming a 'Knight of Faith' by being a victim of bourgeois philistinism. His individual Lutheran faith, as his absolute categorical imperative is being paradoxically and patriotically followed by his own nation as of the beginning of the twenty-first century: an absolute faith in, and a fanatical and practical commitment to bourgeois philistinism. This mass of human beings democratically organized under the sovereignty of the Danish Queen, – whose ancestors were extremely dexterous in sucking the spoils which were derived (by means of trades of any kind; and by means of subtle, delicate, knightly, ethical and faithful pecadilloes such as buccaneering, murder of armless pregnant -or already with the babies- women for the reason that they are -as they are- not fit to be sent to America as a profitable commodity in the slave market, kidnapping human beings to display and prove the humanness of Danes and so on and so forth) from Asia, Guinea, The West Indies, The North Atlantic, Bengal and Greenland 22 , – and of the Danish nation-state, which is extremely cautious in supervising the rats as necessity and the race of the rats as actuality, has been compelled to push and is still pushing bourgeois philistinism to its ultimate limits today. Thanks to the material and social luxuries of the welfare state, the 'bourgeois' character of philistinism is unquestionable and almost invisible. However, this 'invisible hand' soon conjures up a scourge in the hands of the ruling class of Denmark that drags the Danish individual (or the individual with the legal right of living and working in Denmark) to the entrepreneurial–competitive—innovative—sustained—alternative clashes of the actual rat-race with a single blow and that condemns the living Danish individual – who has to leap innovative somersaults incessantly over a river of competitive sharp and rapacious razors and who is therefore always cut in slices yet finds some parts, now and then, during the transitoriness of existence, no longer as a living individual though but as an entrepreneurial half-cannibal and a sustained half-zombie – to an alternative nefarious life of vicious recurrences: from excessive self-gratification to masochistic self-laceration, from alcoholism and drug abuse to smug conventional conformism, from tremendous consumptive consumption to corrosive and decadent mediocrity, and from private 22
All these historical data have been derived from a refined draft about Danish Peacekeeping History by Martin O. Jorgensen.
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hedonism as existential commitment to mass and massive entertainment as social communication. Bourgeois philistinism has been appropriated by all classes of Danish society; a society which, since no more than five decades, has been welcoming, initially in complete accordance with the needs and demands of the heavy Danish industrial capitalism, dissidents and adventurers as refugees and immigrants who got tired of their own regimes that are incessantly subjected to 'changes' either from 'outside' or from 'within'; and who are at the same time the most pathetic victims and the most asinine believers of bourgeois philistinism in Denmark. Which is the one and the only drive to stimulate these pseudoliving and pseudo-Danish individual bozos and cunts – no longer as refugees and as immigrants – to work, to integrate, to reproduce, to cheat, to commit crime and suicide, to be exploited, to be humiliated, to be despised, and to be subjected to an everlasting and voluntary self-victimization and self-vindication which the jargon of capital praises and supervises as a good life of a good citizen. 'Knights of faith', who are emaciated, soused, and reamed out, and 'Mujahids of faith', who are spoiled, castrated, and raped twice – first as a miserable rat by the decadent aristocratic conservative ruling class; and second as a miserable stranger (—fucking pekere—fucking
Arab bozo–fucking Somalian thief—fucking Chinky cunt with peachy tits –fucking black cunt with a jumbo butt—fucking Muslim pig—fucking Nepalese little boy—fucking South American bushy bitch— fucking Persian trash—fucking Turkish pizza guy—fucking Indian fag—fucking Kurdish dumb—) rat by the miserable native rats in the factories, in the schools, in the universities, in the pizzerias, in the kiosks, in the shopping malls, in the dentists, in the hospitals, in the streets, in the concert rooms of symphonic orchestras, in the bordellos, in the restaurants, and in the bars–, and all other components of this multicultural society – which includes approximately 10.000 of homeless (as of 2009) out of 5.5 millions of Danish population and in which a short suspension of the consumption of alcohol would have ignited a radical revolution – are all rip-roaringly wallowing in a deep and perfect dead shit-pit. Moreover, a prohibition of televisions, computer games and antidepressant pills would have caused a rapacious demolition of Folketinget and of 33 | P a g e
Kommune buildings all over the flat country by the untruthful mob of native as well as foreign rats so that they would accomplish –by raping and plundering literally and royally the Queen, the princesses, the princes, the royal horses, the palaces in Copenhagen (or the entire city of Copenhagen, as the British Empire did in the beginning of the 19. century, except Christiania) – the one and the only revolution in the history of Denmark and crown it as the 'Danish Rat Race Revolution', as exactly when the Danish state raucously demolished the Ungdomshuset, when which once Folketshuset, in 1918 it had directly involved in storming of the stock exchange building in protest of the unemployment in Denmark, by siccing its salaried police dogs on it and by lowering the professional pigs onto the roof of Jagtvej 69 in 2007 – seem to have embraced bourgeois philistinism in toto. Those who lived in Denmark or who kept one eye on it knows well how the Danish State and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Decadent Danes demolished the Ungdomshuset, but why did they demolish it? Was a Danish Andrew Berwick waging a feral war against the monomaniac—multicultural Danish society in there? No way. Was an Ulrike Meinhof who had become a nightmare for the salaried pigs of the victorious Danish ruling class hiding in there? Not at all. Bourgeois philistinism in Denmark has perfected its material, social and cultural weapons, to the extent that it is, so it seems so far, able to exterminate Meinhofs in the wombs of succulent Danish women and Berwicks in the balls of swaggering Danish men. As long as a thousand of Meinhofs are not poured into the womb of a thousand of Danish cunts, the flat Danish land will be a land of cannibals and zombies who will be considered as good and creative native and foreign rats of a race by the jargon of capital, which will be the constitution, the Bible, and the Koran of the Danish bourgeois philistinism; and which will infect the dank Danish air so immensely that it, the dusky Danish air, will no longer only be an anathema for the eyes and ears but also a poisonous purification without antidote for the very nostrils and maws. It is unlikely that a swaggering Danish man is carrying a Berwick in his balls, as it is wholly out of question that a cringing or unpleasantly smirking 'pekere' is carrying an Osama Bin Laden in his balls. Pseudo-Berwicks do of course exist in Denmark. The jackals, that is, the croaking foreign rats, call them 'rockers', that is, the squalling native rats. In their 'Jackal 34 | P a g e
Manifesto'(2008), they were squalling beautifully and have captured masterfully and wonderfully how degenerated, corrupted and ransacked are the jackals, whose definition of Denmark as a 'country of whores' should be included in the prayers of priests and imams of the celebrated multicultural Danish society so that neither native nor foreign rats would be offended and no objection would be raised when bourgeois philistinism compels the life of the race of the rats to be experienced as a perpetual existential angst and as a nihilism as state of existence. It is this nihilism that is omnipotent and omnipresent in every single inch of the flat Danish land, as the flatness of which is omnipotent and omnipresent too.
The miraculous apparition of the infidel and drunkard watermelon Suppose that one, say, Kierkegaard, states:‘I believe in Christ about whom nothing can be known; he can only be believed.’ You will hardly pay attention to Christ in this statement but to the act of believing that believes for the sake of believing. What Christ is is written in the Gospels; What Allah is is written in the Koran. Without the act of believing for the sake of believing, – or for the sake of nothing – the entire discourse of all religions would be a fable; and indeed is a flimsy fable. Now suppose that one states: 'I believe in watermelon about which nothing can be known; it can only be believed.' You will not still pay attention to watermelon but to the act of believing that believes for the sake of believing. If you accuse of this man who has faith in watermelon by imbecility, then you will have to have more plausible arguments than that watermelon has no access to the divine revelation, no church, no jurisprudence (fiqh in the jargon of Islam) and that watermelon is not a human being but only a thing that is not be able to communicate with some supranatural powers thus is not be able to show miracles. If you maintain that you believe in Christ or in Allah about whom nothing can be known but he can only be believed, you will be told then that you can know nothing about whether or not a watermelon is ripe without cutting it first. Thus to state that 'I believe in Christ about whom nothing can be known but he can only be believed', as the graveyard philosopher Kierkegaard did, will be tantamount to state that 'I believe that this watermelon is ripe and I do not need to cut it first because nothing can be known about it which can only be believed.' If you still maintain that a watermelon is not 35 | P a g e
capable of showing miracles unlike Christ and Muhammed, then you will be advised to drill a hole in a watermelon; and to pour some Turkish raki23 into it, and to soak it in the cold water for a while, and finally to drink it with the core of the watermelon. As soon as you are completely soaked, you will, miraculously, forget about whether or not watermelon was ripe.
Epistemological Drones: The American way of infinite and academic love of wisdom Thanks to American way of capitalist trinity which is consisted of and constructed by institutions of private property, profitability and the market, we too have great philosophers in our age who illuminate us with their infinite academic wisdom and with their love of wisdom. As the formidable American drones kill those who do not obey them, American epistemological drones like Mr. Searle teach us what philosophical knowledge is in the twenty-first century thus make us believe that we must obey them. But we, the GodlessAllahless-Stateless-Immoral artist guerillas, we, tiger-tamers, cannibal hunters and zombie eaters, will never obey them even we perish in thousands under the fire of drones. The pebbles that are fast, furious and ruthless we had once trampled on and the drops of water that are corrosive, poisonous and stinky we had once drunk will resurrect and revenge the rape we had endured. ‘The central intellectual fact of the present era is that knowledge grows. It grows daily and cumulatively. We know more than our grandparents did; our children will know more than we do.’24 Are you serious Mr. Searle? Where have you intellectually planted that three of knowledge of that present that grows an era which is a central fact? Are you sure that you have taken your daily Prozac tablets which must have increased cumulatively? What kind of unfortunate mistake did your grandparents make you not to know more than your 23
An alcoholic beverage made of anise.
John R. Searle, ‘Philosophy in a new century’, in Philosophy in a New Century: Selected Essays, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 4-25 24
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children who will also know more than you? Mr. Searle is decentralized, anti-intellectualized, de facto de-factualized, mispresented, ignored, dwarfed, disaccumulated, and finally dissolved. There remains a Mr. Searle who masterfully captures how the present era values knowledge; or how it commercializes knowledge. These lines are also a vivid and wonderful expression of how commoditization of knowledge or knowledge of commoditization are swallowed up and chucked up as philosophy which unconsciously chooses the jargon of capital. This knowledge grows just as a plant that is a valuable commodity in the service of global market grows. It grows daily and cumulatively just as interest rate and profit. The fundamental a priori drive of capital is at work and play: ‘We have to profit more than our grandfathers did; our children will have to profit more than we do.’ It should come as no surprise then that certain, objective, and universal knowledge comes from nowhere but a ‘huge accumulation of knowledge’, as Mr. Searle himself writes just after the lines quoted above. The jargon of capital however is not only the jargon of Christianity and of Islam but of all religious or secular discourses which rely on an absolute faith in accordance with philosophy of more and less which dogmatically promotes and worships less violence, more democracy and more ethics. Both the jargon of capital and of religious discourses must presuppose an absolute faith in the certainty, in the objectivity, and in the universality of something in order to be operated as a discourse that must be nailed down to the consciousness of the masses or to the individuals who unconsciously belong to the glorious mass with a clear conscience. Thus to have an absolute faith in the certainty of private property, in the objectivity of profitability, and in the universality of the market can not be defended through a philosophical argument but a religious one. The statement ‘We know more than our grandparents did; our children will know more than we do’ must be exposed to the questions in the face of which the jargon of capital à la Mr. Searle has nothing to say: How does one know that one knows more than previous generations? How does one know that the next generations will know more than one does? The ‘huge accumulation of knowledge’, a part of which is certain, objective, and universal does not only compels Mr. Searle to be entangled in an anachronistic and hallucinatory distortion of historicity but also to distort history anachronistically as if he is under the effect of a hallucinogen: 37 | P a g e
'If by ‘modernism’ is meant the period of systematic rationality and intelligence that began in the Renaissance and reached a high point of self-conscious articulation in the European Enlightenment, then we are not in a post-modern era. On the contrary, modernism has just begun. We are, however, I believe, in a post-skeptical or post-epistemic era. You will not understand what is happening in our intellectual life if you do not see the exponential growth of knowledge as the central intellectual fact. There is something absurd about the post-modern thinker who buys an airplane ticket on the internet, gets on airplane, works on his laptop computer in the course of the airplane flight, gets off of the airplane at his destination, takes a taxicab to lecture hall, and then gives a lecture claiming that somehow or other there is no certain knowledge, that objectivity is in question, and that all claims to truth and knowledge are really only disguised power grabs.'25 If religion is opium for the people as Herr Marx claimed, to use a well-worn cliché, modernity, to use another one, is, so to speak, LSD for philosophers who are hired in the legion whose creed is that of the jargon of capital. The statements ‘Modernism has just begun’ and ‘We are in a post-modern or a post-skeptical or a post-epistemic era’ are tantamount to warn someone by saying ‘Hurry up! The movie just began!’ If this warner does not know whether or not that person has a ticket for that movie, then the warning of the warner is bound to be an absurd and a vain gesture which includes both the warner and the warned. But absurdity, so Mr. Searle argues, haunts nobody but the post-modern thinker who claims that there is no certain knowledge, that objectivity is in question and that all claims to truth and knowledge are really only disguised power grabs. The absurdity that Searle fancies for the post-modern thinker is that this post-modern thinker, whose existence is secured within and through the jargon of capital as exactly the way Mr. Searle's own existence is guaranteed by it, acts in a certain way in accordance with the existential circuit in which he exists, i.e., the internet, the airplane, the laptop computer, and the taxicab. According to Mr. Searle who is sworn to fight with the post-modern thinker, if the post-modern thinker uses the internet, the airplane, the laptop computer, and the taxicab, and if he is claiming that there is no certain knowledge, that objectivity is in question and 25
Searle, ibid.
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that all claims to truth and knowledge are really only disguised power grabs, then this is an absurdity. Now suppose that the post-modern thinker claims that there is no certain, objective, and universal knowledge but he does not work on his laptop computer in the course of the airplane flight but prefers to listen to his iPod, cannot get off the airplane but the airplane crashes, cannot take a taxicab to lecture hall, and cannot therefore give a lecture about certainty, objectivity, and universality of the knowledge. Is there no longer any absurdity here then? Suppose also that the post-modern thinker works on his laptop computer to write a paper about certainty, objectivity, and universality of the knowledge in the course of the airplane flight, which does not crash, takes a taxicab to lecture hall and bawls: 'The main message I have tried to convey is that it is now possible to do a new kind of philosophy. With the abandonment of the epistemic bias in the subject, such a philosophy can go far beyond anything imagined by the philosophy of a half century ago. It begins not with skepticism, but what we all know about the real world. It begins with such facts as those stated by the atomic theory of matter and the evolutionary theory of biology, as well as such ‘commonsense’ facts as that we are all conscious, that we all really do have intentional mental states, that we form social groups and create institutional facts. Such philosophy is theoretical, comprehensive, systematic, and universal in subject matter.'26 Are we all really conscious Mr. Searle? Do we all really have intentional mental states? Do we really form social groups? Do we really create institutional facts? Given that this 'we' is a little bit amorphous, the questions are supposed to be designed in such a way: Are you really conscious Mr. Searle? Do you really have intentional mental states? Have you ever formed a social group? Have you ever created an institutional fact? Given that Mr. Searle is unable to answer these questions, let the questions beget further questions: Are you really conscious when you vomit Mr. Searle? Did you really have an intentional mental state when you watched,for example, the collapsing twin towers in your laptop computer? Mr. Searle is embarrassed, dumbfounded, despaired, disappointed, irritated, winced, regurgitated, and 26
Searle, ibid.
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finally loathed himself. It is because Mr. Searle is the man of common sense facts, though he has no idea about the sense of this common except as an uncertain, a subjective, and a particular interpretation. The senselessness of common has to be actualized in order that Mr. Searle would be a conscious man. He also needs states that are mental; and not only mental, but also intentional. For this Mr. Searle must conjure up an intention that creates mental states, or must state mental creations with an intention, or must intend a state of mental creations, or must create an intentional mental state that is as unintentional as the creation of a mental state with an intention. In this story of the genesis, or in the story of this genesis ,nonetheless, there is only one character who is lacking: the Devil, the first philosopher, whose absence, in the process of the creation of mental states with an intention, in the consciousness of Mr. Searle, damns him, condemns him, lacerates him, gnaws him, titillates him, humiliates him, gratifies him, indulges him, and finally ruins him. It is the fall of Mr. Searle sans the Devil, sans Eve, sans Cain, sans Abel; hopelessly desolated and utterly isolated, wastefully consummated, and consecrated by the grace of an unknown God which creates intentional mental states for Mr. Searle who consciously exists in the realm of commonsense facts. Mr. Searle has to form social groups and has to create institutional facts under the grip of this existential damnation, this rootlessness, this groundlessness, this boundlessness, in a nutshell, this pursuit of happiness. Mr. Searle has to create facts that are institutional in order to form social groups, facts such as what is social, what is a group, and what is to form a social group. Nevertheless, these facts are already created, institutions are established as soon as a social order is formed; as facts are already determined, measured, and calculated in so far as a social group is formed. In spite of all these obstacles, Mr. Searle is the hero of our time and of all times: he shatters the shackles, breaks the rules, hits back the institutional order, fights with the other social groups, overcomes his own self-consciousness – which is nothing but a bleary remembrance of a piece of rotten meat – and declares his own ultimate existential damnation:
In the name of the atomic theory of matter and the evolutionary theory of biology! I despise skepticism! I have an absolute faith in what I know about the real world! It is real because it begins with facts that are proved by commonsense! I am conscious! I do have intentional mental states, I do form social groups, and do create institutional facts! This is my 40 | P a g e
philosophy!
The salaried half-Anarchist and half-Socialist post-modern thinker and his commercialized reveries The pseudo-illegitimate exhortation, operated by the post-modern thinker, on the other hand, of the usurpation of the dominion of the jargon of capital is that which may be called a half-socialist and a half- anarchist attack. The attack is half-socialist because it demands equality only in welfare, and does not even want to mention poverty and warfare. Poverty is for the half-socialist post-modern thinker an object of pity and of political correctness which must be felt, intuited, conceived, and repeated either s-he is alone or is in a social intercourse. The attack is half-anarchist because it pursues this demand under the supervision of a welfare state with a permanent warfare , or of a permanent warfare state without welfare, which provides funds for the post-modern thinker, and not in poverty. For the poverty of the post-modern thinker does not occur as long as he converges with deadlines. And as long as the payment occurs, the deadlines are coped with conclusions in company with a variety of convulsions, compulsions, and convolutions. The post-modern thinker, half-slighted – half-agitated, challenges commonsense facts, consciously refuses having intentional mental states, barks at social groups, criticizes institutional facts as well as the institutions themselves. If only all these haven't taken place in his dreams! He wakes up one day early in the morning in the wake of all his bad dreams, works on his laptop computer, takes a taxicab to lecture hall, stands naked in front of the students and vociferates: 'Today leftist politics must have an anarchistic component. Difference demands the open exploration of alternatives, not the rigid adherence to one particular form of identity. Only by adopting the agenda of liberating individual bodies does it move beyond the parochialism of class and identity politics. It is the anarchist defense of body that refuses to leave emancipation as the deferred objective.'27
27
Andrew M. Koch, Poststructuralism and the Politics of Method, p. 106
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For the post-modern thinker, unlike Mr. Searle, there is something utterly wrong with the components that constitute reality for Mr. Searle: the atomic theory of matter, the evolutionary theory of biology, commonsense facts, intentional mental states, formation of social groups, and creation of institutional facts. These facts, so the post-modern thinker seems to argue, are theoretically deceitful, comprehensively oppressive, systematically obsessed with one particular form of identity, and universally dominant which holds its grip on the 'open exploration of alternatives.' Nonetheless, there is a hope for an ultimate salvation. A leftist politics with an anarchistic component, or an anarchistic movement with a leftist component, or a political left with an anarchistic component, or an anarchistic left with a political component, is the hopeful formula for this final salvation. As long as the 'open exploration of alternatives' is kept afloat, and as long as the agenda is espoused for the liberation of the individual bodies, the parochialism of class and of identity politics is bound to be defeated. In so far as the body is anarchistically defended, and in so far as the anarchist body is defended anarchistically, the possibility of the emancipation of body cannot be refuted. That all this is supposed to fall out before the post-modern thinker falls down in the lacerating process of the rat race is because it is a very special kind of anarchism – subjectively and objectively deferred - that is at work and play here: 'Anarchism is not a condition but a direction. In the social realm, the goal must be to reduce the intrusive arm of government to a minimum in the affairs of individual human beings. In the economic realm, it must engage a discourse that includes the emancipation of the body from labor, to the extent possible, given the material needs of the body and circumscribed by the democratic processes that direct the commitments of labor time. This is the part of Marx that gets lost in the discussion of the working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the part of Marx that must be revived and carried forward.'28 This special kind of anarchism must be an unconditional directionlessness, or a directionless unconditional. Capitalism, on the other hand, is not a direction but a condition, a condition
which conditions unconditionally the direction of the post-modern thinker as well as of his directionlessness by paralyzing his ability to theorize thus condemns him to a 28
Ibid.
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motionlessness, nay, it is worse, to an unwholesomeness, nay, it is the worst, to a prosaicness. The anarchist post-modern thinker initially has to come to terms with the intrusive arm of government in the social realm where some individual human beings have some affairs that are administrated through an intrusiveness. He then has to engage a discourse that emancipates the body from labor. The reason why he has to engage a discourse only discursively and cursorily is because the economic realm intrudes not only on some affairs of individual beings but also on the anarchist post-modern thinker's affairs as an individual human being. In the economic realm, he has to be provided by organic foods and fair trade products which are provided not by the intrusive arms but by the benevolent alms of government which he whines about. In the social realm, however, the anarchist post-modern thinker has to engage with reading affairs if he does not get lost in the process of meek lectures, flattering presentations, fluttering pretensions, exhausting vapid exams, and superfluous but well-paid research projects. A deconstructive Derrida Prozac tablet would emancipate his body and intellect as well and would bestow on him a discursive rhetoric to calumniate Herr Marx who suffered from abominable catarrh, eye inflammation, bile vomiting, rheumatism, acute liver pains, sneezing, dizziness, persistent coughing, and dangerous carbuncles in his genitals during the writing of Das Kapital (18606). In spite of all the post-modern thinker's unconditional directionlessness, restless motionlessness, devalued unwholesomeness, and sophisticated prosaicness, he puts a goal for himself to revise and carry forward what Herr Marx could not accomplish through the working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The anarchist post-modern thinker has himself thus been produced along with his productions: 'The left is in danger of squandering this moment in history, as it splinters and fragments into an array of movements under the banner of 'identity politics.' Poststructuralism has, in part, provided the epistemological foundation for this to occur by deconstructing the dominant metanarratives in the Western tradition. However, when all ghosts of the past are gone, the individual material body still remains. Emancipating that body can still be the objective of a reconstituted left.'29 29
Ibid.
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Once upon a time, there was a reconstituted left whose objective was a body that had to be emancipated. The more the emancipation is held out, the more robust the materiality of body became. One day the material body wanted to be an individual as the ghosts of the past had already gone. This dormant individual had to strike at the Western tradition whose metanarratives were dominant and had to be deconstructed. How could this individual ghost invoke this act of deconstruction? The answer was found in a foundation that is epistemological for which a magical formula was conjured up: poststructuralism. That poststructuralism was only an academic constipation of the timid philistine asses30 who are hired in the legion of the jargon of capital was the reason why it could only be able to provide the epistemological foundation in part and not in toto. That the banner of identity politics was so fragile and agile was the reason why the movements were splintered and fragmented. History has certainly been squandered. The moment has objectively been squandered. And the left itself has universally been squandered. The half-individual – halfghost post-modern thinker is dejected, terrorized, ransacked, fainted, dissolved, disappeared, deconstructed and finally destructed. The self-inflicted destruction of deconstruction disappears in the process of spiritual self-mortification of his material body which dissolves itself, fainting at the corner where the post-modern thinker is ransacked and terrorized by a dejection which makes him groan: 'What the poststructuralists also bring to our political understanding of a postmetanarrative world is the importance of being able to disseminate a message. In the absence of fixed universals, all is possible. But possibilities require open space for their transmission. The left must use every means to disseminate its message to a public that is awash in the contradictions of late capitalism and the exclusionary rhetoric that supports the nationstate.'31
30 'Do not treat men with scorn, nor walk proudly on the earth: Allah does not love the arrogant and the vainglorious. Rather let your gait be modest and your voice low: the harshest of voices is the braying of the ass.', The Koran, 31: 18-19 31 Koch, ibid.
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In the absence of possibilities, all universals are fixed, or all that is fixed is a universal, as long as a message is disseminated. The universal fixation of the post-modern thinker is extremely crucial in a world which is postmetanarrative. It is 'post' because it follows that which does not follow it. It is 'meta' because it totalizes that which does not totalize it. It is a 'narrative' because it narrates that which does not narrate it. Such a postmetanarrative world requires an understanding that is political if it is a political that is understood. In a postmetanarrative world that is apolitically and apologetically misunderstood, this is what the poststructuralists can transmit as a message to the left if possibilities are to find a space which must be opened. In spite of all this, the post-modern thinker's left, or the left of postmodern thinker, has to dedicate himself/itself to a public that is the victim of the contradictions of late capitalism and of the exclusionary rhetoric of the nation-state. That the post-modern thinker himself as an individual human being along with the left is awash in the contradictions of late capitalism should not exclude the possibility of the act of dissemination of a message despite the non-actualization of the message itself. So, nothing is late in capitalism, it is the post-modern thinker who is too late. Not too late, nevertheless, for shopping that is provided by his rootlessness, his groundlessness, his boundlessness, in a nutshell, his pursuit of happiness.
The ethical maxims of the slave morality of good and moderate cannibals and zombies who believe in the premises of science As long as the jargon of capital, that is, the absolute faith in the capitalist trinity - either in the form of American infinite and academic wisdom or in the form of the fifty-fifty postmodern thinker's commercialized reveries - rules, the philosophy of cannibals and zombies will also rule. With the help of DNA technology, what if the jargon of capital makes the atomic theory of matter claim that human beings are in fact cannibals? What if the jargon of capital makes evolutionary theory of biology claims that human beings are in fact zombies? Nothing will be able to resist to such truths since philosophy of cannibals and zombies will be ready to justify them and ornament them with superstitions such as ‘Virtue’, ‘Good’, ‘Moderation’, 'Absolute', and ‘Moral Law’; theoretically, comprehensively, systematically, and universally. The theoretical Socratic virtue, the practical Platonic good, 45 | P a g e
the comprehensive Aristotelian moderation, the systematic Hegelian absolute, and the universal Kantian moral law constitute the slave morality, to use a phrase coined and operated by Herr Nietzsche, of the self-conceited non-existent subjects who are succumbed to a nihilistic state of existence which would never even dream of a nihilistic state of insurrection:
I am always in a state of Socratic ignorance as long as I make money - This is my rationality.(The Socratic virtue), Whatever makes money is always good and there is always a world that is beyond and that is good as long as I make money, - This is my reality. ( The Platonic good) I am a mediocre and metaphysically speaking animal as long as money is the surplus of a social intercourse with animals yet treating them as if they are humans while treated by them as a human - This is my ethical responsibility. (The Aristotelian moderation) I negate everything through contradictions: money is being, the lack of money is nothing, therefore I am becoming as long as I make money - This is my absolute idea. (The Hegelian absolute)
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