SUBJECTIVATION

- Aristotle (Politics Book I, Greece ) For the real difference between man and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, the just and the unjust etc. It is the sharing of a common view in these matters that makes a household and a state .” (4th c. BC)

◦ Where do we draw the line of justice (Evil/injustice as something new sensed in experience & shared as analysed fact)? Where do we draw the line Man/Animal? (Greek basis: Citizens vs. Slaves.)

- Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, England ) What about the greater common good of the utilitarians? In the Hobbesian (late 17th c.) liberal political philosophy, “the state of nature” involves “a war of all against all” from which the man capable of ‘improvement’ would rescue Natives - unruly children defending their 'naturally' chaotic, unproductive wastefulness - or educate the lazy poor. This is justice, ie, the advantage/ self-interest of the superior man; this ‘natural law’ that wealth = dominance.

◦ Ambedkar’s/Ranciere’s question to this is: what do we/they really have in common? Why do you get to decide that they are on the side of Nature and you are on the side of the household of Civilization? (Colonial/Liberal basis: Trustees vs. trainees.)

‘What happened??’

“ What is Enlightenment? ” (Kant, 1784) “First of all, the Enlightenment is a historic period which invents its own name: the Enlightenment calls itself Enlightenment ... it defines itself as a privileged moment in history, as a way out of immaturity into adulthood ... as a coming of age - an adulthood which implies the use of reason without an outside authority to rely on .” (Dolar) Kant in this and later texts brings out the difficulties involved in choice of ethical attitude.

After the enlightenment, the rational individual is divided : Reason seems powerless

Public (Democratic zones)

Task: Question/don’t believe

The Law of universality that I impose 'from within' destroys my illusion of pure freedom (the freedom to have more)

Freedom to reason according to ‘Liberte, egalite, fraternite’ itself is ultimately based on a traumatic self-control of my own freedom (self-reasoned duty)

They have to decide: Is democracy the r k of con ict or adm tration of consensus?

Private (Contractual zones)

Task: Obedience to power

The Rational-Legal system reveals itself to my principled reason to be founded on nothing but power

The external Law makes me obey for example the market, but there is nothing ethical here. I have to impose my own internal moral Law that constitutes me as a modern subject

Is politics a game of power, or about the public appearance of ju ice as an open que ion to everybody?