Re: Restored (and a final story for Luke and Daniel)

John O. writes:
<< Now here's the thing. In his work, Spirit became an absolute, an
external truth value, a transcendental concept, at EXACTLY the same time
that Heidegger joined the Nazi party and gave himself over to the fascism of
the National Socialists. >>

I can't help but reading this as though immediately after it you wrote:
"Coincidence? I think not!"

Or perhaps a dramatic sound-effect to punctuate that kicker at the end: dun
dun DUN!

I don't doubt that this fact is true, or even that it contains some valuable
psychological insight bearing (only) upon Heidegger. But the ostensible
moral of this story -- that belief in an absolute and external truth (is
this the same as a truth existing independently of men and interpretation,
whether we are or even can become acquainted with it?) is DANGEROUS, that,
in fact, it might lead to EVIL -- is, as it seems to me, hogwash.

Perhaps (perhaps) it was the same thing in Heidegger's head that compelled
him to believe in such a truth and to become a Nazi, but this does not
require a causal, a necessary, or even an important connection between such
belief and such evil. That would be a non-sequitur.

You go on to write:
<< I believe that an unshakable faith in one's Truth as an external Absolute
has caused more horror and violence and destruction between human beings
than anything else on the face of this planet throughout history.
[. . .]
<< And I think the philosophical mythology that you are trying to perpetuate
is one of the most dangerous ones that exists and has been throughout the
ages. Even a cursory glance at human history clearly demonstrates this. >>

That cursory glance at human history won't cut it if you expect of such a
claim the same sort of rigor as of claims concerning Derrida. Following
your familiar refrain -- Cite the relevant texts! -- to defend this one
might be a tall order. More than anything else on the face of this planet
throughout history? Do you have the numbers on that one? Pretty ambitious,
if you ask me.

I wouldn't dare get myself into a drunken Derrida-passage-finding contest
with you, but with history in writing and crumbled stones, as far back as
history goes, so far back that we moderns might be inclined to call it
"history" and even fully into the realm where it becomes nearly or utterly
indistinguishable from myth, I might have you beat by a margin.

And I don't buy your assessment, "cursory glance" or sustained engagement.

First, even where faith in an external and absolute truth (is there another
sort of truth, or faith?) was involved, it is perhaps surprisingly often
shakable. You might be surprised to find how often men would wreak horror
and violence for one man's truth, lose, and the very next day wreak horror
and violence for another's. Those whose faith in their truth truly WAS
unshakable often became mythologized and even canonized.

Also, a whole bloody hell of a lot of horror and violence was waged for
reasons quite utterly unideological. This even seems to become more the
case as we get even further and further back -- technology, believe it or
not, made it so much easier to live that it cleared up the days for the
warrior cultures and their ideological battles increased, perhaps to keep
the rust off the swords -- and there's no reason to expect that this changes
when we get back beyond writing and crumbled stones.

Great horror and violence was waged for reasons as mundane as The Crops
Stopped Growing in My Soil, or, even when that wasn't so, because Your Crops
Are Very Abundant, or One of Ours Accused One of Yours of Raping his
Daughter, or I Want to Have Sex with Your Wife, or even We're On a Mostly
Arbitrary Horror and Violence Tour and Yours Is the Place We Came Upon
Today. It has exceptionally often involved money or the things money was
invented to represent. Much of the horror and violence that involved faith
in a truth was especially large and wide-spread, but USUALLY not
unprecedented in numbers -- and even when the name of a deity was shouted
upon entering battle, or his symbol emblazoned across every shield, it very
often, at the end of the day, remained about wealth.

I expect that your assertion comes from the close association our secular
culture has made between unshaking faith in a truth and massive instances of
violence. This is a pretty easily understandable association to make, what
with the pervasiveness of certain ideas about the Crusades, the Holocaust --
even, today, of fundamentalist Islamic violence.

The only possible attempt for rigor in such an assertion that I can think
of, though, is the claim that perpetuating profound violence requires a firm
reason, and that the perpetuator must harbor unshakable faith in this
reason. But I'm not sure that a look at history that is more than a cursory
glance will sustain either of these claims.

An unshakable faith -- which, I think, is more rare than most people
suppose, as I believe a sustained and serious look at history WILL
demonstrate -- is certainly conducive to passionate action. Action of what
sort, however, depends entirely upon the nature of the unshakable faith.
For all the images of murderous zealots, we ought to remember Gandhi's faith
in a truth, and Mother Theresa's, and Martin Luther King's, and . . . . If
you have never encountered genuinely, exceptionally good people who seem to
be driven by faith in a truth, you've probably been trying too hard to avoid
them.

(And for what it's worth, I don't know quite what you and Luke mean by an
absolute and external truth, but if we take for granted that horror and
violence, human suffering on a massive scale, ought to be avoided -- that
lessons should be learned from the problems that led to such horror and
violence in the past -- then we are acknowledging the existence of at least
one but more probably several truths, however firmly planted in the gut, and
truth that I suspect will remain such independently of what I think about
it.)

-robbie
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Received on Wed Jul 16 22:28:27 2003