>> But assertions that no natural predeliction pertains are equally to be
>approached with caution - we are, inter alia, natural beings<
>
>no one has claimed this i think rob, tho you keep reading it as such.
Well, I'm not sure why I've been making so many people so cross then. Cox has been enjoying himself immensely for weeks, smugly spitting those nasty little gratuities of his at the very thought that the variety of cultural forms that pertain might be accommodating some universal substance like instinct (which, should it be within us, would be transformed much more slowly than cutural form, I reckon, very likely creating meaningful dynamic tensions - I did pose it as a possible dialectical relationship, as I think Erich Fromm was wont to do).
>and, i meant 'conserving' in the sense of assigning, on a quite arbitrary
>basis it seems to me, certain senses of sexuality, desire, etc to biology.
>on the issue of blokes being attracted to younger women (or vice versa):
>it's an issue that's never particularly come across my radar. zzz...
Merely a case in point, Ange. Freedom and its relationship to certainty was all I was talking about.
>but
>since you raise the issue of consent, are you really saying that whatever
>one consents to must be a result of natural predilections?
Nope. I didn't say it - 'really' or otherwise. Didn't come near to saying it. Just that we can't always know why we're doing the things we're doing or have done. Did we consciously want to, or did we merely not stop it happening? sorta thing. I've done stuff I'd've thought I'd be unlikely to do right up to the moment I did it - sometimes I'm glad I've done it, and sometimes I pretty quickly would rather I hadn't.
That might be an issue in just how much of our mental dynamics is represented to our conscious processes - and, of course, the whole idea (the one that prompted me from the off) that there's stuff we can't know, and that this should be recognised in the event we find ourselves in a position to discuss rights and wrongs, dos and don'ts, in a post-capitalist, post-patriarchal world.
>> So what about positing a largely unknowable essential human ('coz I
>reckon a couple of things are satisfactorily knowable - but mebbe it
>doesn't matter) within the context of the contingent historical relations
>category?<
>
>that would be more than fine by me.
Bewdy! Never was sure we were effectively very opposed on stuff that mattered. Just didn't quite know what the respective categorical limits of 'humanism' and 'anti-humanism' were, I guess. I'm still not sure - but mebbe it doesn't warrant the heat that might attend the little light I've been seeking.
Cheers, Rob.