"Turds Fallen from the Devil's Anus" (was Re: Kant, Christianity, and Free Will)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>On Tue, 28 Dec 1999 17:30:54 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>wrote:
>
>> The "exalted representation of evil," as in Lacan's quotation from Luther:
>"You are all turds fallen from the Devil's anus."  Lacan offers two models
>of transcendence": the purification of desire into a pure desire for
>knowledge, "beyond fear and pity" (Socrates who kills himself to save
>truth); and the acceptance of one's "unbeing" and "subjective destitution."
>
>> If such models are attractive to you, why not Zen?
>
>Zen is a cultural, political and social philosophy ("religion") ground in
>specific social and political praxis, Lacan's mirror stage and subsequent
>arguments are ground in a theory of psychological / cognitivie development -
>the two aren't comparable.  One does not "accept" the truth of Lacan, one
>makes
>arguments for and against his propositions. Comparing Zen and psychoanalysis
>rests on a complete confusion of both.
>
>ken

Comparable in the sense that both are technologies of the self.

Yoshie