okay ken. i'm beating my head against the steel wall. i'm shooting for 200x. 187 was my limit before. i may email later and asked to be shot.
>If human beings are defined by their rights, these rights do not come from
>human beings, they come from some sort of pre-human ethics. Here's how
>it goes - a Lacanian and a Habermasian...
humans aren't defined solely by their rights, you wanker. in the polity they have been defined by their rights. the answer to, "what does it mean to be human" has all sorts of answers depending on who, where, when you're asking.
i am FAR more concerned that human beings are defined by their capacity to be so called rational actors making choices in the osensibly free fucking market than i am by worries about rights which no way in hell have to be defined as pre political in habermas's reformulation. they simply aren't pre-political, they can never be not political and friggin habermas isn't defining them as pre-political. they are political.
you've conveniently ignored habermas's redefinition of the categorical imperative. everyone can come to the table when we're going to talk about something that matters to our lives. but if you want to act like an asshole then you're out of here if you can't figure out how to straighten up and fly right after a reasonable number of opportunities to do so. and the judge of that 'bad' behavior is everyone else. i have far more faith than you that people can figure it out--how to be judicious in these matters. and part of getting to that point is actually practicing it and learning how to do it. and no one will if no one ever tries.
furthermore, no one on this model is being defined as NOT human. they're being defined as humans that aren't willing to be at the table and act decently.
tough luck. wow. standards of decent behavior, this is a problem? yes, they are a problem now but that's not the result of rights. it's the result of the damn capitalist system that means that people don't have any substantive rights or freedom whatsoever.
blaming terrorism solely on this is silliness.
the market does far more damage in this regard and, indeed, the ultimate origin of the rights discourse is based on a market model. these sorts of worries and concerns seem a bit out of place.
>So what comes first, the human or the rights?
>
> Well, humans come first.
>
>But what does it mean to be human?
>
> It means having these rights!
oh now wait a durn minute. this is not what is going on. this is about figuring out how to create a public sphere. a space where people can get together and make decisions about how to organize their lives. small decisions, big decisions, in between. if it's workplace democracy it would be things like this: "should we rotate jobs so that no one has to same job all the time" "is sam schmuck's idea about changing the way we order the waitstaff's breaks a good idea" "how should we dispose of the chemical wasteproducts" "paper or plastic?" "women have complained that they're being discriminated against, we need to address this issue" "should we use this production process or what?" "should we develop this product line with these improvements?"
so it's delimited and other notions of what it means to be human are operative elsewhere. you worry about the state? well the idea is to get rid of capitalism, replace with collective ownership, no private property, workplace democracy and then you don't need the state in quite the same ways. i don't think the state will go away, but many of the ways in which the state asserts itself now will largely be dealt with at this level, locally, rather than at the level of the state. here i def. depart from habermas.
>So before rights there were no humans.
>
> Yes! Before rights we were barbarians. Now we are civilized.
> Humans have rights.
oh please. wanking. big time.
>But where do these rights come from?
>
> From the idealized content of presuppositions that arise in each
> and every linguistic act.
yeah, like say what you mean as best as possible and mean what you say to the best of your abilities.
this is just so incredibly awful isn't it?
this doesn't mean no joking or irony or satire or anything of the sort.
>So where does language come from?
>
> From the attempt to come to an agreement about something
> consensually.
: waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!
: oh must be you're wet and need your diaper changed.
: waaaahhhhhh
: hmmm maybe a bottle?
: waaaaaaahhhhhhhhh
: hugs?
: waaaaaaaahhhhhhhh
: i guess you've got gas, how about some burping?
:waaaaaaahhhhhh
: nothing's making you happy. off to bed and shut up already!!!
and so on. this is just awful. this is the worst thing in the world. meaning is being imposed on that poor defenseless child. ugh and ick.
>So language finds its origin in the encounter between to people who accord
>each other these rights automatically, prior to the conversation?
duh. it is not a situation of equality historically.
> Yes. In Germany, everyone should learn German, because it is
> the dominate discourse and only through learning German can
> someone actually participate as a full human being.
oh please. as if.
> It is the defining characteristic of what it means to be human.
>>Rights, right?
bullshit ken. that's delimited to the situations of public discourse in which we must deal with these public issues.
>So the entire universe culminates with the signing of a constitution of
>universal human rights.
please!
>A performative contradiction.
yeah. i love performative contradictions. they're the best!!!!!
>But isn't this itself a paradox?
>But this is tautological.
and here we have the fatal blows. every godamn philosophical theory will be found to be tautological, a performative contradiction, or paradox. so fugghedaboudit!!! all a waste of time.
>Agreed. In my Lacanian reading, the form (substance) hides the content
>(void). In your Habermasian reading, the content (substance) is identical
>with the form (language).
but i don't give a flying flig about substance and content. who cares??? i want to figure out a way to create spaces where people can learn to make decisions together and this will help them shape and strengthen the capacities to run their own lives together rather than relying on procedural mechanisms like state and market.
but just shoot me NOW.
kelley