>>> <digloria at mindspring.com> 03/25/99 01:36PM >>>
yes, of course, chaz: ethics and politics are inseparable. they are distinguishable, but one can't possibly think through ethical commitments without also thinking through political commitments; and political commitments always entail ethical decision-making. the seeming separation of the two is a distinctly modern one.
a constellation is a "juxtaposed rather than integrated cluster of changing elements that resist reduction to a common denominator, essential core, or generative first principle'...(T)he modern/postmodern situation is one that defies and resists any and all attempts of reduction to a common denominator, essential core, or generative first principle.' 'Constellation' is deliberately intended to displace Hegel's master metaphor of 'Aufhebung.' For...although we cannot (and should not) give up the promise and demand for reconciliation--a reconciliation achieved by what Hegel calls 'determinate negation,' ...we can no longer responsibly claim that there is or can be a final reconciliation--an Aufhebung in which all difference, otherness, opposition, and contradiction are reconciled. There are always unexpected, contigent ruptures that dis-rupt the project of reconciliation. The changing elements of the new constellation resist such reduction. What is 'new' about this constellation is the growing awareness of the depth of radical instabilities. We have to learn to think and act in the 'in-between' interstices of forced reconciliations and radical dispersion."
<paraindent><param>left,left</param>--Richard Bernstein,
The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of