On Sun, 6 Feb 2000 17:08:09 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Ken wrote:
> >However, this is *not* what I was saying. My reading goes something more
like this: a woman who has an abortion because she takes it to be the WORD OF
GOD (a command), and who doesn't want to have an abortion, but does so anyway,
because it is the WORD OF GOD, against her desire not to have an abortion,
can be said to be is acting in a psychotic manner.
> Which woman ever had an abortion for the reason Ken imagines above?
How many women have *avoided* having an abortion for the reason Ken imagines above? I should stress that acting in a psychotic manner does not indicate psychosis. We act psychotically every single day - whenever we purchase something or engage in waged labour - whenever we act as though we know.
> >I would argue that anyone who supports the attitude that "X made me do it,
even though I didn't want to, I did it anyway and enjoyed it and now I'm not
responsible because 'I' didn't do it" is psychotic.
> So according to Ken, _everything_ one does is an ethical choice. So if a
> woman claims that she was forced to have sex, while being unable to show
> visible physical scars to point to violence and coercion, she is actually
> responsible for what she was forced to do and probably enjoyed it, too.
Your suggestion is gross. One does not have a choice of whether to feel pain when one is being tortured. The very idea is absurd. My point, and I'll explain this nicely despite having good reason not to do so, is that in ethical decisions we take responsibility for our enjoyment / trauma. In other words, we subjective it. The logic of the superego is to "enjoy!" So if you don't want to go to class - your superego cries out "You ought to go to class and like it!" This 'register' demands complete fatalistic conformity with everything around us in an impossible law-like fashion. And ethical response to violence includes taking responsibility (subjectivizing) ones reaction / relation to violence. NOTE: I'm not saying that people *ought* to be ethical and I'm not saying that ethics is a *good* thing. Such a position would simply privilege all over again the very standpoint I'm trying to critique.
ken