After the Fall (was Re: religious crackpots in public life)

Rob Schaap rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au
Sun Jul 9 14:09:09 PDT 2000


I'm sorry, Doug, but I just can't let assertions like this go unopposed. It's a quiet day, and I promise not to post for 24 hours, okay?

Ken pronounces:


>There is a qualitative
>difference between original sin brought about by the fall as theologized in
>christianity and the OBJECTIVE processes of human development and the
>formative
>processes of socialization and individuation.

Yeah, but the difference is only in the status of the premises - one (munching on that apple) didn't happen, and one (humans spoke) did. I reckon both parties do weird, or at least moot, things with the bricks they stack atop their foundations.


>Self-consciousness cannot be achieved with the aquisition of language (or
>some
>such symbolic system that is achived through socialization). Despite our
>pre-linguistic tendencies, which facilitate language acquisition, the brain
>isn't hardwired for any *specific* language - otherwise we'd all be speaking
>the same m(other) tongue. Language-use is, essentially, alienating from our
>needful state of being (prior to language). This creates a rupture between
>"being" and "speaking." This rupture can only be "fixed" at the expense of
>subjectivity. In other words - subjectivity is a forced choice: you either
>"be"
>or you "speak." Hence, there is a gap. Language does not spring naturally (so
>to speak) - it appears only in a social community. Entrance into this
>community
>*creates* a kind of second nature in human beings. Exactly how does this
>correspond to the fall? (where subjectivity is conceived of as full blown
>and Ideal maturity - *Absolute* freedom of will outside of any and all
>contingency and social context).

I just don't think linguistic philosophy gets it! We were using symbols long before we got to sentences, after all. We've effectively always been a symbol-using species. And *all* symbols were expressed, related and interpreted in a social context. Always. You keep insisting on some kind of state of nature that just ain't natural, Ken! There ain't, and never was, a 'being' outside symbolic/social interaction (ie history). It ain't even possible, fershriekingoutloud! Whatever is noumenal in and about us (to use the Kantian framework you're employing), is, and always has been, mediated by the phenomenal.

Cheers, Rob.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list