----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
> "As Emerson afterward expressed it, there was 'something military'
in
> Thoreau's nature, 'not to be subdued, always manly and able, but
rarely
> tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He
wanted a
> fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory ... required a little sense
of
> victory, a roll of the drum to call his powers into full exercise.'
... On
> hearing any proposition, 'his first instinct ... was to controvert
it,' and
> in a manner 'never affectionate but superior, didactic,' scornful of
the
> 'petty ways' of his interlocutors, like a New England Socrates at
his most
> eristic."
>
> Carl
>
===================
Ah yes, the fetish of adversariality as the royal road to science and social solidarity.
"There is a false profundity in conflict, but underneath conflict, the space of the play of differences. The negative is the image of difference, but a flattened and inverted image, like the candle in the eye of an ox - the eye of the dialectician dreaming of futile combat." [Gilles Deleuze-Difference & Repetition]
Ian