[lbo-talk] The Importance of Choice

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>[lbo-talk] Re: The Importance of Choice
>Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com, Tue Mar 16 10:22:29 PST 2004
<snip>
>>Michael Dawson -PSU wrote:
>>>Carrol Cox:
>>>wherever and whenever we find "ourselves," we are always already 
>>>involved in action, i.e., in an ensemble of social relations apart 
>>>from which we have no existence at all.... I very much doubt that 
>>>any of the primates can be individuals, and the concept of a human 
>>>being an individual is obscene
>>
>>These two claims require no response.  They reveal the quality of 
>>mind of their author, who defines virtually everybody alive on 
>>today's Earth as a practicer of obscenity.
>>
>>Carrol = Louis Althusser who writes better and is more honest.
>
>Yoshie got annoyed when I suggested this sort of thing is a 
>depressive symptom, but the more I think about it, the more 
>persuasive it seems. Depressives are haunted by feelings of guilt 
>and/or emptiness, feel that taking action is hopeless, and often 
>advertise their sense of helplessness and self-reproach at high 
>volume. What I see here is that depressive constellation 
>masquerading as a political philosophy.
>
>Doug

Let's say, for the sake of an argument, that the opinion of a person 
who philosophically discounts "a very Eden of the innate rights of 
man," where "alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham" (at 
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm>), is a 
symptom of clinical depression, rather than a piece of political 
philosophy.  In that case, it is a biologically determinist argument 
against thinking of an individual as an uncaused cause, which 
deflates "the Importance of Choice" in the subject line.

It is said that "[e]very year more than 19 million American Adults 
suffer from clinical depression" (at 
<http://www.nmha.org/ccd/index.cfm>) and that "[t]he National 
Comorbidity Study, a large survey of adults in the United States 
released last year, found that 1.7 women for every man had 
experienced at least one episode of depression" (at 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/health/psychology/16DEPR.html>). 
Are those 19 million clinically depressed Americans historical 
materialists in the closet?  Are women more likely to be in favor of 
Althusser's philosophy than men?  :->
-- 
Yoshie

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