[lbo-talk] The Importance of Choice

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com, Tue Mar 16 16:30:44 PST 2004
<snip>
>Yoshie wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>This doesn't follow.  There are degrees of rational 
>self-determination.  Kleinian psychoanalysis associates these with 
>degrees of ego strength and integration.  The weaker and less 
>integrated the ego, the more likely it is that it will not 
>experience itself as self-determined, that it will not experience 
>its experience as the experience of anything real, and that it will 
>experience itself and the world as fragmented into externally 
>related bits.

Does Kleninian psychoanalysis say that individuals _choose_ to have 
"weaker and less integrated egos" and therefore become clinically 
depressed?  If so, I wouldn't recommend it to the clinically 
depressed seeking treatments.


>These features are evident in the following passage from Hume's 
>Treatise (a passage I've quoted before).  It was published 10 years 
>after Hume's psychotic breakdown.

At 20, John Stuart Mill, the foremost philosopher of individual 
liberty, also suffered from a breakdown: 
<http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Mill.html>.

Tahir Wood twood at uwc.ac.za, Tue Mar 16 23:50:37 PST 2004
>>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
>
>Doug this is quite apparent, and therefore the comparison with 
>Althusser all the more apt. The pathological nature of the leftist 
>thinker

Persons whose politics and philosophy are different from yours = 
"pathological" individuals?  What are the implications of such an 
equation for liberty?
-- 
Yoshie

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