[lbo-talk] note of thanks

[ravi]

On Apr 10, 2009, at 9:50 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> I never really understood the appeal of Derrida for people who  
> consider themselves radicals. Part of the whole point of Heidegger/ 
> Foucault/Derrida is that nothing ever really changes. The system of  
> presence/power/signifiers always preserves itself. It's really  
> rather quietist. On one level -- the basically deep metaphysical/ 
> theological one that Heidegger and Derrida were talking about* --  
> that's probably true, but it doesn't really lend itself to  
> application on the political plane.
>

Hmm... I am not sure I consider myself a radical... usually that term  
is foisted on you, isn't it? Derrida holds no attraction for me  
(mostly because I cannot understand his stuff) but the little I  
understood of Heidegger was certainly radicalising. All the cheerful  
optimistic certainty thrown at me in school was beginning to feel  
pretty fake very early on. And the techno-utopianism of my generation  
(or 1/2 generation before) felt much the same, especially in light of  
the much broader struggle (in India) of the early 20th century. But so  
deep was the rot that coming out of school, my one great love was  
Artificial Intelligence. To read someone (later, in my 20s), who  
approached things and issues in opposition to the reigning  
triumphalist reductionism ("turning towards what is readily  
available"), was to be be given a framework to ground one's suspicions  
of the prevailing emperors of thought and finally stand up from under  
the collective boot of the footnote[r]s to Plato. Unlike you, I am no  
Heidegger scholar, and I might well be one of the many who romanticise  
Heidegger (to their needs), so this response should be read merely as  
a personal comment.

You write in another post:
> Later, when the bottom fell out of Nazism, Heidegger revised this so  
> that capitalist liberal democracy, communism, and fascism, despite  
> outward appearances, were really at bottom the same thing  
> (technological thinking).

That might be a later (and self-serving) turn in Heidegger, but  
fortunately for me, that is literally the only Heidegger I know  
(though I have attempted more than once to muddle through his  
Nietzsche volumes, Being and Time, etc, and even understood some of  
it). The Dreyfus/Winograd response to strong-AI that I mentioned in an  
earlier post is another example of tracing a point of differentiation  
(if not line of attack) to Heidegger, much more so than Penrose in  
this case (of AI).

	--ravi

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