[lbo-talk] What Is a Liberal?

[shag carpet bomb]

At 06:47 PM 5/5/2010, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 5:12 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > On May 5, 2010, at 6:05 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> >
> >> hmm. since both kinds of liberals put their faith in method, maybe
> >> they should be called "methodological liberals" ha ha. man, if i do
> >> say so myself, below would make a good book!
> >
> > It would! Very good stuff.
> > ___________________________________
>
>I like it, too. I am going to be a very bad man, though, now, and
>mention the B-word again, and not only that, I may not be around to
>elaborate properly, depending on how thick and fast the response is.

thanks for compliments all. as michael smith alludes though, it's really an 
old story just applied to a specific question.


>That said, I think it's worth noting, given the conversations that
>seem to be unfolding. The opening of Badiou's latest Big Work (Logics
>of Worlds) is a version of what had already seen light beforehand as a
>critique of what he is calling "democratic materialism" and that
>sounds to me an awful lot like (at the least) shag's liberalism #2
>(interpretive), and really very much like the methodological
>liberalism she comes to: its main thesis, he says, is that there are
>only languages and bodies. And so we are left with juridical relations
>where all bodies and languages are allowed except the ones deemed to
>violate the consensus that all bodies and languages are allowed (these
>are "totalitarian"). But there is of course no objective anything
>against which they are measured -- no god, as shag points out, and, as
>badiou puts it, no truths.
>
>http://www.lacan.com/badbodies.htm
>
>this very simple observation of his has seemed to me -- ill-read in
>much of the social theory of liberalism as i am -- one of his more
>interesting contributions, and i am pleased to see it echoed here,
>because I had not entirely trusted my gut on it.

i will take a look.

the first place i ever read this critique was in a book by Claes G. Ryn, 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Democracy_and_the_Ethical_Life:_A_Philosophy_of_Politics_and_Community&action=edit&redlink=1>Democracy 
and the Ethical Life: A Philosophy of Politics and Community

I'm sure CB MacPherson's The Real World of Democracy was huge to my 
understanding, but he is one of those thinkers I've simply absorbed, unable 
to recall why the work was eye-opening at the time. It certainly perturbed 
me. As I flip through the pages, I have marginalia that indicated irritation!

shag


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