On May 19, 2010, at 2:09 AM, SA wrote:
> In Chomsky's case it's especially unjustified (ha ha) since everyone
> knows that he neither believes in god nor has ever posited any
> metaphysical theory (in which justice is a property of the universe,
> for example) - in other words, they know very well their accusations
> about his alleged belief in "floating, transcendent" whatnot are,
> strictly speaking, false.
Well, not exactly. In their article on Chomsky's (largely unstated) theoretical underpinnings, Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers argue that he believes in an innate human sense of justice that is repressed and distorted by bad institutions (NLR 187, May/June 1991). Their own summary:
> To anticipate what follows, we take Chomsky’s social views to be
> marked by four key claims: (1) human beings have a ‘moral nature’
> and a fundamental interest in autonomy; (2) these basic features of
> our nature support a libertarian socialist social ideal; (3) the
> interest in autonomy and the moral nature of human beings help to
> explain certain important features of actual social systems,
> including for example the use of deception and force to sustain
> unjust conditions, as well as their historical evolution; and (4)
> these same features of human nature provide reasons for hope that
> the terms of social order will improve from a moral point of view.
Just as our capacity for language is hardwired (though we have lots of room for using it creatively), so is a sense of justice. This view helps explain his faith in reason and empiricism - his passionate devotion to factchecking politicians and the media. Because if we can straighten that shit out, it will unblock the expression of our underlying rationality and sense of justice. If you believe, as Foucault did, that there is no such underlying structure, then politics gets a lot more complicated.
Doug