I know I haven't been updating, but I'll keep trying to remember too.

Saw Harvard. It was nice, scattered, arrogant and old all at the same time. Trying to get excited about work, not much luck there. Going to get a haircut. Have dropped about 3 pounds. Life is OK. I'm reading Steppenwolf right now and am thinking that it's time for Totality and Infinity.

Peace.

            I’ve decided to start this thing up again, mainly because I now have enough time to actually write daily and chronicle some of my brilliant and leben/weltenschaung shifting ideas.

            Anyways, now that the pretentiousness is out of my system, I can write more freely. My boss was not at work today and I had little, if anything, to do, so I decided that today was a “learning day”. “Learning days” are those special days when I decide to learn about things that I’ve been interested in, but haven’t had either the time or resources to pursue at home. At work, though, both are available on “learning days”.

Today’s topic: Was Heidegger a Nazi?

Background: Martin Heidegger, one of the great existentialist philosophers, whose philosophy has influenced everyone from post-modernists to neofascists to critical race theorists. While Head of the University of Freiburg he gave some controversial speeches and wrote some letters that indicated an interest in participating in the Nazi party’s politics.

Ed’s conclusion: Not really much of a Nazi, but more of a German supremacist who believed that the German language and its history with the German “volk” placed them in the metaphysically superior position of being the historically chosen people who could redeem the world of inauthenticity. He’s still essentially operating within an incredibly myopic historical framework. History “chooses” no one, it simply exists and proceeds and to believe that power and ethnocentric notions of culture equal destiny is like me claiming that since I am in good health and of sound mind now it is clear that I am the son of God and have arrived to save everyone because I am in good health and am sound of mind. Bullshit.

In response to two of Liora's recent postings, I will make my own, though it be only to myself.

While reading Foucault and Okin, the realization came upon me that most power structures, in all their various manifestations, are masked by or concealed within the normalization of daily ritual and societal custom. While I could use the methodology of justice or the concepts of morality and truth to elaborate on these, they have their own distinct limitations. You see, when one makes a claim regarding a concept or methodology, there is always a claim to a value structure being propagated or engendered beneath the surface. In a sense, "justice" is always about values in every case that it is used, and in the justification of these uses we only work within power structures, noble or not by various definitions. My proposal is that we reduce methodlogical inquiries to their analysis of direct physical and psychological effects. For example, the American family structure could be viewed as unjust within a feminist scheme of moral and ethical analysis. On the other hand, we could reduce it a power structure that works to reduce the economic and psychological control of women over their immediate and societal orientation.

What do we gain with this approach? Nothing that has to do with claims about fairness, though we may wish to make them later, but instead an idea of how we can compare, contrast and deconstruct the various levels of power relationships within both actions and day-to-day customs and conventions. The goal should not be to immediately find injustice or oppression, but to create a working methodology that can be applied to any kind of structure at any time in any human environment. If social science should fulfill one role it is this. To create a series of precise methods not for predicting the future or for evaluating the "rightness" or "fit" of institutions in a particular, but for conceptualizing power, for discovering it wherever it may be, camoflouged or readily apparent. Questions and discussions about value structures should enter only in the context of what structures really exist, not what might or could be, what we fear and worry about.

Anyways, this is just something I've been thinking about. While it does not fit into the ideas of Nietzsche, who is one part writer, one part philosopher and one part charlatan, it does evolve from what he foresaw as the future tragectory of science and philosophy.

I do realize that I haven't writen anything and I apologize. I've been busy looking up grad school and have only found a few that do critical theory in the political science department and so have been consistently disappointed by the quantification of what should be a qualitative discipline. I mean, out of the poli majors at Rice I know 1 or 2 others out of my class who know who John Rawls is, much less Habermas, Heidegger, Adorno, Horkheimer, Arendt, Raz, Sandel, etc. I think that most people have this moronic, and fairly myopic, belief that somehow theoretical modeling and statistics are going to save the day, arching forth in stream of glittering algorithims and effervescing recalibration. I find that dubious for too many reasons to list in this limited space.

Anyways, I know that only 2 or 3 people read this rag, and most probably don't care about political philosophy or critical theory, but I do respect their opinions and so post my current "dream" schools:

UC Berkeley, Harvard (yeah, right), Cornell, Columbia, NYU, Duke, UCLA

Let me know what you think.

Incidentally, there's a great show on KPFT saturdays that starts at 9 or 10 and goes to 11 that features trip hop and trance music. Reminds me of moonscapes shaped by MDMA and disolves on my fingertips lip bubblegum shell that drift and drift and drift, with consciousness like droplets of water shooting up through my skin into a sky that twists and shifts like so many paroxyms on so many people in so many places and all in me at once.

OK. Again, apologies for the dereliction of my duty and perhaps I'll talk about some political nonsense tomorrow...

Just a random a thought: All governments are lying cocksuckers according to Bill Hicks, and while I am loathe to make generalizations, even Sam Huntington notes that they are useful and he's probably more important than I'll ever be, there is a ring of truth to that.

Just take the example of ideology. Talk to me about a Democratic or Republican ideology. There is no such thing as an American party ideology because politics and by association government is the sycophantic pursuit of not just power, but personal moral fulfilment. Bush lied, people died, and why? Either because he believes that this is the best way to stay in office, which is despicable, but I'm not sure the democrats would have done much better (fuck capitalizations, I'll save them for those whom I respect, or he went on moral instinct as he claims he often does. Anyone who has the self-confidence to rest assured that actions that could kill thousands of people and enrage millions of others has either delusional megalomania or some kind of psychopathic, schizoid-type disorder. There is no way to have moral certainty in international affairs because they are the best representation of chaos we in the social sciences have. What is the solution? I could argue for approximation theory (George Sher in the Phil department does) or perhaps large-scale stat analysis focusing on supported, popular trends. I, instead, believe that collective guilt and remembrance are the tools that best serve politicians. Would this make me and all Americans below me guilty of some crime? Have we done this before? History should not be a photographic memory, but a sharply emotional deja-vu. Genocide should not be met solely with factor analyses and cold logic, but with irrational revulsion, fear, anxiety and guilt. We can deny logic quite easily; its limits are charted and are a knowledge as colloquial as anything in pop culture. Emotional response and recollection, however, whether experienced culturally or personally manage to entagle and bemuse us in a manner that cannot be easily doubted or ignored.

Please tell me what grad school you think are good! I really need ideas and I know that they only 2 people who look at this a poli majors who know me and can probably guess more or less well what I like to study! I'll write more tonight.