I couldn't leave this feedback comment alone. Had to make a few more comments regarding the 'false association' or 'over connection' between Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy (particularly DGB Post-Hegelian Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Philosophy)and Niki (the tent lady's) 'illogical Hegelian Synthesis definition' of 'Communitarianism'. Let's see where this takes us. -- dgb, May 8th, 2009.
"Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy Is Not 'Communitarianism' -- Nor Is It 'Anti-Communitarianism' (Take 2)"
2 Comments
the tent lady said...
Hi David,
Communitarianism is the synthesis in the Hegelian dialectic. You want to dispute me properly, then do your readers a favor and dispute my published antithesis to Hegel's perfect synthesis, "The Anti communitarian Manifesto." It's available free online and remains undisputed after six years and thousands of downloads.
It's hilarious that you chose to cite a passage from my blog rather than a passage from our "What is the Hegelian Dialectic?" or "The Historical Evolution of Communitarian Thinking," or "Communitarian Law." Even my article "Elitism is Dialectical Terrorism" would have been a more appropriate source for your complaints against my work.
No matter what you think of me and my "arrogant trash talking language," you haven't made the slightest attempt to show what my argument is, let alone rationally dispute it.
You admit you don't even know what communitarianism is, you claim it's "too abstract" for you to comprehend (yet you claim to get Hegel!) and then (and God only knows how you arrived at this conclusion) you say Etzioni and I are "basically the same people."
Can you legitimately say I am the one who makes no attempt to learn anything meaningful about the world? You spent a lot of time trashing me in this post, maybe you should spend at least as much time studying this topic you admittedly know nothing about.
"In a passage that is notable for its vagueness, Azevedo says that the CEBs should be the basis for a new communitarianism that rejects the two "bankrupt" models and systems "that are now polarizing the world," capitalism and Marxist socialism. This communitarianism is to be "a dialectical synthesis, a new creation, superimposing itself on thesis and antithesis rather than retrieving them." The passage illustrates the controversy in Latin American Catholicism between those who continue to endorse the "third-position-ism" (tercerismo) of Catholic social teaching and those (including all liberation theologians that I know of) who believe that only socialism can be in accord with Christian values." Theology Today-Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil: The Challenge of a New Way of Being Church By Marcello deC. Azevedo, S.J.Washington, D.C., Georgetown University Press, 1987. 304 Pp. "
April 15, 2009 1:46 AM
david gordon bain said...
Niki,
I would love to reach a point where I could/can discuss some of these issues rationally without the 'trash-talk' you but it will probably never happen. We both have our own agendas that have met -- however briefly -- in time and cyberspace...Who knows? Maybe the points I make here will help to clarify both our respective philosophical positions regarding the 'overbloated, overgeneralized connection' between 'Hegelianism' and 'Communitarianism'.
Some of your points I could probably even agree with you. I might even be prone to support your 'Anti-Communitarian' stance -- horror of all horrors, did I say that? --if I came to believe that being a 'Communitarian' meant the 'subtraction, marginalization, and/or elimination...of some of my most important, fundamental individual, human, civil rights'.
If there is any commonalities between our two respective philosophies, it may be on the common ground of 'individual rights'.
But no...here you come again...like a Somalian pirate with your 'rocket grenade launcher' slung over your shoulder. Or like Sarah Palin and/or one of the hunter's that she supports on one of her/his 'aerial wolf hunts'...Shoot for sport...write to annihilate...from the air or from cyberspace...it worked well for The Republicans in the last election...
Ms. Niki, if you weren't so (deleted) arrogant, abrasive, and well -- 'rhetorically dirty' -- I might be able to have an intelligent conversation with you.
But even without my adding more 'gasoline' onto your 'fire', you just hear the name 'Hegel' and you start to go offside-ballistic like a Sunday morning preacher preaching against all sins... Only in your philosophy, Hegel is 'The Devil'. What did he do to deserve that?
I think your real argument is with any Government State that starts subtracting 'individual human rights' for the 'good of the community whole' (or some 'Powerful Elitist Special Interest Group'.
You have no argument on that one. You are preaching to the choir. If you were to take the time to read some of my political essays, you would see that I don't like 'Narcissistic Elitist Politics' any more than you do. But trying to get you to dig any deeper into my philosophical work is like -- well -- you trying to get me to dig any deeper into your philosophical work. Like 'the sound of one hand clappin, it's not going to happen.' (Bob Dylan).
So without any further ado, let me poke a few holes into ('deconstruct' if yo will) your 'Hegelianism equals Communitarianism' argument.
With the slightest mention of the name 'Hegel' you go into your 'attack-paranoia-anti-Hegel-anti-Communitarian' routine which you have down pat like a door-to-door salesman has his sales pitch down pat. Even though there are a hundred thousand Hegelians out there who do not use Hegelian philosophy in exactly or not even closely the same way.
Ms. Niki, you are not the only philosopher-writer to not like Hegel. Schopenhauer didn't like Hegel. Kierkegaard didn't like Hegel. Nietzsche didn't like Hegel. Marx basically only liked the 'alienation' stuff written by Hegel. There is some stuff that I don't like about Hegel including his 'abstractionism' and including his theory of 'The Absolute' -- as in 'The Perfect Synthesis'.
I think we both know Ms. Niki, that every 'synthesis' is simply the new starting point for a new thesis/anti-thesis-synthesis cycle. It is like the 'eating' cycle or the 'sex' cycle. Is there ever going to be 'a synthesis of perfect eating' where we don't want to eat again? Or is there ever going to be a perfect synthesis of 'sex' where we are never going to want to have 'sex' again? Or not going to want to eat something different? Or have sex in a different way leading to a different type of synthesis? No one in the history of man has every been completely happy with the 'status-quo'. The 'Establishment'. 'The State'. 'Communitarianism'. Why would you ever think that it might be different now -- or at any time in the future? Rebellion (anti-thesis) is always the spice of man -- and woman.
Niki, if you were living up in Alaska and not saying a peep, then I might agree with you -- at least partly -- that you are 'living outside of the dialectic'. But even here, I would probably say that you were simply living an 'anti-thesis' to some government mandated thesis that you didn't like. Now, when it becomes evident that you are spending literally 'thousands of hours' rhetorically arguing your philosophical cause on at least several blog or websites, then this is simply that much more dialectic evidence that you, Ms. Niki, are certainly not living outside the dialectic that you are 'rampaging against' or 'championing for'. You are right in the middle of a dialectic at least partly of your own making -- not outside of it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be both exspending energy here back and forth on some type of issue that is definitely important to both of us -- even if you are on 'Pluto' and I am on 'Mars', or visa versa.
New theses and anti-theses will always happen Ms. Niki -- there will never, ever be any 'perfect synthesis'. I, as a post-Hegelian philosopher-writer know that. So should you -- even if you hate Hegelian philosophy. You speak of 'all Hegelians' as if they are 'one and only one entity'. That's called 'stereotyping' and 'pre-judging'. Just as if I were to stereotype 'all Alaskans' on the basis of Sarah Palin. Or you. Or 'tent ladies' or 'Anti-Communitarions' on the basis of you.
I think that is what so infuriated philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche -- and you, Ms. Niki who I am associating with pretty well-respected company here. They/you hate(d) to think that they/you could/can not think outside the Hegelian Dialectic Box.
I am a predominantly 'free-will, exisentialist' thinker -- I do not believe in Historical Determinism or Dialectic Determinism -- and yet I do not believe that I -- nor anyone -- can think or live outside of the Hegelian Dialectic Box. It's as built into our style and process of thinking and living as our definition of 'black' is connected to our definition of 'white'. You cannot consider yourself to believe in 'Anti-Communitarianism' as juxtaposed against 'Communitarianism' and believe that you are not thinking 'dialectically', that you are not using 'Hegelian logic' -- you who hate Hegel, Ms. Niki. That is the epiteme of what Hegelian, dialectic thinking is all about, Ms. Niki. And you, as well as I do, know that.
And do you really think your 'Anti-Communitarian' philosophy is some perfect 'anti-thesis' to all of society's ills? In the same way that your so-called Communitarian antagonists seem to think that Communitarianism will solve all of society's ills?
Anti-CommunitaIt may be good for you, Ms. Niki. But do you profess to think and write for the whole world -- and believe that the whole world should think and feel like you do? You -- Ms. Niki -- the supposed champion of 'individual rights'.
Communitarianism may be a synthesis of 'left' and 'right' thinking. But it will never be the one and only synthesis -- any more than there will ever be only one type of 'synthesis' between a man and a woman, or between man and society (The State, The Law, The Government...).
That is why, Ms. Niki, you may view yourself as 'living outside the dialectic'. And yet you know you are not. You are/were fully dialectically engaged with me -- albeit briefly -- expressing your disapproval of what I wrote about you.
And so you come back to the dialectic again, back to this dialectic, not a 'Communitarian' dialectic, back to your dialectic difference of opinion with me -- and you launch more 'rocket grenades' at me. Ms. Niki, this is hardly 'living outside the dialectic'.
You come back at me with more 'inflammatory language' and 'high-falluting logic' Ms. Niki -- and you think I am going to rhetorically roll over and die. Sorry, Niki, you have the wrong person...There is nothing worse than a 'know it all' who races through their blog column like a horse with blinders on. Unable to see anything from any direction except straight ahead. Worse -- a woman 'biting in all directions' as she writes with blinders on...from the home of 'The Bridge To Nowhere'...
Do you like Sarah Palin, Ms. Niki?
Or is she on your 'elitist' list?
Thesis: Narcissism
Anti-thesis: Altruism
Synthesis: Ethics, morality, fairness, justice.
Therefore by your definition of communitarianism in the first line, Ms. Niki, 'Communitarianism' means ethics, morality, fairness, justice...
And you say you know Hegel and you know what 'Communitarianism' is. You know neither. I didn't say I didn't know what communitarianism is. I said that -- reading you -- I would never know properly what Communitarianism is because I would simply confuse it with Hegelianism. And the two are entirely different.
Thesis: black
Anti-thesis: white
Synthesis: gray
Therefore by your brilliant definition of 'Communitarianism', Ms. Niki, Communitarianism means 'gray'.
Thesis: male
Anti-thesis: female
Synthesis: Hermaphrodite
Therefore, by your definition, Ms. Niki, 'Communitarianism' means 'hermaphrodite'.
I strongly suggest that you find a better definition of 'Communitarianism', Ms. Niki, than the one you gave me in your first line. There are hundreds of millions of potential 'Hegelian syntheses' in the world and in the minds of men and women. I guess, by your definition, that means there are an equally high number of different definitions of 'Communitarianism'. Therefore 'Communitarianism' by your own definition can mean anything.
And you are calling me 'confused', Ms. Niki...
I strongly suggest you should look in the mirror...
And think about the words you are using before you rush to try to embarrass others...
Unless you want your own so-called 'logic' to come back and make you yourself look like the foolish one...
What goes around, comes around.
dave
May 7th-8th, 2009 5:53 PM
