{"id":9878,"date":"2012-11-19T14:02:18","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T19:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9878"},"modified":"2013-04-21T19:30:06","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T00:30:06","slug":"159-kant-undead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/11\/19\/159-kant-undead\/","title":{"rendered":"159 Kant undead madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

The same paradox is at work in the core of the \u201cdialectic of Enlightenment\u201d: although Adorno (and Horkheimer) conceive the catastrophes and barbarisms of the twentieth century as inherent to the project of enlightenment<\/strong>, not as a result of some remainder of preceding barbarism to be abolished by way of bringing \u201cenlightenment as an unfinished project\u201d to its completion, they insist on fighting this excess-consequence of enlightenment by the means of enlightenment itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, again, if enlightenment brought to the end equals regression into barbarism, does this mean that the only concept of enlightenment that we possess is the one which should be constrained, rendered aware of its limitation, or is there another positive notion of enlightenment which already includes this limitation?<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two basic answers to this inconsistency of Adorno\u2019s critical project: J\u00fcrgen Habermas or Lacan.\u00a0 <\/strong>With Habermas, one breaks the deadlock by formulating a positive normative frame of reference.<\/p>\n

Through Lacan<\/strong>, one reconceptualizes the \u201chumanity\u201d of the deadlock\/limitation as such; in other words, one provides a definition of the \u201chuman\u201d which, beyond and above (or, rather, beneath) the previous infinite universal, accentuates the limitation as such: being-human is a specific attitude of finitude, of passivity, of vulnerable exposure<\/span>.\u00a0 159<\/p>\n

Therein resides, for Butler, the basic paradox:<\/span> while we should, of course, condemn as \u201cinhuman\u201d all those situations in which our will is violated, thwarted, or under the pressure of an external violence, we should not simply conclude that a positive definition of humanity is the autonomy of will, because there is a kind of passive exposure to an overwhelming Otherness which is the very basis of being-human.<\/span><\/p>\n

How, then, are we to distinguish the \u201cbad\u201d inhumanity, the violence which crushes our will, from the passivity constitutive of humanity?<\/p>\n

At this point, Butler compromises her position, introducing a naive distinction which recalls Herbert Marcuse\u2019s old distinction between \u201cnecessary\u201d repression and \u201csurplus\u201d repression:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cof course we can and must invent norms which decide between different forms of being-overwhelmed, by way of drawing a line of distinction between the unavoidable and unsurpassable aspect here and the changeable conditions there\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Butler (as well as Adorno) fails to render thematic is the changed status of the \u201cinhuman\u201d in Kant\u2019s transcendental turn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kant introduced a key distinction between negative and indefinite judgment: the positive judgment \u201cthe soul is mortal\u201d can be negated in two ways, when a predicate is denied to the subject (\u201cthe soul is not mortal\u201d) and when a nonpredicate is affirmed<\/strong> (\u201cthe soul is nonmortal\u201d).\u00a0 The difference is exactly the same as the one, known to every reader of Stephen King, between \u201che is not dead\u201d and \u201che is<\/strong> undead<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The indefinite judgment opens up a third domain which undermines the underlying distinction: the \u201cundead\u201d are neither alive nor dead; they are the mon-strous \u201cliving dead.\u201d [For a closer elaboration of this distinction, see chapter 3 Tarrying with the Negative<\/em> 1993.\u00a0 The Lacanian objet petit a also follows the logic of indefinite judgment: one should not say that it isn\u2019t an object, but rather that it is a nonobject, an object that from within undermines\/negates objectivity.<\/strong>]<\/p>\n

The same goes for inhuman.\u201cHe is not human\u201d is not the same as \u201che is inhuman<\/em>.\u201d \u201cHe is not human\u201d means simply that he is external to humanity, animal or divine, while \u201che is inhuman\u201d means something thoroughly different, namely, that he is neither simply human nor simply inhuman, but marked by a terrifying excess <\/strong>which, although it negates what we understand as \u201chumanity,\u201d is inher-ent to being-human.<\/p>\n

And perhaps I should risk the hypothesis that this is what changes with the Kantian revolution: in the pre-Kantian universe, humans were simply humans, beings of reason, fighting the excesses of animal lusts and divine madness, but since Kant and German Idealism, the excess to be fought is absolutely immanent, the very core of subjectivity itself<\/span> (which is why, with German Idealism, the metaphor for the core of subjectivity is Night, \u201cNight of the World,\u201d in contrast to the Enlightenment notion of the Light of Reason fighting the surrounding darkness).<\/p>\n

So when, in the pre-Kantian universe, a hero goes mad,<\/strong> it means he is deprived of his humanity, in other words, the animal passions or divine madness took over, while with Kant, madness signals the unconstrained explosion of the very core of a human being<\/span>. 159-160<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The same paradox is at work in the core of the \u201cdialectic of Enlightenment\u201d: although Adorno (and Horkheimer) conceive the catastrophes and barbarisms of the twentieth century as inherent to the project of enlightenment, not as a result of some remainder of preceding barbarism to be abolished by way of bringing \u201cenlightenment as an unfinished … Continue reading “159 Kant undead madness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,138,38,76,20],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-9878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-butlerethics","category-ethics","category-sub-destitute","category-zizek","tag-thedebate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9878"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9880,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9878\/revisions\/9880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}