On the Practical Necessity of Having Demons (Session 2)

okay hello and welcome to the second session of the seminar on the practical necessity of demon of having demons by Reza Nicaristani I'm going to pass the mic Reza please take it away thank you very much everyone hello I hope you are surviving well So today we are going to have presentation, we are going to delve into the text that I recommended, but also laying out the foundations of the conceptual foundations of the entire

course moving forward namely the difference between evil as understood under the ages of defilement sin and guilt So with that said, does anyone have any questions, any remarks from the previous sessions? Anything? Doesn't need to be, you know, just like can be a question about, you know, something

extremely, you know, trivial confusion or something. I'm sorry Rez, I just got here. Are we talking about the the piece? The reading? Yes. It was beautiful, it was magnificent. Richard, hear me. It is very good. Actually this is the reason that I chose this, not because it was on Paul Ricoeur, but I think it captured quite a wide range of topics that ought to be discussed. I also have a remark, Reza, about the text we read. It was confusing for me in so far that it was trying to lay out

a moral plan instead of an ethical plan. And so far, that's... I think that's... You know what that means? Yes, yes, that is absolutely true. I think this is precisely because it was written as a response to Ricker's work. It was essentially focused on Paul Ricker's work. And Paul Ricker, even though he doesn't get too Christian, in symbolism of evil, his book on evil. Nevertheless, with these authors there is a fundamental Christian core at work, which does not allow them to ever cross the line from morality

to ethics understood cosmologically. Does this differentiation come like face to face in the opposition of amnesia and amnesty? Because I cannot buy it that you can ever forgive anyone. I can't be convinced of that. I think in ethics, you can also forgive. For example, in a Stoic ethics, you can forgive. But forgiveness is not something that is basically the problem of morality.

is the problem of developing yourself self-care forgiveness is self-care if you manage to forgive a person then you have exercised stoic ethics such that you now have more tolerance to the obscenity of the world without agreeing to it without agreeing to it forgiveness is not something like this kind of passive Christian or Catholic forgiveness forgiveness is something that you just

do it in order to understand the new threshold of your enemy and your own self well damon i i mean he says as much you know there's three parts to essentially record slash kereni's a functional approach and the last part which is the one you're talking about pardon and slash forgiveness he says as much that it's a marvel of what is impossible the possibility of forgiveness is a marvel because it surpasses limits of rational calculation and explanation. On 2.14, towards the end, he says, pardon makes little sense before we give it, but much sense once we do. And there's a certain gratuitousness about pardon due to the very fact

that the evil it addresses is not some part of dialectical necessity. Pardon, in Pascal's terms, that recalls Pascal, pardon has its reasons that reason cannot comprehend. So this excess that you're associating with it is part of this hermeneutic response, and it succumbs to the limits of rational coordination. So it's not that I would say that forgiveness is essentially understood as an ethical term rather than a moralistic term is fundamentally within the bounds of reason and rational calculation. Forgiveness is always a rational calculation once it's done correctly. May I add something to my remark, Reza?

I meant in the constellation as opposition to forgetting because to practice forgiveness, you need in my point of view to practice as well some sort of amnesia, oblivion and forgetting as well. Well, this is, for example, when you read Cynic Ethics or Stoic Ethics or Epicurean Ethics, in fact, even though Epicureans are post-Christianity, you get this idea that the problem of amnesia or oblivion is not total when it comes to

forgiveness. Essentially what they mean by that is putting it on the back burner of memory, collective memory. As I mentioned, forgiveness is not total. It's not a one-time thing. And forgiveness comes in its stages. Once you forgive, for example, someone who has done wrong to you, you shouldn't actually forget the wrongdoing and that's why forgiveness is a rational calculation. You just do it for the sake of turning your enemy, turning the wrongdoer into someone

better so as yourself. Because if you put complete and absolute amnesia or forgetfulness of the wrongdoing, the act of wrongdoing on the table, then it can happen again in history. So Stoics actually do suggest, for example, Seneca, some of the Escaitian cynic philosophers like Anarchiasis, they they do suggest that you ought to forgive as much as you can without ever forgetting.

Because forgetting the act of wrongdoing not only make you prone to repeat that act of wrongdoing, but also so as the person who has done you wrong. So that is more of a kind of a historical consciousness that you need to have it. Not forgetting in the sense of really, not in the colloquial sense, yes, you have to forget about it, but forgetting in the sense that it should no longer be part of your personal memory or your trauma.

You should actually put it on the table for the public, for the collective memory. Yes, exactly. By forgetting, I actually meant forgetting the self, the victim. I mean, at the end of the day, it's not practical. okay, my father abused me as a child, and now I just, out of blue, decide to forget about it. That kind of Catholic bullshit, yes. Exactly, that's COVID Christianity. That's not what he's talking about. There's a very specific reason he wrote this, and he's talking about Auschwitz, he's talking about collective dramas,

not personal, what my father did to me. We have to look at this text very specifically because there's a very specific rational agenda of Kantian evil that he's engaging with. I mean, there is a very thorough detailing of Kant's system. And forgetting slash forgiving is the very conclusion. I think we should, first of all, look at the system he creates before we get all the way to the very last page, which is where we've jumped to. I think maybe we should stop at this point and let other people talk and do their presentations. But for one thing, I would say that the kind of forgiving that he's actually talking about

with regards to the Holocaust is actually the problem of morality and not ethics. Sure. I mean, he's using ethics. He even says he's like instrumentalizing ethics for the purposes of morality. Yes. And ethics is something that is not instrumentalizable, precisely because it is the very ideal practical reason. Par excellence. Can I ask a question? Absolutely. Absolutely. This is more regarding in general the idea of, or the ethical responsibility of historical narrative.

I'm thinking it's not something that he specifically touches upon, but the case where historical evil kind of becomes a threshold of what has to be reached before taking action against a current evil. Yes. Can you elaborate a little bit on this? Yes, yes. I mean, for example, if you say, if you compare the state of how refugees are treated in deportation or asylum camps, in the if you compare that to the specific case was a Auschwitz then of course it it looks like a

lesser evil and then that that makes people not want to take action towards the current it's more acceptable yes it's a it's a less rotten tomato so you should choose that yes of course yes But I think that is related to like in Christian morality, you can forgive because everything will be judged in the end. Like you have like the final judgment where like injustice will be repaired. So you can't manage this reserve of resentment and rage because in the end everything will be fixed magically by the final judgment by the apocalypse so there's this like uh guaranteed

this this contract you do where you can forgive because um the injustices will not be because the arbiter is already fixed the arbiter yeah but that's not what he's saying here he's that's a pre-enlightenment model. What he's engaging with here is already a model where the arbiter of God and the subject are untethered from one another, a la Kant and the Enlightenment. So you're doing this for forgiveness, and this whole model is for a political purpose. It's part of a political project. This is why he mentions Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Kashmir. It's not about God. Yes, but you see, Akin, this is something that we will unfold.

I think Kant is a prime example of Christian morality in the dress of enlightenment. I think it's more universal. I think that that's a lens that he himself obviously was working and a sort of attention that he struggled with his whole life. But I think we can resolve it by just positing the tension between the I as the self and the universal and those two being naturally bound up with each other a la perception and moral obligation qua reason. Yes, but you see, the last one that you mentioned is a tricky one.

all the other ones, basically the link between I and the universal self and the collective is already there. But that moral obligation, what is it really? You see, Kant never answered this, Kant simply posited categorical imperatives without fleshing out what they do entail. where do they come from? What is actually the historical reason that you posit in fact such a thing? Well, he says, I posit something that I can will would become universal, but not in the sense that everyone can do, will do this, but everyone can do this, such that I believe

Well, this is where this kind of what you might call to be Kantian soap opera of categorical imperative, which I am actually really quite pro-categorical imperatives. There's only one imperative amongst many. It's not the only imperative. There's all kinds of imperatives. I ought to do my homework. I ought to take care of my parents. Yes, yes, yes. But these odds are coming from the will. You should understand that the problem of the will is where evil in a religious context begins. This is where actually religion parasitizes

on philosophy of enlightenment. And Kant, unbeknownst to Kant, he was just doing the handiwork for the religious people of his time. Yes, with a good amount of enlightenment philosophy thrown in, but that's why Kantian philosophy never managed. to become a political philosophy of any sort, political, ethical philosophy of any sort. So there is a, there are historical reasons for Kant's failure in the arena of practical reasoning

and politics and these need to be answered. So any person, who might have any comments, remarks, I have a question about, I think something that he says in the text and also something that Akin was telling earlier. My apologies, who's talking? I can't see. It's Martina. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Can you see me now? Still struggling with these so many people here. worry don't worry you you you go on be be guided by my voice you'll find me eventually um so i was

wondering why we referring to forgiveness in terms of gratuity is something that i don't really understand because the way i see it forgiveness is like the ultimate self-profiting endeavor So it can only appear as like retreaters on an emotional plane, but yeah, rationally, it's not. So that's something that... Well, this is what I was saying that, you see, the problem of evil wasn't always a religious problem. It was actually an anthropological and a philosophical problem at the dawn of time.

But it then became a religious problem, a religious moral problem, so to speak. And that's when forgiveness became of the same category that you're speaking of. forgiveness has, when you look for example in the ancient texts, like I don't know, in the old Avis, in Hindu texts, in Chinese texts, in Greek texts, like for example the early Cynics, but also

you know, Hellionistic philosophy of the Stoics, you see that forgiveness is in fact a rational problem. And that's the whole point that the reason that Darwin was talking about the relation between forgetfulness, either of the self or the wrongdoer or the wrong action, linked with the act of forgiveness that makes it a rationalist action. In the sense that you forgive someone because not only it can give you more opportunity to self

cultivate to self-determine concretely but also your opponent the one who has done something wrong but yes at the in the moment that the problem of evil becomes religious seeing shifts from the problem of the self to the problem of impinging upon the law that's when things change forgiveness is no longer rational yeah it is just basically what you might call to be whimsical self-profiteering.

Yeah. But so if we understand that forgiveness is something that is rational, then the question isn't how can one forgive? Because the answer is with practical reason. But it's how can someone do something that is self-damaging, I guess. May I add something to that, Reza, before you answer because uh maybe maybe your idea of forgetfulness of the self systematic forgetfulness of the self is uh yes please go on that's exactly what i was going to hit on because i understood the the problematic of self is its construction right and that's all ethic

talks about right how to construct ourselves and in order to do so we should first neglect or forget the the given notion of self right that there we are all given a self in some level yes i mean that's what the whole idea help me out i'm trying to form no absolutely no no no my apologies to interfering. That is absolutely the core problem of ethics, that ethics begins with systematically forgetting the self. You see, so forgetting the self, so many people say that,

well, you know, we don't have selves. I remember, I'm not going to name that person, a philosopher most probably many of you know, I had this discussion that I said that, you know, self is something that is an object of manipulation for ethics. And he told me that, you know, well, you know, I don't have a self. I don't believe in a self because I'm a Buddhist. well how can you say something like that you know majority of people who actually say such a thing are in fact the most selfish in the canonical ethical sense you might ever imagine

self is something that ought to be forgotten but forgetfulness is not something that you can just forget in a colloquial sense. It is an act of systematicity and collective endeavor. It's a historical task rather than merely a personal task. And that's bringing the idea that Ekin was talking about that I and the collective are bound together so for I to forget it should re-assimilate itself ever again into the collective and the collective ought to

embark on the act of forgetfulness. You can see this in that the failure of such a kind of dialectic of self and the collective in acts of trauma. Armenian genocide is a good example of that actually. I have a question. How do you think philosophy distinguishes itself from religion, not just in terms of the function of forgiveness, but the very definition of evil?

I would say that, okay, there are obviously, you are asking this from a very, very wrong person. Someone who believes that religion is nothing but a piggyback upon the edifice of philosophy. But that aside, I would say precisely because for philosophy evil is not something evil par excellence. It's not evil in the religious sense of it. Evil is simply the problem of the self. It can be actually positive. Evil can be positive for philosophy.

Once understood, within the limitation, and these limitations are always contextual, the contextual limitations of the self and its linkage with the collective. This is what evil is for philosophy. And it is also is the same thing obviously for ancient civilizations which did not have monotheism or organized religion on their hand. This is why demons in ancient civilizations are not evil in the religious exorcist sense

they simply show you positive and negative constraints of who you are and how you should navigate them so how is evil confronted with good then is it the opposite of good I mean like how is it I think that this is essentially a post-religious dichotomy No, evil was never confronted with good. Good is a different category, standing by itself. You can see this even in Plato. Good is simply the idea of self-determination according to timeless forms.

but Kant makes good practical now shut up after this page 204 I quote if Kant freed us from the excess of rational speculation on evil he also warned against the opposite extreme of drunken irrationalism what he called shvarmarai the sort of mystical madness which submits to and to evil as an alien power that invades and overwhelms us at a whim. This latter view typifies not only belief in demonic possession, but also the mystical profession of the dark side of God, running from the Gnostics and Bruno to Bohm, Schelling and Jung. By taking the mystique

out of evil, Kant removed some of its captivating power. He enabled us to see that evil is not a property of some external demon or deity, but a phenomenon deeply bound up with the anthropological condition. Well, this is, I think, this is where unfortunately I show a little bit of my libidinal materialist face to the public against the vulgar rationalism that tries to disenchanted in a wrong-headed way things that do exist philosophically but are being interpreted

as mystical. The very idea of fanaticism of Kant, for example, what you call, is called actually, is being also translated as a speculative enthusiasm. This very idea, which is also Alberto Toscono has translated to fanaticism, the idea of fanaticism is quite a very slippery idea, in fact. This is why Hegel brings the idea of other into the fold, within, in fact, the anthropological sense. So you can still have that kind of aura of the other, of the outsideness, of the outsider, there, but without being too mystical.

But I would even go further. I would say that bring it on. But I was actually was right. If there is a certain kind of seduction by unknown forces, we should incorporate them to the problem of ethics rather than purging them, rather than expelling them. Who is with me on this? Bataille, Hegel and Kant. Finally the circle is being closed.

the system of german idealism is complete now now go to bed this is an interesting project i really don't think it's been done you know like the three you should you should put this out into the world formally yes i think this is one of one of the reasons that i think uh there are so much unnecessary blood being shed in the philosophical arenas is precisely because people don't see the continuities. Continuities that are being put in place, not out of whimsical philosophical decisions by some goddamn philosopher,

but by actual philosophical constraints of each system. So maybe we should start our presentation, first presentation, the first victim. Oh, oh, oh. Hi. The first victim is me. Can you hear me well? Absolutely. Thank you so much. So yeah, I must say I really enjoyed reading the text. I did this time.

And I think there was just one little moment at the end that disappointed me was when in conclusion he kind of quotes Tolstoy saying, Tolstoy's famous question, what is to be done? Which is in fact not Tolstoy's question, is a very famous question by Cherny Shevsky. Russian nerds here. That was the only moment. Also, I must say that I kind of expected this question, whether this is more of a moral standpoint rather than the one of ethics. But then I thought, or the way I answered this question to myself was that since Rico wants to find

a very practical application to his thoughts and maybe this is where some sort of moral is needed, especially since he's talking about this very particular events. So yeah. So, on the hermeneutics of evil, Richard Kearney examines the question of evil in the philosophy of Paul Rico, and he attempts to comprehend the way in which Rico accounts for the phenomenon of evil in analyzing three major ways of approach to it, by practical understanding, working through, and a pardon.

He divides his study in three parts to address these approaches. The first and the second parts elaborate on practical understanding of evil by studying the problem of evil in early hermeneutic work of Ricoeur, as well as in his 1985 essay was the same subject. So Kearney follows Ricker's transition from phenomenology to hermeneutics of symbol. Ricker argues that philosophy presupposes language. And when he studies evil, so he kind of arrives to understanding that to struggle against evil, one need to be able to critically discriminate between good and evil. And this is where hermeneutic discernment comes to play

in his philosophy. So, Riker speaks of limited capacity of a human to think the enigma of evil, and he proceeds to hermeneutic conviction that meaning is never simply the intuitive possession of a subject, but is always mediated through signs and symbols. And since evil defies consciousness and contravenes will, it is mediated through signs and symbols that can stand for the experience that cannot be said directly. And because they exceed limits of rational cogitation.

So, Bricker suggests that interpretation of myths and symbols of culture, which mediate the experiences of evil or boundary experiences that cannot be immediately grasped by the rational faculties of mind, provide us with instruments to grasp the complexity of this phenomenon. And he also addresses this paradox of evil that is being kind of something that exists within us, but also something that is, that happens upon us. And in this first part, He, Kearney, addresses the kind of emerging understanding of human responsibility for,

or the responsibility of human action, human agency in kind of responsibility for evil. evil. So basically how moral consciousness emerges as one that internalizes punishment for the misuse of freedom. And in the second part, from myth to responsibility Kearney addresses Ricker's attempt to further demystify evil by the possibility of its practical understanding. So he analyzes the discursive responses to evil, namely myths, lament, blame, wisdom, theodicy, and he points at aporias and enigmas that expression of evil expose, such as again the paradox of being responsible to evil but not entirely.

So he draws from various models from biblical wisdom to Kant's practical wisdom to his own more, his own notion of narrative understanding to move from theoretical or metaphysical understanding of evil to more practical one. So again, opposed to what can be grasped by exact knowledge criteria of logic and science, Rico proposes hermeneutic comprehension of indeterminate, contingent, and singular character of evil while still claiming its quasi-universal criteria. So he also borrows from practical understanding. His practical understanding borrows

from action that evil is something that ought not to be and must be struggle against, and this is also something that he kind of borrows from Kant's practical explanation of evil. So what he takes from Kant is this recognition that it is possible to move from speculative explanation to more moral political action, which liberates the insight that evil is something that ought not to be and needs to be struggled against. And this makes possible de-alienation of evil, as opposed to, so then it's something that is a matter of contingency, as opposed to necessity,

as we can see in cosmological or cosmogonical or theological accounts of evil. Yeah, and I think it's what is important in this section that he again addresses this challenge of evil as something that is both kind of has certain alterity in it, but also humanity. And the third part, so the first two were focusing more on the kind of action response. And then in the third part, he proceeds to hermeneutic of understanding. So then not only action response possible, but also suffering response to evil is possible.

And he, of recur, suggests hermeneutic of narrative as a way to confront the problem of evil in history and memory and then to work through the evil. And it is important because working through evil allows various forms of resistance to evil by transforming alienation and victimization into certain moral response and just struggle. In this final section, he or Kenny underlines Ricker's idea of narrative as being capable of providing a figure of what is absent and a figure that is necessary when certain events are suppressed from memory.

and also this figure bears the emancipatory potential because it allows for the active struggle against evil in the future and he also underlines two modes of narrative fiction and history and draws parallel between fiction and history because both deploy literary practices Riker argues that there is a certain balance needed between empathy and distance to avoid fundamentalism. And then he also says, or he prioritizes fiction or he prioritizes narrative

over or like poetic practices over history and addresses testimonication and he argues that simply testimonial vocations are not appropriate because they might end up as just repository of that facts or or be completely neutralized. And then that there is an individual as well as collective responsibility for the narrative, because we owe to those who suffered in the past.

And he points at a number of ethical responsibilities narrative, namely freedom from illusion and also responsibility to refigure certain events to avoid the historical naturalization of justice. Asya, sorry, I have to interrupt you because there's been 10 minutes and we have very limited timeframes for presentations. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Asya. And before we go to the response, Two questions that came to my mind. One was a question of contingency. So there is this

trend running actually through theology and post-Hellionistic philosophy, equating evil with contingency. Isn't it also the very irrationalist stance? Because, you see, to equate evil with contingency, you must inflate the concept of contingency to the absolute. So you get something like Measun's absolute contingency, hyper chaos, you know, these kinds of stuff, right?

And that's when it becomes evil. But that's precisely because you have not rationally worked out the concept of contingency. Hence, the concept of contingency in the sense that it's being equated with evil becomes once again pure product of negative theology. Nothing more, nothing else. Any person who can say something about this, you know, would be great.

People who haven't, we haven't heard from. Jonathan, Richard, Cepide, Matteo, Nikita, of course, Asia, Carl. I mean, I don't need to name all of you. Jasper was just like there with a fantastic background, dark background. Could I ask you to elaborate a small bit more on what you mean by like conceptualizing that contingency yes you see contingency uh when it comes okay if contingency is in the purview of epistemology right of the epistome then cannot be

be something of pure outside that can impose its whims upon agents. So that if it's the case, then to equate contingency with sin, with evil, requires presupposition that you have already inflated contingency such that it is outside of the preview of a practical agent, which then turns contingency into a theological notion rather

than a philosophical one. Essentially, it's like a cheat in the game. You know, you basically started with saying that, you know, well, evil is this kind of contingency. And anything that is not basically not doing evil is a kind of a rational agent. So the rational agents are essentially the ones who are not impinged upon by this sort of contingency. But that means that you have already manipulated the concept of contingency, to that extent inflated it,

to that extent that is now outside of the purview of epistemic. it. Hence, this very equation of evil as contingency is no longer rational, in fact. For it to decide what is irrational and a rational practical agent, it is already pure negative theology to begin with. Is there some sort of commonality between this idea of contaminants and contingency in the sense that, like, if we're, like, sort of linking to our discussion a minute

ago about, like, the self and affirmation of the self, like, if we, if there's contingency that allows for this contaminant, exogenous evil to enter into the self. And so this system of morality is therefore more distributed, whereas if the self is reaffirmed as a non-porous entity, then evil is something more. So in the more Christian theological sense, evil is more an intrinsic, non-contingent corollary of someone's moral character. So maybe there's something where like contaminants and contingents are bound up. I think they are, but they are bound up within the purview of rational will.

Not free choice, rational will are two different things. Yes, I do think that they are bound up. But you see, that's not what, for example, Ricker wants you to agree on, or even, you know, kind of canonical organized religion. Evil always becomes a pure outside. But what is a pure outside? You see, the pure outside is essentially an epistemic problem before it being a practical one. The unknown unknown doesn't have a case. So how can you actually make a practical wager on such a thing?

Isn't this the very definition of Pascal's wager? Just imagine God existed and it could burn you in the pits of hell. Then maybe you should actually do some religion in your own time. Well, that begs the question that how practical reason can be commensurated with something that is purely outside and purely unknown that which does not have a case also here the problem of absolute contingency which you can see it in maya sue in uh elia in sohail malek's work so on so forth

Now, but the kind of evil that we're concerned with in this text is particularly what Paul Ricoeur and Kearney call symbolic expressions, mythical symbolic expressions of evil. Symbols of evil on page 199, he says, symbols of evil, like all symbols, have a literal meaning and a secondary analogical meaning. And then he goes on to argue that symbolic expressions are donated, in that a primary meaning gives rise to a secondary one, which surpasses the first in its semantic range and reference. And his real point is not that organized religion serves any account

of overcoming evil, but that myths and stories and these that are passed down that deal with history and wars and past traumas are actually a way to make moral sense of the monstrous. But then how can you see there is a kind of a slippage here in the work of Recur in the sense that his idea of language is not exactly the kind of language that we know, particularly if you are coming from analytic upbringing. So if that is really the case, then how can evil be equated

with contingency? Well, this is because symbol in Ricker's linguistic philosophy is equated with literally being a promiscuous entity that can hang up, parasitize any other source of entity, symbolic entity. So it's more like a pure unconscious philosophy of language to begin with, where symbol is purely contingent. yeah i mean this is you know this is the hardest thing for me to grapple with in continental

philosophy writ large i actually really liked what required to say and admittedly i'm not that familiar with record but i was impressed but the only thing is always with continental philosophies of language i find it lacking in any type of systematic meta language and a theory of reference what do we mean when we're talking about symbols of intersubjective existence i think you put it nicely here when you said when you used the word unconscious i know federico has read i think you've read federico the symbolism of evil which richard kirney references a lot so maybe you have more to say about what the hermeneutics no no i haven't i haven't but i think federico i know that his program i don't know federico if you're here and if you've read the book and if you have anything

to say on it i'd be interested if you know more about what exactly records you know philosophy of language and intersubjective hermeneutics really means, but the unconscious that you just gave, I think works Reza. You see, I mean in symbolism of evil rigor in the introduction is quite specific. The problem of evil, the problem of sin, doesn't arise until the problem of the emergence of the symbolic medium. So that actually is quite a very radical claim, right? But then what is actually the symbolic medium?

Like written language, I guess, is what he's talking about. Yes, but what does, historically speaking, within with regard to the evolution of human civilizations. Does really the evolution of language, so to speak, coincide with the evolution of something like sin in the way that Rickard talks about? No, it doesn't. It absolutely doesn't. In fact, Scott Otron has written something really great about this. how do you add scott atran it's got art run uh a-t-r-a-n is it talking to the enemy i'm looking

at the works that he's written i think so yes yes all of all of scott atran's books are great he's one of the greatest anthropologists of all time Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan Jonathan from Jung and from comparative religion, like Mircea Eliade and Guida Duran. I don't think that Ricord actually is a Jungian person.

He does, you see, the thing with Ricord, particularly when you read his works on psychoanalysis, right hermeneutics of psychoanalysis he's not really Jungian when he talks about the symbolic he doesn't mean symbolic meaning in a Jungian sense he actually means something I would say that the closest equivalent of his idea of the symbolic is Ernest Cazirer, Ernest Cazirer, language and myth.

Yeah. Which I highly recommend. Particularly, I should have actually listed this for this class. It's a really, really tiny book. You can really finish it in like two hours. It's actually one of the greatest works of philosophy. What was the name again? Language and Myth by Ernst Kazeera. He's a good philosopher. I know of him just a little bit, but I'd like to... He's one of the greatest of all time, yes. I think you also had a philosophical battle with your nemesis Heidegger.

Am I right? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I don't have, you know, certain kinds of enemies you should never encounter. Because those enemies might be so strong that either corrupt you or make you overreact in your stances. That's a very good ethical advice. Yes, I think that with Heidegger, the reason that I have never written anything about him is precisely because if I write something about him, I do overreact on my own position. Like I simply try to overinflate my own position

to conquer his, which is not a good philosophical strategy, is it? No. Philosophy should always be a neutral game. In a demonic sense, right? Yes. Impersonal. Impersonal, yes, absolutely. Philosophy, if philosophy is not impersonal, then it's not philosophy. Heidegger is a monster, to be honest with you, both as a human and as a philosopher. I have nothing to do with him. I don't want to, like, if he was alive, sorry, Marty, we cannot be friends on Twitter.

Reza, have you read Jason Mather's book? Yes. The four masks of an Eastern post-modernism. Yes. He acutely analyzes Heidegger's stances and he wipes the floor with him some sort. Yes, yes. I know Jason quite well. But to be honest with you, Heidegger is in fact one of the most main contributors to this kind of pseudo moralistic ethics that is being, you know, peddled around in continental

philosophy. Sorry, we don't want to deal with Nazis, even though we are called Aryans. That's a birthmark of shame. Reza, do you know Liam Bright? He's last positive. Of course, yes. He had this post yesterday. It was like, Hitler, sorry, I don't read the lesser known Heideggerians. Shall we go to response now? Yeah, I was doing the response.

Shall I begin? Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Richard Kearney states in reference to Paul Ricoeur that evil is beyond consciousness. It resides at a radical distance that phenomenological analysis cannot reach. It provides the limit experience questioning the powers of the subject and its intentionality that has been the primary concern of phenomenological investigation. The immediate consequence of this argument is that the problem of evil pertains not only to morality, but also to the very phenomena of experience and meaning, more than even phenomenology itself.

So the mystery of evil does not lie merely in a wrong or horrible action or will, but in the idea that this action or will is beyond comprehension. and from this very moment on it draws the horizon of human experience. The prioritization of evil over consciousness comes along with the prioritization of hermeneutics over phenomenology so that subject is conceived from the point of view of symbols. From a phenomenological point of view, for instance, symbols would be expected to be bracketed by a phenomenological reduction. This is pretty striking to say because we are accustomed to consider symbols as instruments of thinking and representations of external objects.

Symbols now become the principal objects of hermeneutical research by communicating with a more fundamental level than that of the phenomenological analysis of consciousness. consciousness. Thanks to the symbols, what cannot be said directly is expressed indirectly. However, it is crucial to understand that symbols are not mere cultural products or fictions of human imagination. Symbols are prior to reflection and even to intuition. They are not false explanations by means of fables, but have a genuinely exploratory We might perhaps say that symbols have a certain mode of objectivity, which surely does not refer to scientific or empirical knowledge, but to a reality at a deeper

ontological level. Precisely because of this, symbols are elevated to the status of that which gives rise to thought. This seems to be one of the hardest aspects of the essay. how can a theme be both prior to intuition and a cultural object? I should say this is probably the most obscure part of the article for me. And in this precise context, I have two questions which might sound a little bit simple, but perhaps they might help us clarify the fundamental concepts used here and to challenge some of the premises of this essay. So my first question is, what precisely makes Ricker and Kearney believe that the experience of the evil has a privileged existential status?

Why wouldn't this thing be something else? What I understand is that evil is postulated as the ultimate horizon, mainly because it is traumatic and destructive for consciousness. But is prevailing over consciousness enough for something to have ontological priority? And even if this is true, why not, for example, artistic experiences or sexuality or the experience of infinity or immortality and so on, be the candidate for challenging consciousness and therefore phenomenology as its rigorous science? My second question is similar to the first one, and maybe the answers would even be the same.

Why would symbols and their production by way of myths, narratives, and religions throughout history represents the privileged cultural phenomenon? A symbol is both a cultural product and also that which can relate with the limited experiences that escape the faculties of mind. This seems to be the main ambiguity of the symbol. It is simultaneously an empirical object and that which resists to be grasped by the transcendental structures that condition what we know as human. But why wouldn't, for instance, the work of art be more powerful in giving rise to fault? Or any other cultural product that doesn't deal with the evil or that is not necessarily symbolic?

It is true that Kearney mentions the importance of the political as a means to communicate with the evil, but only if it is reduced to narratives and symbolism again. And I have never read Recur before or Kearney's work, so maybe there are already well-known answers somewhere else, or maybe it's even hidden in the paper and I can't see it, but at least I need some more explanation in the context of this paper. Yeah, that's all, thank you. Sorry Reza, you're muted, just a second. Oh, yes, okay.

Every magnificent questions at the end. I would like you first let me answer your first question and also ask other people to contribute and then I will ask you to a little bit unpack or compress the gist of your second question. So with regard to the question the first question that you brought up. Yes, so this is actually the main problem, evil being given

ontological priority or ontological privilege, precisely because evil, after the rise of monotheism, organized monotheism is being equated with the blights of the self or more accurately the blights of self-preservation. So it seems, and that actually quite tells us a lot of things, it seems that for religion,

at the onset of the rise of religion, self-preservation, comprehensively understood, and by that I don't mean just individual self-preservation, self-preservation as such. It seems to be the main point of how to create ethics and moral laws for religion, precisely because this is the whole point. I remember I was talking to Carl with regard to climate change and I told him that you know so

climate change has a little bit of that of that kind of religious ethics which should be expelled really. I told him that so isn't it the whole point that current majority of current climate change rhetorics are about human survival and not about other species. You see? And then Carl said that, well, if you say this on public, you get cancelled. I remember that.

He said that it might be controversial, actually. This is the same thing. So this prioritization or ontological privilege of evil comes from different directions. One, the misunderstanding of self, what it is and what it ought to do, number one. Number two, what does it entail to preserve a self with regard to number one, already having, you know, laid out the problems of the self?

So what does it mean to preserve self, self-preservation, self-care? Is it merely a survivalist kick or is it something better? Is it the problem of concrete self-determination of the self? in the sense the self can change over time in a historical context concretely. Number three, the problem of will. When I say will, when philosophers talk about will, they are extremely, extremely, and you should really pay attention to this,

any sort of, when you see the word will, When they talk about will, they often confuse free will, what you might call to be entitlement to free choice, with rational will, namely entitlement to make a choice. These are two fundamentally different forms of will. Free choice might not actually be a property of animals, such as ours, right?

But definitely sapiens have rational will. So the idea that if we have figured out the problems of the self, so the self might have a will. Now the thing is that religion panics and recoils at the prospect of free choice. namely free will, being failed. Philosophy cherished the fact, sometimes, sometimes, not all the times,

that the free choice is being failed, but we do yet have the capacity to choose. Namely, practical reasoning. So with these three main ideas, I would say that the privileging, the ontological privileging of evil originates from three main failures to understand the fundaments of ethics in

their pure form the problem of self the problem of will and most importantly the problem of what does it mean to be an agent. And in this case we see that this kind of ontological privileging of evil always

comes hand in hand like weird sisters with a bloated conception of the self or a bloated conception of the will, so on and so forth. The problem of evil, as conceived by post-Christian philosophy, is the very idea of evil, I must say. It breeds evil, precisely because the kind of self, the kind of asianhood, the kind of

will that it has in mind are already pathological to begin with. Evil is an epistemological problem, not an ontological one. it turns into ethics. And you just said that in reference to Plato, good is related to

the timeless forms. So we just say that the investigation of the good corresponds to ontology and evil to epistemology. Oh, you are trying to bait me now. You evil. Well, to be honest with you, this is something that many Many interpreters of Plato always say, right, but that is not really what Plato ever said or ever practiced. You see eternal forms are something like symbols.

that you have to have in place in order for you to make a structure, to make a sense of the world. They are not ontological in any sense. They are formal in the precise sense. is a problem of ethics. Transcendentalism can be either on the side of ethics or on the side of morality. So this is one of the things that happens in the history of philosophy and ethics. So when formalism, the formalist revolution begins by way of Plato, we are

inside the realm of ethics. But it's a realm of ethics which is rather a thorough. So let me give you an example of the timeless ideas and how we do make ethics by way of this timeless idea. So for example, you see We have the idea of being healthy. We have the idea of being just. It's a timeless idea in a Platonic sense, right? So being just is an idea.

It's not a concept. Concepts are transcendental. Ideas are not, really. Ideas are forms. So, you have this dilemma that I am going to help this poor person, going to give him some mask and hand sanitizers in time of COVID-19, or I am actually going to hold and bear arms

against the tyrants of the world. You see, these ideas are concepts. They are actually not ideas, sorry. These two decisions are of conceptual import. They are time sensitive, namely that's why they are not timeless. They are time sensitive, they are time contextual, place contextual, so on and so forth. But nevertheless, the way, the very reason that you in fact come up with such practical reasons and put yourself in such a dilemma as whether

I should actually attend to these poor people or bear arms against the tyrants is coming from something far beyond the form of justice, as Plato would say it. Being just is timeless. Simple reasonings merely are the spatial and temporal contextualities of how to fulfill the timeless forms.

So it's not that as if they are ahistorical or what you might call to be equal with whatever you do, but nevertheless they are formal apparatus for you to be able, in fact, to engage with practical reasoning of any sort, whether in morality or ethics par excellence.

So with that said, you can think then about a different problem. What does it happen if I don't have these forms in place? Can I do actually engage in practical reasoning of the sort that ethics require me to do? Number one. Number two question would be something like this.

Imagine we do have these forms in place, but then we also have our individual personal life experiences, which make us to make different choices. Not all of them are right, not all of them are wrong. How can we fulfill these forms? That's the question of transcendental

or phenomenological perception or experience versus formal experience. The main point is that you cannot even have experience without formal experience. All experiences at the end of the day in the realm of ethics are informed by the formal tools of experience. Because otherwise, what does it matter to do this or do that? Being just or being a jerk? Nothing.

Questions? I know that I have said some controversial materials for which I hopefully I will be cancelled. But maybe our great friends who haven't talked. Richard? My dear good friend. Concerning forms, would you consider that demons have forms or are they formless as demons? Well, you see, when I'm talking about forms, I mean it in a formalistic sense, in the sense of a platonic, platonistic sense,

but not over-Platonistic in the vulgar sense that usually people talk about. Yes, of course, demons are essentially forms which allow the self to navigate, to become something better for something worse. For example, this also is also the question of God or gods. It's just that gods are too greedy. They want all the forms for themselves whereas demons in ancient societies are modest forms, like form of greed, form of being a double dealer, form of

being a psychopath, but being a good husband. So there are all these forms. And you see, this is really actually the very case in ancient Assyria, that they have so many of these forms, namely demons, that even priests can't remember their names. So when you encounter a demon, does the experience give you access to that form, to the demon form?

Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't. You see, the very question of ethics that we were talking about. Does lived experience, what you have experienced in your life, can always be a great moral or ethical compass for you? obviously not the same thing can be said about encountering demons you should always and that's when I basically said something with regard my response to

Ekin. That's why I think that rationalism, the kind of rational ethics that we are talking about should be more adventurous. You see, the adventure, the navigation is what matters for ethics. What about the end in itself? Isn't that also important to not use as means for end, but end in itself? The end in itself is revisable always. What do you mean by revisable here? Because if there is a settled end then why to engage with the problem of ethics? You're just doing morality.

The end in itself is tricky. There's many interpretations of what Kant means. Yes, yes, of course. Yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely. No, end in itself, yes, there are some end in itself, but that's not really a Kantian thesis. It's actually a Platonic thesis. which I mean, all these German philosophers always tried to eject Plato out of the equation by giving the most vulgar interpretation of Plato. But no, this is actually the Platonic idea. Yes, and in itself, in the sense

that freedom emancipation well aristotle makes it political he says praxis for aristotle praxis is a mode of action screw aristotle you don't talk about aristotle in my class you don't like aristotle at all the worst reader of plato ever existed yeah but we should thank him for his his logical system i mean that that's quite important yes yes a logical system that literally slowed down the progress of human civilization for 400 years how cool is that

Okay, my dear friend, some of you who haven't talked, I really want to Reza, can I chime in? Yes, yes, please, please. I was just wondering if this conversation that we're having about forms, doesn't this also kind of nosedive into what the essay brings up in terms of narrative? Like, aren't we also discussing sort of aesthetics? and I mean what Asiap sort of brought up in her presentation about narrative being a kind of emancipatory project I mean these are the things that kind of bring us closer to the unthinkable like I'm also reading Maurice Benchot and he brings up this in one of the essays it's

an essay on masterpieces and he says that the reason why we sort of lack sort of discipline is because within the kind of pedagogical apparatus, we're missing like an epic narrative. Like there used to be these epic texts that would bring us closer to... Kazir talks about this in terms of myth. Myth as a narrative. Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes. But I would say, you see, the same thing like when we are talking about ethics and morality narrative, also in these times has been fundamentally distorted. You can't just go and talk, oh, I want to resurrect narrative. People will say that, shut the fuck up.

So what is the core of narrative that makes this kind of cosmological ethical ambitions real? because certain kinds, certain parts of narratives are actually dead weights. So we should resurrect the good parts of it. And my question would be, what are the good parts of narratives which we should preserve? Jonathan, please go on. Well, I guess to answer to that, I feel like, I mean, he keeps going and talks about this need for a kind of restructuring of historiography. This is on page 207.

And that because narrative has this potential to have a dark side, that we need to kind of build up our discernment. And then he says that we need this, according to Rekora, a kind of ethical vigilance by historians. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's a very good point. You see, while I completely can go with the concept of narrative, but I think that there is a better concept for this. This was brought up by a friend of mine, Benedict Singleton, the idea of plot, plot versus narrative.

I highly suggest this little book by Mary Helms, The Kingly Ideal, where she talks about what is a plot. So plot is something indiscreet sometimes, but for the most times it's actually very very discreet. It doesn't let stories go out of its orbit. So in medieval times, actually in ancient times, upward, the very

idea plot was associated with artisans, craftsmen. Why? Precisely because the word plot meant a plot of land. So an artisan such as a sculptor takes a plot of land, dig it up, dig the dirt up, create a statue out of it. But this was an extremely, extremely demonic idea for those people, particularly in Middle

ages to the point that artists and artisans were synonymous to conmen and forces of demonic forces, henchmen of demons. Why? Precisely because when you do that, when you dig up a plot of land, make a sculpture out of it, you essentially connect the forces of the mundane, namely the terrestrial forces, forces of something beyond aesthetic, sublime, whatever you can think about it.

So this is why artists in the Middle Ages were called con men, unfit for marriage, you can't marry an artist. That was actually fundamentally true, precisely because they do certain kind of double dealing here. They make, they turn the narrative, think about narrative as a narrative, as the story of the earth, the kind of life that we are in, tangled in, so on and so forth.

So they dig into it and then they create something better out of it, something that strives for the sky. So that's how they become double dealers, connecting the dirt and water to the void beyond. And that's why they are extremely dangerous people. You should not friend them on Facebook, ever. In the context of the text, this double dealing seems in a way related to this, what Recur calls

calls simultaneously acknowledging similarities and dissimilarities, a narrative reenactment, the sameness of history, reappropriating past as present at the same time as acknowledging hermeneutic understanding, the otherness of history, past as past. Yes, yes, yes. That's a very good passage. Definitely so. Yes, yes. The idea of plot is more on the side of ethics really, in the sense that, so we have these kinds of selves.

Are we going to make narratives out of them or are we going to make plots out of them? that launch those kinds of selves to the beyond. Around, crisscrossed by gods and demons, as the constraints or the outer rims of the very selves we are. I don't know if I can add something else. because I was thinking about this thing that you just said about the springboard and how self-preservation is basically a mirage that has to do with false psychology

and how this self-preservation is a mirage because it actually involves an absolute forgetting instead of a relative forgetting. And that has to do with a transfixing of the myth or let's say this big narrative that you're talking about. taking the narrative as an absolute determination that makes you forget yourself in an absolute way, rather than a relative forgetting that can be this actually, the myth as a springboard toward another stage of self-conception or a reconstitution of the self. Yes, definitely. So yes, yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much for encapsulating. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Riz. absolutely absolutely my dear friends should we have a

bathroom break i think that we need that at this point okay how about five minutes but bathroom break and then we uh we start Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

So, how are your COVID-19 quarantine experiences these days. For me, it's superb. The best year ever in my life. Which quarantine

are you talking about, Reza? Because in Germany, there is no quarantine. Goddamn Germans. Goddamn Germans. I know. They're going to get sick again. The Europeans always with their plagues and stuff. Actually, I think that Europeans don't catch COVID-19. They most probably get cholera at the end of the day because they are dirty. We're going to get canceled for this. There's, you know, I think the reason that some of these states like Texas and I don't

know, like Mississippi and such are opening up at 25% capacity is just to kick people off of unemployment. There's no way that a restaurant meets its bottom line profit by having 25% seating or a movie theater. Absolutely. To be honest with you, this whole idea of reopening is just... To be honest, okay, this is my idea that yes, economy should be reopened because if you don't reopen it, then you will die even a worse death than getting pangled, getting coronavirus. But the kind of reopening that they have in their strategy is just meaningless.

Precisely because the very sectors that they are reopening are absolutely non-essential. And in fact, they are the very sectors that can create more coronavirus cases. I mean, don't you think there's an- It's a very good- Sorry, go ahead. Thank you. Well, I just think there were ignoring some like more inventive ways to start the economy where people could be making some type of economic contribution from their computers. There could be some type of virtual economy that we start.

You see, Ekin, this actually shows that we are still in the 20th century time frame. There are no such thing as these kinds of creative or innovative strategies. The majority of people don't even know how to use a computer. Majority of people don't even have a thermometer to actually check themselves. It is, I actually love that this whole world is going to be evaporated in my lifetime. Oh, so good. it's you know the the employment level the unemployment level right now slash employment

level is the same employed amount of people we have right now the same amount of employed people as the year 2000 which means that 20 years of economic growth has been cut so you know we don't even know what this means yet it's going to take like a year to really see what this implies yeah you couldn't be any more eager to see how that plays i'm eager too it's going to be very interesting you know don't you want to move to europe no to be honest with you i have a great house in the state of Connecticut. Nice backyard. Why do I need to go to Europe?

Just because they are paying money to freelancers? No, thank you. I don't want your money. Well, I mean, you could catch cholera, so there's always that. But really, I think that this is just like, it shows why this kind of global capitalism failed so miserably. Like literally, any sort of solution that they can come up with is

going to be worse. I really don't think that we are going out of this unescated as humanity. And Reza, would you say that before Pango, was it also in reasonably a large amount illusory? It has always been illusory and it's just now revealed? yes of course yes yes uh i mean the first illusory uh what you might call to be factor was infrastructure

you know yeah america thinking of itself as the ultimate superpower but look sure Sure, the death rate is high precisely because they have a better testing, they have a better transparency than goddamn China. But even in that sense, it shows literally the kind of society that you created and how it can be the bane of humans. Like literally healthcare. Majority of people are actually dying from non-COVID-19 causes at this point.

To be honest with you, communism, Stalin, Uncle Stalin should be resurrected, be brought back and take back the good world. Long live. You know, Richard Wolff, he's a communist economist. I was talking with him on a podcast a few weeks ago, and he made the good point that America can only function if everybody is at work. It's an economy that does not have any means to keep going at all once people stop going to work.

Do you know what it is called? Just in time? No, Protestant bane. This is the curse of Protestantism. So the Protestants always want to work. They actually take time off on the Labor Day to work even more. Now they don't have that kind of privilege. But surely you believe that Trump is going to win again, right? I mean, there's no way. He's absolutely going to win. He's absolutely going to win. I mean, if Bernie Sanders, that would be different, but not with Joe Biden. None of them. None of them had any chance against Trump,

to be honest with you. I think Bernie could have really like, you know. Zero, zero, zero, zero chance, to be honest with you. No. That's because nobody from the mainstream supported Bernie, but his ideas would have actually probably been the only ideas to save us, you know? Yes. To be saved by good ideas is very different than to what? To be saved by the people. Unfortunately, people in the U.S. are among the most illiterate people that I've ever seen in my entire life.

People who still promote creationism, intelligent design, anti-vaccination. Well, my friends, Stalin will come at some point. He will send you to Moon Gulags and he will vaccinate you with microchips. your conspiracy theories will come true. What do you think of these guys with this plandemic documentary? You've heard about the plandemic documentary? No, actually, to be honest with you, I'm not following any sort of plague news at this point.

I just want to live my life. Conspiracy theorists, Bill Gates, coordinated this, so on. It's becoming quite a popular narrative. We're talking about narratives and evil. I mean, it really... If a conspiracy theory doesn't involve me as a world dominator, I'm not interested. Let us start. So... My apologies. Can I ask a question? Yes, yes, absolutely. Jonathan mentioned Blanchot before,

and I was just thinking in the context of narrative and also a literary objective of Fronese's practical understanding. I'm thinking about that idea in relation to Blanchot's idea of literature as something that distances us from reality. I'm not sure where it goes, but those two ideas seem to... No, no, no, no, apologies needed. I'm just trying to think because, to be honest with you, I have only read, you know, a couple of works from Bolan Sho, so I cannot speak on behalf of him.

From my understanding is that Blanchot also is another case of taking this idea beyond or two away from the earth. Since Bataille, I would say, we will discuss this in later sessions, but I would say the problem of evil in the religious context, the corrupt evil and also the corrupt morality,

moral laws, emerged from this idea that that you posit the idea of devil, the idea of beyond, the idea of outside, far too away from the orbit of your earthly life and earthly self. That's when actually evil happens, real evil takes place, absolute contingency, absolute beyond, so on and so forth. I would say that for ancient civilization the problem was so simple.

Keep demons close to your own self. the title of this course, On the Necessity of Having a Demon. What do you have to do to keep the demons closed? Like what kind of procedure is that? By understanding that self is an illusory structure, right? First idea. But you cannot simply say that self does not exist.

Then proceed to navigate the negative and positive constraints of that very self. is essentially the problem of navigation. Well, some people might say that, oh, you're just talking about colonialism now. No. The problem of the self, and hence that of ethics, entails this very simple dictum.

Begin with yourself. Put yourself in a collective context, configuration, so to speak. And then from there, start to understand the relation between self and the collective. But that is not all you can do. The individual does not make ethics. That is the whole point. No matter how much tricks you learn about self-navigation, you are not in the business

of ethics. You're actually in the business of a goddamn religion. It is a moment when you see yourself in the collective consciousness fully assimilated that you can contribute to the problems of ethics and the problems of the self. self might be at its beginning, an individual problem, but ultimately it's a collective

problem. So as the problem of individuation. How can you individuate the self if not the not without the collective. So the path should be extended through the collective. And that's a historical narrative or a historical plot, and that's when you will, as an individual, encounter a massive amount of disappointment. So I wanted Stalin come back and retake the years, right?

It's not going to happen in my lifetime. I wanted that all children having free education, it's not going to happen in my lifetime. So these are psychological. constraints upon individuals. How can you avert the trauma, the disappointment of such failures? Well the only way is to understand the self is nothing but

the most important contributing factor to that which matters most the collective Think about libertarian ethics or libertarian morality, whatever you might call it. So libertarianism is very strong on self-preservation. It's really actually robust. Many people just don't understand what libertarianism is.

make fun of it, so on and so forth. But no, to be honest with you, theoretically and practically is quite robust. It is quite similar to Kant's categorical imperative, isn't it? No, how? No, no, no, no, can you unpack it, please? Because they have these base definitions which don't change and then they develop, like they have two or three like fundamental principles then they develop logically yes but i was i wouldn't say that it's kantian it is similar to kantian but it's not kantian uh but yes that is the whole point so

uh this is yes as you say libertarianisms are really good at self-preservation precisely because they have certain kinds of definitions, presumptions, to which they can hold and and they can also basically keep them alive. So, yes, in a contemporary sense, I would say that if we were going to repeat the definition of morality versus ethics

what it entails and the kind of hard work that you should undergo I would say that yes libertarianism versus communism Libertarianism is strong and absolutely any person who simply says that libertarianism makes fun of them, their theoretical undergirding, doesn't understand really what libertarianism entails. is fundamentally strong precisely because it understands the micro constraints of self-preservation.

You do a lot of micromanagement in the libertarian camp. And that gives you a lot of chance to survive against, for example, liberals, no liberals, so on and so forth. So yes, I would say that libertarianism versus communism is the ultimate war. What about between different types of ostensible communism, right? Because I mean, maybe for someone who like, I am like a communist, but I take real exception with Stalinism. And it's this idea of the forgiveness of evil,

which is entailed through these sort of discussions we've been having. Like, if we forgive evil and evil associated with the self, and we forget it, and we forget the evils that the self can commit, in transitioning to a utopia where we've forgotten like the possibilities of evil that selves can commit and like seeing ourselves as fully transitioned to a collective society and that allows someone like Stalin to come in and because we've forgotten collectively how how evil James James are you insulting my uncle Stalin what are you doing here

no yes absolutely but you see the idea of forgetting what kind of forgetting are we talking about are we talking about in the sense that we put it on the back burner of collective concrete consciousness or are we simply as persons as individual members of the communist movement. We say that we forgive you. It's a process. It's not a mistake. Yes, it's a process. But how can this process be achieved? How can it be made concrete?

It can't. It's a vector. Oh, you libertarian. Claude libertarian. I'm following you. This was a bait for you. But yes, that is absolutely true. I think communists, even the most progressive ones, have not figured out the problems of forgetting and forgiving. The problem of sin, evil. and the will. And this is why a lot of work ought to be done until communism

would be something other than a libertarianism in disguise. There is a very specific reason why the categorical imperative is entirely incompatible with libertarianism. What Kant calls maxims are the rules by which a human being acts. For instance, I will not drink alcohol while driving is a maxim. But a maxim needs not be explicitly formulated for it to be, in fact, the normative rule by which one acts. What Kant calls in this context of human agency a universal law is a principle that is not only a rule by which one oneself acts but also rule by which one thinks all human beings ought to act as well

by a principle by which they would act if reason had complete control over my dear friend i can impose from less wrong you know it was wrong less wrong doesn't entail that's wrong or longiness no less wrong you know the forum of the no libertarian ai people because that sounds like i'm saying that for kant like you know there's you know give the example well this is why can't was wrong you you know you see wrong he uses the eye of as equi-polling to the universal it's not the eye of libertarianism which says everyone should be able to have these rights it's everyone should be have these rights

if it is in accordance with reason. This is the whole point of Lesterong. You see, Lesterong is a rationalist forum for libertarians. So essentially, I would say this is exactly the bad idea of universalism that we should avoid. Why? Precisely because no libertarians or libertarians, even at the time of Heinlein, when he wrote his manifesto of how to take back our government,

They were not concerned with this kind of individualistic idea that you're talking about. In fact, Heinlein was coming from a communist religion. He was enchanted with communism and then he became a libertarian. So he knew all the tricks and they are all there in his work. I think these kinds of attacks of libertarianism are a bit of a strong thing.

No, libertarianism is strong. You should take it seriously as a communist. And the same thing goes with religion, with new age Catholicism, so to speak. If you don't take this tactic seriously, then most probably you're going to fail in stepping to the world beyond.

So, we have, oh please, please, oh Richard, you were supposed to talk, my apologies. What was I supposed to talk about? I'm sort of, I am curious not to leap too far ahead in the readings, where Nechev fits in this discussion of sort of the spectrum or opposition between the libertarian and the communist. In the catechism of the revolutionary, when he's talking about

revolution by any means necessary and sort of proposing that what his role in the revolution is going to be is an agent of annihilation, the one that completely upturns society and that it will ultimately be a subsequent generation or somebody else, even in his own generation, that will make the decision about how to reorganize that society, but that he is going to choose to just basically be a blunt weapon to break down the previous order and then sort of goes about systematizing that. That's, that seems. Who was the first advisor of Trump? Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon. Didn't Steve Bannon also use the term being a blunt weapon?

Yeah, I don't think it's an uncommon expression in English. Yes, nevertheless, I would say that Nietzsche... Not Nietzsche, Nietzscheyev. Oh, Nietzscheyev. Nietzscheyev. I'm talking about an agent of annihilation in the context of a communist... The catechism of a revolutionist. Precisely. Someone who opts to stand alone as an agent of annihilation so that ultimately civilization can reformulate itself.

So he's both perceiving himself as part of the collective, but his role within the collective is as a sort of unilateral, blunt object to destroy the way that the collective is currently. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, okay. You're kind of fast-forwarding to our next session. Hence my disclaimer. Yes. so yes Nachayev's piece is an absolute really eye opener and you know that Dostoyevsky basically forged the figure of Estavogin yeah of course based on him

you see he's I would say that his stance is quite good on the paper just like Nick Land or people like him who doesn't like this obscene world to go in a smoke right I wanted to see this world burn. But unfortunately that is not how things work. There is a kind

of systematicity should be in place. Essentially, Natchayev did not understand anything about the methodological modesty. Means to ends is an extremely context sensitive and highly pre-alious endeavor. You can't achieve an end with any sort of means, any sort of means that try to short

circuit toward means should be extremely afraid of them. With Nachayev, you should understand where he's coming from. So he's anti-Tesarist. He has a semblance, nothing more than that, of the Bolshevik revolution, so on and so forth. But literally, his main agenda is to literally annihilate the Tezarist society.

the Tezarets government. And to that extent, you can see that these methods are very, very terroristic in the modern sense. I would say that if you really think about transition from against the law to be collective ethicists, then your methods is all you have. It's not the end, it's the method.

The method is what makes the end. Natshayev's methods were all based on that kind of, you know, what you might call to be early anti-feudalist revolutionary, where we say that, okay, how about this? We accelerate the Tezorist society such that it implodes or explodes and in the micro vision of our tactics we don't hold back on any sort of unorthodox measure. That was essentially

the Nachayev's idea. But Nachayev literally, and that's why, why is that, you should ask yourself, why is that Nachayev faction didn't become a major power after the fall of the feudalist Tezarists? Why is it Bolsheviks took that power? Well there was a reason. Because they had better methods, but also they weren't essentially making evil of Tezer

himself just like Nashaev did. They were making evil of the collective historical consciousness that gave rise to Teza. That's a trick. They were conning the history, the communists, the Bolsheviks. Reznor Chayev was extremely, extremely like a baby revolutionist. It was as if he has a duel with this government. No, the actual fight is not between you and the government or state.

It's between you and what has given rise to the government. That's the Bolshevik revolution, as opposed to Nachayev's catechism, or a revolutionist. So at the risk of romanticizing him, which is definitely a risk at some point, if the demon is the thing that's a constraint operating at the boundary, you know, between the self and the absolute, and he's explicitly operating in the interstice between sort of two periods of history, sort of he situates himself at the end of something. He speculates about what might come.

He very clearly says he will not be a participant in what comes. That will be somebody else's responsibility. Yes, I wash my hands from this very sin. I don't know if it's I wash my hands from it so much as I won't be there to see it. I am going to annihilate myself as I annihilate everything else. I'm going to be the suicide bomb that blows up and takes everything down with it. And then it will become the responsibility of others to build something in the wake of that. What I guess the question would be is, does he then represent the possibility, whether in narrative or plot, of being a demon or constraint for both the future and the past,

sort of sitting in between? Yes, absolutely. Nashayef is the reason that I actually included his text. It's precisely because it's that kind of demon. And that kind of demon is always very, very seductive. Well, one thing I just pushed back on a little bit there is you said before, and I agreed with you when you said it, that gods are always trying to take all the forms onto themselves, but demons are very modest forms. You know, the double dealer, the con artist, and that the Assyrians ultimately had so many of them that they didn't even have names, which is to say it was like demons were N plus one. there's something about about him that's more like a god from that standpoint i think than a

demon there's something very immodest about the idea of humming the absolute the absolute that frames both the past this is something that i don't want to jump into this discussion uh right now until we go through certain kind of concepts but this is why i think that we need someone like in the clan in our age to navigate the very idea of history and what we can do. The same thing the way that, for example, Lenin did with Nachayev. Without Nachayev, you couldn't have an organized Bolshevik revolution.

Because these kinds of people always point out the precariousness of your ideologies. They are always coming from the so-called beyonds, even if it's not beyonds. And that is the power of these kind of revolutionaries. Reza, we are running out of time. We should distribute presentations for the next class and response. What is the next text by the way? You, don't you? Did we have a syllabus with like every text assigned per week?

I thought you were... Do I look like a person who actually gives syllabus for every session? I mean, you have a syllabus, but it doesn't have the reading assigned next to the week. The readings are one section and then the week discussions are another section. So I think you have to pick the reading. I don't know. You guys figure it out. Don't put it on me now. I just assume it comes in order. It's the book of Ardavirav. That's the one that's next. The book of Ardavirav? Okay, okay. How about this? Yeah, okay. The book of Ardavirav is good. So, well, of course, no one is going to read the entire book of Ardavirav.

I would say that the main point of the next session, and also the presentations and responses, be on this idea that how the problem of ancient evil, which was simply a very neutral problem, into a non-neutral problem, aka religious notion of evil. And that's basically the

very core of Arda Virafnameh or the book of Arda Viraf. The transcription you gave us is only 48 pages and they're pretty small pages with spaced out text. Oh, that That book is huge. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, I know. And who is willing to do the presentation for this book for the next seminar? That poor soul. Georgia, you're laughing. Maybe you should be nice. I can do it, Allison. Is there anybody who thinks a person wants to respond to Georgia? All right, I'll do it.

Carl, right? Yeah. By the way, Carl, I don't know, you should actually email each other. I do actually encourage, you know, promiscuity among my students. Carl is one of the greatest people I've ever encountered. extremely serious, extremely astringent, and one goddamn tank of intellect. That's making me blush and exaggerating in no small degree, but thank you.

I'll send an email after I've read the book. Okay, we are running towards the end. I'll stop the recording now. Oh, you recorded all of our talk about Stalin and