Categoria: thoughts on life and its philosophy

Dyl Ulenspegel clould not beat it

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

You know, I can gain some pleasure from some foolish acts – and I also think that much of what we are teaching, be it on rights, politics and policies etc. can be literally found in any day-to-day situation within institutions like for instance any university. Finally I still think there is some meaning in making such follies of public services public (you think it is a play with words? – Not really!) [well, all this shows there had been something I learned from one of my teachers, Rudolph Bauer – and I am still grateful for his teaching many years back and his ongoing friendship over the years].

So, here another little story.

***********

I sent a mail to “buildings office” – after suffering in a lecture room and after seeing the students suffering even more (at least I could move a bit around while lecturing). So here is the text of the mail sent on the 24th:

Dear …, I had been teaching today from 11 to 1 in the Distillery, room G01. The students complained about the lack of heating – and I only made the session myself as I had been able to stand and move at least a little bit – not keeping warm but at least maintaining a temperature that allowed me teaching. However, students said as well that they had been over long phases not in a position to concentrate.

Be it as matter of citizens rights to education provided by the Irish state or by way of customers of UCC as service provider, this is an unbearable and unacceptable condition. I am writing not least as this is not the first time it happened, though it had been previously in different venue.

I hope that this issue will be investigated in a sincere way and the issue will be corrected.

Thank you very much,

Peter

I then received on the 28th of January an answer by the Buildings Office Helpdesk – yes, I received one.

Just an attachment – a form

WORK REQUEST/ORDER

NO: 62025

Requested by: Herrmann, Peter

Dept.: … Location: ….

Description of work request:            turn on heating in G.01

One page (A4) with different sections:

To be completed by Supervisor

To be completed by Assignee

For Office Use

…

Mind, especially the stuff noted under Safety Notice:

All works is to be undertaken by suitably qualified and competent persons, and in compliance with the Buildings and Estates Office Safety Statement and College Safety Procedures.

Work should be supervised as appropriate by the relevant foreman.

What is said in respect of qualification and competence may be questioned when it comes to the folks that is engaged with defining the admin side of a simple act: switch the heating on before teaching commences.

**************

May be … – if Kafka would be still around, he surely would write another of his famous stories based on this. And this story could surely be sufficient for Erving Goffman, Norbert Elias and the like to get them an hour and more exploring phenomenology of institutions and the Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations of the Process of Civilisation … .

One point may be added: Norbert had been strong believer in the process of civilisation – and although he had been (as Jew) forced by fascism to leave Germany, he had been until the end of his life convinced of such civilisational progress, rejecting any proposals to talk about de-civilisation and even remerging barbarism. Later, such discussions emerged by people who based their arguments on his work. Though I assume he would not have agreed. He had been just too gentle to think that we can step back. And with all conviction I still try to maintain such gentleness that I have had the honour to experience during our meetings, not possibly getting seriously damaged by being forced into such an iron cage (as Weber would have had it).

You see? Such a little story, and so much in it … – Occasionally I feel myself being seen as a very abstract thinker – but there is something I learned from somebody else who had been teacher and somewhat mentor: Niklas Luhmann, showing me that these apparently very abstract terms, categories and relationalities are just in front of us in tiny pieces – and it is up to us to leave it there on the ground: scattered and dangerous with the sharp edges of the heap of shards; or if we draw attention: allowing us to detect the essence of what all this is actually about: simplicity of oppressive hegemonic of which we are all part.

There could be an endless chain of examples we may add:

  • Grants for conference participation given to full time staff – maintaining establishment – rather than promoting with the meager means colleagues who may be in precarious situations, just starting careers … – sorry, didn’t older colleagues have enough time to establish themselves to be invited and get the conference fees covered by the organizers?
  • Issues of teaching and learning decided by administrative rules (or administrators as rulers?) rather being assessed in the light of needs of students – and staff that are preparing relevant material, sessions and excursions
  • publications rated on grounds of quantity and of ‘reviewed’ quality instead of quality and quality emerging from collective disputes

Well, we may leave it with the trinity – sure, in this light we come to the conclusion – taken from Marx’ ‘Grundrisse‘ – that

[t]he concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception.

PS: in this context perhaps of interest my publication

More recent and relevant:

And finally:

  • Research on demand. Academics between self-consciousness and self-chastisement; forthcoming in the documentation of the ÖFEB-annual meeting)

Guest Contribution: Children’s Rights in Social Care Setting under Irish law: Reality or Myth??

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications

Lucy O’Leary *

Children’s Rights in Social Care Setting under Irish law: Reality or Myth??

Introduction

The recent Irish referendum has given the impression that children’s rights in Ireland will be placed on some sort of an equal footing with that of their parents. However, the reality is somewhat different. The social care setting is an area of law that is of particular controversy due to the inability of the courts to look at these children as independent entities from their biological parents, foster parents and social workers. Their opinions and feelings are largely framed in terms of the opinions of the social work profession and despite the referendum, aimed at placing children at the forefront of all matters concerning them, this will not change. This is due to the lack of a child based approach in the courts and the adversarial nature of this arena.

This article shall look at the reality of children’s rights in the social care setting in Ireland in light of the referendum, and see what, if any, changes have been made to place the child at the forefront of these disputes. It shall place particular emphasis on the right of the child to have a say in where and who shall take responsibility for their everyday care. It shall also look at the impact that both European and international standards play or should play in the voice of the child being properly heard in these cases.

The Irish Perspective

Children’s rights in Ireland have been the source of debate for decades, especially given that Ireland signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child as early as 1992, and 20 years later, children’s rights had still not been placed within the constitutional framework of this jurisdiction. While the legislative provisions protecting children and potentially giving children a voice are vast[1], the ‘inalienable and imprescriptible’[2] rights of the marital family are regarded as the “fundamental law of the state and must be taken as overriding any pre-existing law inconsistent therewith”[3].

The reality of the marked absence of a child centred approach in the courts has led to much criticism of how Ireland[4] effectively regards the independent rights of the child, as a separate consideration from that of their parents, social worker, foster parents and all other interested parties. The rights of the marital family have led to some extremely contentious decisions by the courts[5], where the best interests of the child were clearly contrary to the outlook of their parents, but due to the hierarchical system that exists within the Constitution, and the placement of article 41 at the top of that system, the rights of the child were outweighed by the rights of their parents.

This was thought to have changed in light of the recent referendum on children’s rights in Ireland. During the campaigning for the yes vote, many criticisms were made about the language of the new article 42A and how this would not, in reality, change the previous hierarchical system[6]. Despite these assertions, there were also fears that the new amendment would dilute the rights of parents to ‘parent’ their children[7]. The reality however is far removed from these fears. The Supreme court has stated time and time again, that the “sanctity of the family and the enduring existence of parental authority seem….to be guaranteed by the provisions [of article 41 and 42]…..and that the framers of the Constitution considered, and enacted, that the best interests and happiness of the child would be served by its being a member of the parental household”[8]. It is very difficult to see how this will change, given the wording of the new article 42 A.

The wording of the amendment, while it does provide some rights to children, is restricted to cases of guardianship, custody and access[9], and is preceded by the words “provision shall be made by law”, as is every insertion of the various provision of article 42A. This means that legislation will need to be implemented, in order to give effect to the rights of the child as asserted by this amendment. The Child Care Acts 1991-2011 and the Children Act 2001 provide for all matters regarding children. These are the legislative provisions available to children in Ireland and therefore, it could be said that this amendment offers nothing new to the realm of children’ rights in Ireland.

It could be said that the most important right for a child to have, is the right to have their views taken into consideration in all aspects of their care, a provision that is contained in the Guardianship of Infants Act 1964, s 25[10], a provision that has not been commenced yet, and which has been described as a ‘relatively mild obligation as it leaves the discretion to the court in relation to the child’s capacity to understand’[11]. While the amendment provides that legislation must be enacted in order to give this provision effect, in the absence of a child centred approach by the courts and the adversarial nature of the system, it could be said that a radical overhaul of the court process would need to be implemented, in order to give proper enjoyment of these rights to children.

The social care system is a further barrier to overcome for children that find themselves encapsulated within it. Not only do they have to try and be heard by their parents and the courts, they also have to try and be heard by their social workers. While the social worker will try and ascertain the views of the child, their obligation is to act in the child’s best interest, which may not correlate with what the child actually wants. This can lead to a further ostracising of the child and a feeling of helplessness in an environment where they already feel loss of control. It has been well established that involvement in the decision making process can increase a child’s “sense of identity, self esteem and personal autonomy”[12]. However, the absence of this approach within the system, can only serve to be of further detriment to the child.

_______________________

* Lucy O’Leary
BCL 2009 in Griffith College Cork
Studied H Dip in Social Policy 2011-2012, UCC
Currently studying LLM Child and Family Law in UCC 2012-2013

This contribution had been written in preparation for publication in SOZIALEXTRA (issue 4/2013). As it is dealing with the situation in Ireland and gives at the very same time an insight into questions that are of general relevance it is worthwhile to be published also in English, not only in the German translation in the journal.

See on this topic also my own post.

[1] Child Care Act 1991-2011, Children’s Act 2001

[2] Article 41.1.1 Bunreacht na hEireann

[3] Re O’Brien (an infant) (1954) IR 1 at 10, per Davitt P

[4] Concluding observations of the UNCRC, CRC/C/IRL/CO/2, 29 September 2006, p.2

[5] N v HSE [2006] 4 I.R, Northern Western Health Board v H.W and C.W, (2001) 3. IR 622.

[7] ibid

[8] Re O’Brien (an infant) (1954) IR 1 at 10

[9] Article 42A.4.1º ii

[10] As inserted by Children Act 1997

[11] Annual Review of Irish Law 2004 (Dublin: Round Hall Sweet and Maxwell, 2005) as cited in O’Callaghan, “ Realising the Child’s Right to be Heard in Private Child Contact Disputes: Progress in Practice?” (2010) Irish Journal of Family Law at 9

[12] J.E Timms, Children’s Representation: A Practitioners Guide (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1995),p 440 as cited in O’Callaghan, “ Realising the Child’s Right to be Heard in Private Child Contact Disputes: Progress in Practice?” (2010) Irish Journal of Family Law at 1.

Details

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

or leaving me aside. Leaving me aside – my excitement when experiencing Russian history n a nutshell, really compressed in a short paragraph, a long sentence if you want: Compressed to the imagination of walking along the Nevsky Prospect on the pavement of which once Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin walked …., a Zeitgeist that drove Fjodor Michajlovitsj Dostojevski to gambling; allowing me now to think in similarly eccentric ways as Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy did, when he may have visited this city that has now the name Saint Petersburg; thinking about the greatness of Peter and the likes who, when time matured had been dwarfs standing in the way of the largess of a new society which chased them away, following the call coming from the Aurora and standing at the beginning of conquering the Winter Palace – the storm that later still required The Mother taking rigorous steps, standing up when she had been called.

Details are often forgotten while looking at the large picture. Or is it more that we are blinded by some grandeur?
There are surely the great politicians, the large lines and also the large crimes. And even if one should be careful with premature joys or anger, one should not take the required circumspection as an excuse for holding back with political judgement. And this is a matter of current governments here (yes: HERE) and there (for instance the ridiculous sentence for Berlusconi and the reduction of even this modest conviction. Nevertheless, leaving this major lines aside, looking at something that is more hidden it is sometimes the really small things that make huge differences.
When I went  he other day by train with Viacheslav to Petersburg – and while we had been comfortably sitting in the fast train, we had been chatting with Natasha (who is Natasha  – It could be a long story now like the many stories usually told from the transsib, even if the train trip took definitely much less time than one of those famous (or infamous?) trips in the “old times”. At some some stage we talked, of course, also about politics – Natasha recalled pre-Perestroika-times (“What are you talking about? When was that?” Viachselav intervened, half jokingly). The woman continued undeterred, though with a little smile:

You know, those times, before Gorbachev. We had been … – we. You,

she pointed on me, as on somebody coming from another world, the world of old capitalism

you start you sentence with I. And you write it with a capital letter, even in the middle of the sentence. it had been different here. It had been about us, about we …

Viacheslav intervened:

Peter knows. He studied also in

Looking at me I helped:

Leipzig – when it still had been in the GDR, although the Campus had been near Berlin.

Yes, the times and the circumstances had been different. But there seems to be more to it. One could speculate about this “it” constituting the we and the I … – and as much as times and circumstances matter, something seems to be still alive here where pure capitalism is on the advance to complete final victory. I thought about this “we” the evening when visiting with Viacheslav and Olesya the Mariinsky theatre, enjoying Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila … – in the program brochure so many details had been listed, the soli in the orchestra even if they seemed to play a minor role. It seems to be a paradox: but here, where it is still about a “we-society”, the I becomes much more important than in societies that pretend individuality and can only do so by limiting it to a sole mate, who has lost the soul.
And in actual fact, the detail gains grandeur when being really part of the we. – And history is a little bit like a love story – a love story being felt like the “story line of history” …

children’s rights – ignorance or weakness?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, social quality, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications

Travelling over the last years, I felt here and there a bit ashamed – not because of hearing so bad things about the country. On the contrary, because of the praise I heard. First, it had been because of the celebrated bedside rug which, though from beginning outstretched on the floor pretended to be a tiger. Then, after the final total K.O. of the cat, because

…”Well, you Irish are so self-controlled, so disciplined when it comes to bearing the consequences of the crisis. No useless protests, just carrying on …”

I frequently said I am not too much friend of these attributions: ‘the Irish’, ‘the French’, ‘The Germans’ – dolce vita cannot only be found in bella Italia and the Greek police forces and their (para-)military helpers showed recently how much they are favouring law and order, probably doing better than the home-country of the high-ranking German visitor, Mrs Merkel.
Still, not being friend does not mean one can push such attributions easily away. At times it comes to my mind too: “we Irish”: first pushing the child into the well …, then shedding crocodile’s tears and finally coming up with an attempt to save the child from definite decease.
And as much as this is the pattern underlying the approach to the economy – actually since the 1950s (see the working paper Tíogar Ceilteach – An Enlargement Country of the 1970s as Showcase? in the series of William-Thomposon Working Papers) – it has found a new field of showing evidence, now actually literally dealing with children. All is about a referendum, scheduled for november now. The Taioseach (Irish Primeminister) bravely stepping forward, overcoming his apparent usual schizophrenia by uniting now the two souls:

As Taoiseach and as father I’m asking people to vote yes

Good boy – …good man, I should say and could add: a real politician, not just like the official administrator we know from Max Weber as being characterised by

Sine Ira et Studio

Rather, the real politican, engaged with all fibres of his body and soul. Well done, right? And we may wish to see more in this.

And although I try to be optimist a but asks for being allowed to enter the debate – it is not about “but don’t vote in favour of these rights as they are suggested with the change. It is more about the question

But why are you not really serious when it comes to children’s rights?

Let us have a brief look at the text of the Proposed New Article 42A – I saw it first here in the journal. And it reads as follows:

Children

1. The State recognises and affirms the natural and imprescriptible rights of all children and shall, as far as practicable, by its laws protect and vindicate those rights.

2. 1° In exceptional cases, where the parents, regardless of their marital status, fail in their duty towards their children to such extent that the safety or welfare of any of their children is likely to be prejudicially affected, the State as guardian of the common good shall, by proportionate means as provided by law, endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child.

2° Provision shall be made by law for the adoption of any child where the parents have failed for such a period of time as may be prescribed by law in their duty towards the child and where the best interests of the child so require.

3. Provision shall be made by law for the voluntary placement for adoption and the adoption of any child.

4. 1° Provision shall be made by law that in the resolution of all proceedings –

i brought by the State, as guardian of the common good, for the purpose of preventing the safety and welfare of any child from being prejudicially affected, or

ii concerning the adoption, guardianship or custody of, or access to, any child, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.

2° Provision shall be made by law for securing, as far as practicable, that in all proceedings referred to in subsection 1° of this section in respect of any child who is capable of forming his or her own views, the views of the child shall be ascertained and given due weight having regard to the age and maturity of the child.

And it found positive feedback from here and there. Apparently a broad consensus  – and that is good so. But I am wondering if we would find this consensus also in case of taking things serious, not looking at the corpses but looking for, i.e. in favour of the living. The state should work towards conditions and their legal anchoring that allow children to develop freely under conditions of respect and equality. – Interestingly, the article mentioned first, making reference to experts, does not refer to children.

Having said before ‘The state should work towards conditions and their legal anchoring that allow children to develop freely under conditions of respect and equality’, means we have to look for a society that is not about

Work. Consume. Be Silent. Die.

as I saw it recently on a website, dealing with a young man who committed suicide.
This person made a choice – a tragic choice. But as tragic and individual, not to say lonely as this choice had been, one sentence on the website shocked me more than the decision itself. The sentence:

Es hat den Anschein, als würde man die gesamte Sozialpolitik in die private Verantwortlichkeit von Individuen verrücken.

or in my translation

It seems that the entire social policy would be shifted to the private realm of individuals.

It is exactly this what moral approaches to social policy frequently forget. It is exactly this what heads who claim to support social rights forget when they reduce these rights on the level of protection, forgetting the more fundamental issue:

Rights are fundamental and need to be defined in a perspective of social quality. They have to be defined as rights for everybody, from the very beginning rather than for the drowning child.

And of course, this goes back to the debate on the stillborn kitten which disguised for some time as strong tiger, before being unmasked as bedside rug. This is not about general values and ethics. It is not about muttering ‘that is neoloiberalism’, briefly shaking the head and continuing business as usuals. – Heads should know this at this stage: heads of politicians, and heads of academics working in the areas of social policy, social work and law alike. – I am freqeuntly surprised that my student’s usually know more about the complexities of realities than highly paid people working Sine Ira et Studio.
__________

PS: Being member of the editorial board, I am currently working for SOZIALEXTRA on one of the special topics of one of the issues: Human Rights – Children’s Rights – Human Rights as Question of Everyday’s Life

student accommodation, studying facilities ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

or what is studying about?

Dear Students – here in Ireland and probably elsewhere.
Recently a mail had been sent to the staff at UCC – it originated from a Senior Lecturer in Science Education at the Department of Education, Uiversity College Cork and stated the following

I am writing to ask you to encourage your students to make use of the weekend study facilities now available in the Campus Kitchen. From now until next May the Campus Kitchen will be open on Saturdays, Sundays and bank holiday Mondays from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day. Feedback from recent talks on “Steps to ensure success in your study of science and engineering in UCC” that I gave to all first year science and first year engineering student students indicates that a significant number of students living in student apartment complexes find it difficult to study in this apartment environment.

Many thanks to Mr … and his security staff as well as … for making this facility available. The Students’ Union will be informing students of the study facilities available but a few words of encouragement from yourselves may help students to settle down to study and to start using the weekend study facilities to help them to keep up with their work. Recent statistics from the HEA (Mooney et al., 2010) on drop-out rates from universities in Ireland are cause for serious concern.

Now, I will be the least to complain about providing additional study facilities to students – when I had been studying, I had been in the privileged position that I could use the library 24 hours a day – there had been one exception throughout the year. though I do not remember exactly, I think it had been the 25th of December that the facilities had not been available.

Leaving various things aside that could be said in this context, I want to raise at least three points:
* is the provision of study-facilities really an appropriate answer on the lack of quality-accomodation for students? – This laves aside the fact that this accommodation is in many cases completely overpriced, pushes students out on the private market, thus contributing via a more or less long chain to problems on the housing markets. If landLORDS (are we still living in feudal times, or is it even meant as prayer?) are making easy money, this, of course, maintains high rents …
* is teaching, organisation of seminars and discussion opportunities so limited during the week that there is urgent need for facilitating additional studies during the week – especially: additional space for individual studies?
* finally, is the lack of space for studying a real and major problem for “high drop-out rates for universities”?
Perhaps such Higher Education Authorities should step down from their pedestals – having a look at the reality of all these supposed  *****-universities, excellence universities may cure them. Though it is boring and we all know it it may be stated again: education is perverted to a commodity. It is “goal-oriented” and the sole goal is availing of a paper that states a degree. I do not want to write a plea for the humanist tradition in its traditional form: it had been highly idealist and elitist in its very foundation. Nevertheless, it surely had been more of an empowering spirit than much today’s skill-orientation. And surely had been more emancipatory, independent it is orientation than social scientists who state in a complaining, and even depressed mood:

This is the consequence of liberalism

Turning around after a deep sigh …., continuously walking the old ding-dong-trotten path, welcoming any success, any start gained or maintained, as a success – it is a little bit like Christmas:

Mai le campane risuonano più dolcemente

Isn’t it time to wake up? – Can be sweet too!

At least this colleague seems to have slept while he had been studying … and needs to improve skills, then justifying a position as Senior Lecturer in Science Education at the Department of Education

We Got IT – Update Your CV …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Dear Colleagues,
as it is now clear that EU had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2012, there is some rumour that every EU-citizen can claim to be winner of this prestigious accolade.
You may consider this  when updating your IRIS and other information relevant for Quality Assurance.

Most of you know that I had been engaged for many years in EU-policy making – on different levels. From direct contact I know also – just to mention one tiny point – the the current president of the Commission (in my experience the least qualified during my “term in office” which reaches back into middle 1980s) appropriated the responsibility on “social services of general interest”, taking it away from Vladimír Špidla, then Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs …. – I mentioned this occasionally publicly and do it again although it may have been confidential information I obtained in a personal conversation from the Commissioner. Still, although I left that field of activity for different reasons (leaving some minor engagement aside) I am in principle very much a supporter of the European idea. And I am well aware of the ambiguity – what is today the EU surely being an institutional setting that succeeded on many issues we can relate to in positive ways. Nevertheless, I have my serious doubts that the awarding is in any way justified. An idea that is valuable, being set in a harsh structural setting, is as valuable as the chitchat of a smart society in an increasing “refeudalising” economic environment (having used this term, and having published in 2010 on this [the second of the “New Princedoms” just went to the printer] I am myself aware that much economic analysis is still needed to back this thesis).

Anyway, EU-staff and students may claim that they had been awarded. Colleagues from “Third Countries” (sorry, this is the official terminology) may possibly claim that they know Laureats (which is something, isn’t it).
The details on the award ceremony are not yet clear – so, refrain at this stage from buying flight tickets to Stockholm.
Some additional information for foreward looking people: There is some hope that The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel may be soon going to the EU too.

Beginnings – Going Astray

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy

It is the great time of the year again – at least I like it: the students are returning, or are just arriving at the university. For many a huge step, something like entering the ‘large world’, another step to adulthood.

The other day I had been standing with Michael and Paddy in the student centre, looking across campus where the freshers had been shown by their older mates   how to get around. Well, somewhat oldish terms – and there is surely much of this in the mind: the freshers feeling like making a step towards independence, being a bit unsure about what all this about, the requirements and just …, well for many it will be the first time that they really leave the lap of their parent’s home …; the mates being proud that they can show a bit of what they learned already, showing a bit of their supremacy, and perhaps also a bit of their power: the abilities they achieved. And there the three of us are standing, talking about the way they and we actually go. Are we looking at students out there: the young people we have to teach – we the supervisors, feeling ‘super-wise’ …; are we looking at young colleagues with whom we will collaborate on this huge project which enlightenment failed to establish: a better world – a world which actually cannot be ‘established’ as such; rather a better world will always have to be a process, a movement of people coming together to make a world a common property (process of relational appropriation, as I define it – still grateful to Denisa: I brought this definition forward in class, elaborated it and … forgot the wording. She, at the time one of my Hungarian students, had all the notes from the classes …). Or are we looking at the future competitor on a market on which skills are traded, in societies and regions that aim on being

most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.

Although I am in general very much on the side of those who consider the glass being half-full, I am worried: I listened to last weeks negotiations in Kassel – the German Constitutional Court approving the ESM – in my opinion a decision strictly based on nationalist interests without offering any answer on the problem of Europe which faces the danger of falling apart; I listened to Barroso’s ‘State of the Union’ address at the same time, repeating shallow phrases from over the years, (leaving the bloomy phrases aside) calling for a stronger Europe – sure, I am not against a stronger Europe as such, though the question of the overall aims remains to be asked and answered; and I followed the elections in the Netherlands, the results of which came to many (and also to me) as a surprise, moving the country under the VVD towards a questionable Freedom and Democracy.

And I remember the other day colleagues talking about a high number of registrations for a course:

There are people out there who are interested. We just have to find a way to answer the demand ….

Well, there is definitely interest in education – and now I mean the education in the true sense: education as means of emancipation. And this is something we have to encourage, we have to fight for ways that allow this to happen: this kind of education and this kind of emancipation – not a matter of individuals’ demand but of societal necessity for which we have to create space.

For me, every new teaching period is such a challenge – not primarily a question of what to teach but more a question how we can learn together, how we can develop relevant research skills: brave openings.

May be I be it is an absurd idea. May be not.

Talking about absurdities: The other day a mail had been passed on to me, sent via the staff-exchange server – a former employee from UCC, now retired, talking about the fact needs must be met ‘even in retirement’ and offering the service of a Training and Development Company she set up. It is about More to Explore and Rethinking your Thinking. And courses are offered on the premises of UCC.

Well, it may be I should rethink my thinking, my optimism: A university that is claiming to be ‘Ireland’s first *****-university’, a university that leaves part of the work to be undertaken by retired staff, a university that is particularly proud of sports people as bearers of the academic torch, just recently Five sports people conferred with honorary doctorates. – Yes, well done lads.

I wish you all well in the current academic year!

Indeed – and I hope we can do better!!

Catharsis

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Well, being now here in Cairns again is surely also a little bit about dealing with my own history – having been here some time ago, working as fellow at the Cairns Institute …, one of the stations of what one may call unsettled life, unsettling life or living global(ity).

But arriving the one day around lunch time and having one free day before the conference brings me also to something we may call life at the verge of general history. And perhaps having lived on that verge, being merged into it without fully reflecting it in every day, requires this current personal catharsis (well, modern and in particularly social-work language speaks of debriefing though that is always difficult if we are required to be our own debriefer). – And living in history doesn’t allow debriefing as it would suggest an end to history (or at least its personal recognition).

___________________________________

Step by step.

Some reading during the flight – to be correct: re-reading. It is Wilhelm von Humbold’s The Limits of State Action. In the Editor’s Introduction of the Liberty Fund-Edition, John Wyon Borrow writes on page XXXVI f.

If this is true, if a sense of history is an aspect of possible emancipation from the given standards of one’s immediate situation, the relation between historiography and discrimination is, or has been, a reciprocal one. For the growing sensitivity, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, to the nuances of distinct historical periods and the possible value they embodied, was intimately connected with the criticism of contemporary society. … The sense of the relevance of the past and its record, not merely of the crimes and follies of mankind but of its experiments in various styles of life and social organizations, involved in a reappraisal and a criticism of a particular image of contemporary society and of the notion of what constituted modernity.

Well, it is surely this need of knowing about history in order to be able to shape the presence and future. But let me be a little bit clearer – not only because I see this one of these days in Jill Chism’s piece of art The Inner Circle

Knowledge is not wisdom

___________________________________

Wisdom would probably not suggest what we see so frequently, so naively as convulsive search for a smart society as complementing a smart economy: we need a new foundation of society rather than the hope for pure moral reason. Humanist liberalism and its inherent individualism, consequently applied and not distorted, already erected this monumental system of injustice, this Leviathan of a single world market that eradicates systematically any notion of justice simply by defining injustice as natural order, leaving us with free exchange as guideline of the suggested ultimate freedom, of course not able to see it: an eye for an eye …, makes everybody blind  (as we can learn from the same piece by Jill).

___________________________________

As said, I arrive lunchtime and after having a shoer, I stroll along The Esplanade and it doesn’t take me long to stand in front of the war memorial monument

The Cairns War Memorial as erected to the memory of those who fell in the Great War (1914-1918).

Surely something to memorise, the victims of the terrible war, started from German soil, emerging as global war and thus showing that it had been not at all a conflict between nations but a fight for global hegemony, for the distribution of the world between the powerful.

It is a monument that makes us aware of “great history”, men fighting against men under the leadership of “great men”, the chiefs, guiding their tribes in a global fight against the enemy – of course, women didn’t play a role though ….

… I hesitate a little later, after I had been enjoying with my new Chinese friends a really great espresso (before preparing it, Ah Lam asked me “short and strong” – I nod and get what I wanted – even Italian espresso can hardly compete) and paying …, I hold the five Dollar note in my hand, the smallest note, depicting Queen Elisabeth II.[1]

And it may well be a good thing that the ladies are not on the battle ground – we know sufficiently from Brecht’s Mutter Courage about their suffering. And we know from his novel on the Good Person of Sezuan that too close involvement into these male battlegrounds may easily crunch her goodness.

___________________________________

A little later – after much laughing (not to say giggling), much talk and a few recaptured Chinese words that had been dormant in my little skull, anew giggling and a bow when we say good-bye – my way brings me back: again along The Esplanade, now looking across the harbour with the yachts – a surely posh place – in the distance the mountains emerging as aloof, marks of a different world – the rainforest overshadowed by a dark cloud, and overshadowing affluence. Overshadowing … – a paradox as this is the shadow of the past: not celebrated but genocided: massive and manifest at first an entire people of whom the rights even to exist had been infringed; later being “psychologically genocided”, standing in the shadow of the immigrants, themselves not even being allowed to do the same and instead banished for life and with their lifes. The yachts of the rich – owned by “New Australians” of whom the forefathers came on vessels: galleys that brought those who had been evicted from there own countries, loosing their indigenous rights and now claiming the rights over the indigenous people in the country to which they had been brought. And the yachts of the rich – now also owned by the Tourist-Australians. And still, it is the rainforest, the part of the country to where many of the traditional owners, custodians and ancestors of this land had been dispelled, now overshadowing this part of the country, giving the affluent present non-owners, the self-legalised proprietors a bitter spice: wealth established on the shoulders of displacement, and wealth – in the form of a shipyard and yachts – as border, building a kind of fortress.

___________________________________

Hope though … – between the strand and the boats a piece of art sticks out. Barely visible, lanceolate, colourful. A piece of art – “without title”, “Ohne Titel”, “sans titre” …. – I am not sure if it is indigenous or not. A piece of art that sticks out, barely visible, lanceolate, colourful, made by an unknown artist. A piece of art, barely visible, lanceolate, colourful and possibly marking the future – a future where title, authorship, property doesn’t matter.

___________________________________

Is it by chance that I see Bungan one of these days? The artist of whom I have one most beautiful piece of indigenous art – I nearly wrote peace of art which may well be a Freudian slip as it is a painting that expresses harmony in an amazing way. We meet on The Esplanade, actually in the shop where I purchased the painting. Seeing her and recognising her is a matter of the same second, I am immediately banned by a strange, somewhat magical power this woman exudes. I look …, well, yes, it is not herself, it is another paining and I am caught by it. A sober, black and white painting that stands out in the middle of all the colourful pieces. It is the history she expresses in the painting. The history that expresses more than

We had been right, and you took our land!

Instead, it is

We had been right, and we now claim our right. We should do it together as we have only this one world. But if we do not have another choice we will do it against you!

___________________________________

I would like to pay my respects to the traditional, present and future owners, custodians and ancestors of this land and acknowledge the spiritual relationship of all Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people with their country and their cultural values and beliefs.

This is the statement – though in slightly different forms – used often in this region on the occasion of opening ceremonies. And it is also in some form used on the occasion of the conference Racisms in the New World Order, which actually brought me back to Australia. Jackie Huggins who addressed the participants on the occasion of the opening reception also uses these words. Yes,

the traditional, present and future

And she emphasises future. As we will only have a future if we recognise it as future of this one world, the future of this one race: human beings striving for harmony within themselves and among themselves and with the environment we live in.

As said in the beginning, this visit is a bit of personal catharsis – not just as matter of remembering having lived and worked here for some time, but a reminder of “personal relationality”, the fact of being part history: the nightmare of all dead generations weighing also on my brain – in every day’s life[2] and the responsibility arising from there. Too often a burden … – the burden of walking too close along the verge.

[1]      Actually other, larger denominations of the Australian money also show female faces  – may be worthwhile to look at in its own right

[2]      Alluding to Marx, Karl: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852

The Emperor and Wolfgang Amadeus

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

The other day I saw on facebook an advertisement – apparently a new game.

KINGDOMS OF CAMELOT

I didn’t have a look at it. But of course, there is always this notion of ‘My home is my castle’ – although it is an illusion and the home of many is actually the home of their bank – in the best case. I write ‘in the best case’ as for probably most of the people it is not ‘my castle’ but a loan granted by their prince, the bank. And for increasing numbers it is victim of the loan-givers meddling collectors – the Deutsche Bank showing ‘German perfection’ even in crime.

The other day I talked to Marco, after we watched on RAI the report on Il Palio – he wanted to draw my attention to the anthropological side:

Isn’t there some medievalism in us: we are engaged in all these personalised and irrational attractions.

And he, the catholic, also wondered about the masses going to mass.

The recent visit of the pope in Milano caught the attention of …

I forgot the number, but it had been large enough to justify his words:

There is obviously something of this irrationality we need!? The feeling of security? Comfort?

Sure, this may also be an eternal resonance of the lost paradise, sadly looked at by Eve – captured by Antonio Allegretti with the masterful scuplture Eva doppo il peccato allegretti. And it is surely this challenge, defined by the gained independence and responsibility and the difficulty even of a genius as Euclid to fully master this independence.

*****

But Euclide’s problem had been the effort of keeping the world moving by handling a set of numbers and geometric forms. More radical attempts, for instance Stefano Porcari’s strive for a Catholic Republic had been cruelly rebuked. Not only that ‘he left life’, i.e. had been hang. But apparently he also failed to represent a demos – at least this is what we can concluded from Marion Crawfords who contends in the work Ave Roma Imortalis

The name Porcari calls up another tale of devotion, of betrayal, and of death, with the last struggle for a Roman Republic at the end of the Middle Age. It was a hopeless attempt, made by a brave man of simple and true heart, a man better and nobler than Rienzi in every way, but who judged the times ill and gave his soul and body for the dream of a liberty which already existed in another shape, but which for its name’s sake he would not acknowledge. Stephen Porcari failed where Rienzi partially succeeded, because the people were not with him ; they were no longer oppressed, and they desired no liberator; they had freedom in fact, and they cared nothing for the name of liberty; they had a ruler with whom they were well pleased, and they did not long for one of whom they knew nothing. But Stephen, brave, pure, and devoted, was a man of dreams, and he died for them, as many others have died for the name of Rome and the phantom of an impossible Republic; for Rome has many times been fatal to those who loved her best.[1]

It is somewhat symbolical that the space that accommodated the house where Porcari had been born and where he lived is now an empty space: in the middle of Rome, in a small street next to the Pantheon – a space where it is prohibited to erect a building. Is it prohibiting people to develop as collective and social demos, claiming a real res publica?

One can turn it around: The modern state, not least going back to Montesquieu’s ‘Spirit of the Laws’, never ever succeeded, and even aimed on, taking the res publica serious, the establishment of a public space. Not least as such public space is always a process as it had been shown in parts of that early French revolution that had been employed by processes rather than building up structures. The public had been systematically reduced on a gathering of individuals. At this point we may leave it open if and in which way this had been different in ancient times. But Euclidian arithmetical reductionism had to lead to the claim of private property being the ultimate ‘natural right’ as spelled out for instance by Locke. And even more, the individual had to be the ultimate point of reference – this had been the true spirit that Montesquieu managed to breath into history of modernity.

And as such, the state emerged as seemingly independent force not as what it is usually presented: the servant of the people. This res publica is a scattered mirror: Eve could only fall in despair, Euclid could only wonder why his genuine attempt crashed and Alfonso Balzico’s Cleopatra could seemingly choose but had been distracted from the affluence in front of her eyes by the permanent presence of the hissing snake.

*****

 And this allows to return to the remark on the

KINGDOMS OF CAMELOT

It is this ongoing and strengthened individualism that actually allows the new, now hidden emperors standing over the princes – and it allows the suggested servant of the people to act like a jester. Though the difference is: the real jester had been mocking about the ruler – and here it is the ruler, mocking about the people. Of course, this may easily be seen as clandestine clue: at the end of the day, the day that may well mark the beginning of real history, it will be the people ruling themselves.

But for the time being jestering is very similar to Euclid’s play with numbers and forms. It is not really far fetched: We find the very same picture in today’s economic policies: number crunching – even in many cases of the search for radical growth policy (my little project with Marica), the strive for Millennium Development Goals (topic of a new little project with Almas) and even the search for niches. As Brigitte says in a recent mail, referring to a book by Raul Zibechi

but he also thinks that the control over territories is getting increasingly important for the rulers and for social movements – something that also points on the re-emergence of feudal forms. Of course, the question is then how such theses can be applied here in Europe.[2]

This is exactly the problem: that many of the solutions are caught in the dilemma Einstein supposedly put into the words:

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

This search for solutions by following the same thinking that created them is not new – though Charles Anthony Smith, Thomas Bellier and John Altick present it as new. Be this as it is, it is heuristically surely interesting to read

the ego-panoptic construct we identify has two related but discreet dimensions. First, the individual has a greater capacity to keep the powerful in check through individual level surveillance of society. Second, the individual is more capable of constructing the world that exists around them. State and society have an increased susceptibility to control by or influence from the individual while there is also a simultaneous limitation on the ability of state and society to force the individual to conform.[3]

*****

All this may sound rather abstract – but actually it has a very simple expression in today’s economic policies. Though all this is a central part of the crisis, it is nevertheless a frequently forgotten one. Debt and in particular indebtedness by the states is undeniably a major problem. It is again and again highlighted by reference in particular to crisis in Greece. And it is made increasingly a topic in supposedly rich nations, complaining about the ‘cost of solidarity. And it is also frequently – even by several conservatives – brought to the fore that austerity policies are at least not without problems. Such policies are not so much ‘imperial’ than ‘medieval’: the brute force against the subject by the use of violence; requesting increased dues. However, there is another dimension to today’s policies in dealing with public debt. And saying today does not refer only to the current crisis but to historical predecessors from the previous century. For Western Germany it is generally accepted that special conditions after WW-II – in particular the support received by the Marshall Plan and the advantage of a near to completely destroyed material foundation of the industrial process (means of production), allowing a kind of ‘new start’, condition for a major competitive advantage on the global level – fostered a period of exceptional growth. But with this we reach implicitly another point: the problem of ‘growth’ – not least since W.W. Rostow growth is considered to be a magic driver, a self directing pattern that does not require any justification as the attraction is given by the Platonic understanding of numbers as real, gaining their justification from a supposedly natural order: 1 naturally followed by 2 naturally followed by 3 naturally followed by 4 maturely followed by … – ops, naturally maturely as the given and unquestionable order of development. And it is the competitive-individualist growth pattern. The Cartesian

proposition, I think, therefore I am, is the first and the most certain which presents itself to whoever conducts his thoughts in order

– later we will come back to it – is now perverted. We can reword: The

capitalist proposition, I grow, therefore I am, is the first and the most certain which presents itself to any economy conducting its balance sheets in order.

As this is a purely individualist principle, and furthermore: as this subsequently is a purely competitive principle, it is also a matter of permanent externalisation of costs. Investment is not aiming on

the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life.[4]

And as much as this is still an important aspect – and at the very end the decisive point, it emerges in its capitalindividualist perversion into a rat-race of accumulation of supposed wealth and the permanently enforced externalisation of costs.

We may leave at the moment an important point aside: the fact that the suggested wealth is an illusion. Instead a seemingly technical aspect of maintaining this illusion is worth mentioning.

Germany’s exceptional post-WW-II-growth had been mentioned. But after 1945/49 other economies had been growing with exceptionally high rates too, including the United States of North-America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And indeed, this had been based in – on the one hand – increasing income at least of the so-called middle classes and – on the other hand – the availability of an increasing number of long-term mass consumables (refrigerators, automobiles, household appliances, TV/colour-TV etc.). Interesting is to relate the growth rate for instance in the USNA, the increase of public debt and the inflation rate. The problem of public debt is not the fact itself, but the use of such debt as means of permanent and massive re-distribution. Inflation is an effective instrument – and not least an instrument that allows dispossession: the assets of citizens with an average income are not only eaten up by the changing cost-benefit ratio on the market for every-day’s consumables. Inflation is also a means of public debt relief.

As Carmen Reinhart and Belen Sbrancia state

financial repression is most successful in liquidating debts when accompanied by a steady dose of inflation. Inflation need not take market participants entirely by surprise and, in effect, it need not be very high (by historic standards).[5]

This is a mechanism that works directly against the population and also via redistribution where banks and funds are working as intermediaries.

*****

Indeed, here we find a ‘love-story’ between the different profit-making and –taking mechanisms – complementing and competing roles at the very same time – that evokes repercussions of the first lines of the recitative in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Despina contending

Now I can see

You’re a woman of sense.

and Dorabella answering

In vain, Despina, I tried to resist:

that little devil has such tricks,

such eloquence, such a way with him,

that he’d melt the heart of a stone.[6]

And in actual fact the problem of the entire story is brought to the point by Guglielmo, just a short time before expressing his pure egoism, expressing a misunderstood individualism:

such treatment of so many

is pernicious and a bore

…

… you treat so many thus,

that if your lovers complain

they have a good reason indeed.[7]

It is like the state which can easily be seen in sustaining a function of an indeed self-interested court: the emperor frequently changing clothes, appearing as social and welfare state, activating state, bureaucratic state etc.. There is no doubt, all these different appearances matter – politics do matter. But they do matter not least as part of a historically long battle about hegemony where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life may be metaphorically telling. A genius of a world that had not been invented yet, and a world that surely did not allow to live this collective notion – a world that finally deflated the genius, causing a puny withering away of a flower that lost its inner buoyancy at the age of 35.

a man defeated by life[8]

It had been and is world in which

[c]oncepts like ‘civility’ or ‘civilisation’ on the one hand and ‘culture’ on the other were used in Germany as symbols of different canons of behaviour and feeling. It was possible to show that the use of these words reflected the chronic tension between court establishment circles and bourgeois outsider groups. This also highlighted certain aspects of the bitter class struggles between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy.[9]

However, there are two points that should be reconsidered when reading Norbert Elias’ analysis and reflections: The first is to put a big question mark behind his thesis that this struggle

finally came to an end in the twentieth century with the rise of the two classes related to the productive economy and the de-funtionalisation of the nobility as a social stratum.[10]

Fact is that the ‘productive economy’, i.e. capitalism, actually systematically undermined productivity if productivity is seen as matter of use value. If

[i]t is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest[11]

it must be something else – and indeed: it is exchange value that – by an invisible hand – creeps into all pores of life, absorbing meaning and sociability with every breath, with every stroke of the hand. The Cartesian proposition

Ac proinde hæc cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum, est omnium prima & certissima, quæ cuilibet ordine philosophanti occurrat

had been frequently criticised for the inherent idealism. But its utmost individualist stance had been barely objected – Descartes speaks of those individual

whoever conducts his thoughts in order.

And this is it: the order of the mind and thought of the individual philosopher – sitting on an earthly cloud, playing a virtual harp: professional perfectionism, excellence of universities: the realisation of

their own interest.

Second, it is too often forgotten that this new ruling class is in itself split: citoyen and bourgeois inevitably interconnected and nevertheless unavoidably in conflict, avoiding each other like the plague: The idealist freethinker – and Mozart had been one of them – standing against the materialist utilitarian for whom paradoxically the only ‘use value’ is a creature that lost its feet and legs: ‘use value’ is – for the utilitarian – the ‘uselless’ profit, a ‘social construct’ based on the alienation also of the product from itself. A social construct that does not have any own use despite being a placeholder for any use-valuable; interchangeable even with itself.

Thus – coming back to Mozart – he had been not just in a quandary. The individual solution obstructed by the lack of inalienable social integration, thus undermining socio-individual integrity. And the social integration undermined by the individual not accepting to be a mere part of an disruptive system of …, yes: self- obstructing individuals.

Sure, the privileged Tamino can live this role. But really: Papageno cannot.

*****

It surely matters in which way we look at things, the perspective we take. Recently, visiting the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, I had been fascinated by overlooking the town through the window.[12]

Actually it may be said that it had been more overlooking history. An inexpressible notion. Depending on the position, the ‘images’ change. What seems to be a from a more distant position as Napoleonic visage, withers into a small house covered by a dark roof – youy see it in the middle of the diagonal that spans from the Eifeltower to the house with the red roof. The imperial greatness, the appropriation of historical power by one person transforming into people’s life, translating into an authoritarian character of bourgeois society.

For the time being we play in our little realms as for instance a

KINGDOM OF CAMELOT

– not seeing the invisible hand of the emperor, in fomer eras claiming to be representing the devine, then the emperor by grace of god, in extremes the claims of being God’s chosen people and today enthroned by the new god of mammon – money as the ultimate good. – To make sure: this is not the failure of individuals. Nobody can ‘see reality and act in a free will’. Rather, it is a forceful reality – gods are always misleading: the ancient and the modern gods, deceiving for a while by golden fleece und the cover of which the collective knowledge of the abys is darkened.

Delaunay’s La Fenêtre sur La Ville allowing to overlook Paris – the metropole that may claim to at least one of the legs of modernity’s cradle; and allowing to see that

make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.[13]

Delaunay’s La Fenêtre sur La Ville: a painting with an inexpressible notion – evokeing helplessness. But even more suggesting the power of the de-indivdualised being – the kindness, solidarity, empathy and real self-realisation … – Herr Messerscharf und die Ameisenmenschen (Mr. Trenchant and the Human Ants) from Phanresia’s Stories of Friendship[14] once learned this lesson.

[1]            Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1902: Ave Roma Imortalis

http://archive.org/stream/averomaimmortal04crawgoog/averomaimmortal04crawgoog_djvu.txt

[2]            may translation

[3]            Smith, Charles Anthony/Bellier, Thomas/Altick, John: (2011): Ego-Panopticism: The Evolution of Individual Power; in: New Political Science, 33: 1, 45-58; here: 46

[4]            Engels, Frederick, 1884: Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Preface to the First Edition – http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/preface.htm – 5/5/11 11:47 AM Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1993, 1999, 2000 – Volume 26. Frederick Engels. 1882-89

[5]            The liquidation of government debt; nber working paper series; National Bureau of Economic Research 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 March 2011; Working Paper 16893 http://www.nber.org/papers/w16893

[6]            Così fan tutte. Drama Giocoso; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. Première: Vienna, January 26th, 1790. Wiener Staatsopernchor/Wiener Philharmoniker/Karl Böhm; Live Recording from the Salzburg Festival on the occasion of Karl Böhm’s 80th birthday, 28 August 1974; Hamburg: Polydor International/Deutsche Gramophon; Libretto (Engl.: Lionel Salter) 32-205; here: 166

[7]            ibid.: 164

[8]            Elias, Norbert, [1991]: Mozart: The Sociology of a Genius; in: Nobert Elias: Mozart and Other Essays on Courtly Art. The Collected Works of Norbert Elias. Vol. 12: Edited by Eric Baker and Stephen Mennell; Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2010; 55-167; here: 57 – it had been an uncompleted work by Elias, first published in 1991, edited by Michael Schröter who had been authorised by Norbert

[9]            ibid.: 64

[10]            ibid.

[11]            Smith, Adam, 1776: The Wealth of Nations. Books 1-111; Edited with an introduction and notes by Andrew Skinner; London: Penguin Books, 1999: 119

[12]            Robert Delaunay, 1885-1941 – La Fenêtre sur La Ville, 1910-1914

[13]            Marx, Karl: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852; here quoted from the internet-version http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm – 15/12/2008 11:21 am .

[14]            Peter Herrmann: Phanresias Geschichten von der Freundschaft. Ein Kinderbuch; With Illustrations by/Mit Illustrationen von Franziska Herrmann; Bremen: Europaeischer  Literaturverlag, 2010

Mocking and Roots

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Returned from Rome – not only known as Santa Sede, but also known as one of the main “sites of antiquity”, seen as cradle of civilisation. Sure, it may be contested if such a claim is actually legitimate – there had been many antiquities and consequently there are many places that can be equally seen as such main sites. Having been there – this time actually not as long as on other occasions – I had been drawn immediately and tensely into this question. Perhaps it is our new office, if you want you may say the ultimate tension between times: an old building (though not reaching as far back as antiquity, a most elegant interior: with columns, arches and nearly monumental vases and statues, and at the same time accommodating one of the most modern social and economic research institutes. But all this …, does it go hand in hand? Is it compatible at all? On my facebook-site I surely made several disrespectful remarks – and I am not tempted to deny them. And I also made several remarks that simply reflect some general criticism: immeasurable wealth in the face of increasing world-poverty … With all this one should surely not simplify things – even personally I know a reasonable number of people: honestly faithful, honestly working for human rights, for combating poverty, trying to build up a just society. Actually the other day a leading figure of the Italian catholic church plead for a stronger influence of his organisation in politics – let us even assume that  he is a god-willing, honest person. But there we are in the middle of a first fundamentally critical point: This organisation claims not only influencing the state – we surely have to admit that there are several organisations, with different political couleurs, claiming the same. But this organisation, the Holy See as calls itself, calims TO BE the state, at least a state. What we easily overlook begins – symbolically – with the Vatican’s own Euro coins, and being surely expressed by the huge number of embassies. Actually walking through Rome, in most varied places, you find the embassies, the Diplomatic Mission to the Holy See. Btw., I think our Finish embassy has the most stunning location, overlooking Rome … Sure, btw. – but there is another point to it: next to it, there is a wall – narrow, just a small protection for the tourists that are roaming across this space: in memory of Garibaldi. On the wall you can read the Roman constitution – and there is surely a reason to mention and celebrate Garibaldi and the modern constitution in one breath. Literally, standing there, looking across the city, the Holy See is at your back – and you may want to say, it is in a position that is left behind. But you have to say: the church is a kind of backbone of this current system. There is no simple answer – on the cover of a book I bought in the Gallery of Modern Arts (Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna), I read:

Ogni epoca, per trovare identità e forza, ha inventato un’idea diversa di “classico”. Cosí il “classico” riguarda sempre non solo il passato ma il presente e una visiona del futuro. Per dar forma al mondo di domini è necessario ripensare le nostre molteplici radici. (Salvatore Settis: Futuro del “Classico”; Giulio Einaudi editore; 2004 [nuova edizione])

I think it is in some way remarkable that I bought the book in an arts gallery: arts seems to be much better able to reflect its origins without sticking to it like the fly in the trap, sweetened by honey, pleasing like Adonis, in Greek mythology the god of beauty and desire and dazing like opium. If life, real life, would support us in every day to live history in this “dialectical way”: keeping the valuable, but push the overcome part on the rubbish heap of history, mutual respect would surely be easier to reach. But as long as organisations claim to be states … All this has surely another dimension too: if and to the extent to which the church did have a legitimate role society it had been at times that are in social science frequently looked at in terms of cooperative, associational, communal … . There is much transfiguration going hand in hand with this – the golden ages of harmonious communities have never been really prevalent, at least not during those times that we may consider as sufficiently known. Nevertheless, there surely had been times preceding the modern state. and this brings us to a critical point, looking at many of today’s political movements, not least some of those claiming very critical positions against the current mainstream. Again. I do not want to question the credibility of these claims. Nor do I want to claim knowing the answers. To be honest, I am still looking for the exact question. At least I feel uncomfortable, looking at solutions based in values, in good will, in general feelings and partial analysis, not considering the fundamental changes of the productive systems. New quest for salvation: in old religions, revived Evangelism or new claims of excellence are unlikely to help. As said, I had been in the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna. Entering the exhibition-hall, there is first a fascinating …, installation: The floor of the entire hall is a mirror, a broken mirror. Old statues standing on it … Can we say: Antonio Allegretti’s “Eva dopo il peccato” (1881) in desperation of what she lost? Giacomo Ginotti’s “Euclide” (1883) not understanding that the blueprints he made, didn’t work out? Alfonso Balzico’s “Guiletta” (1884-1886) hesitatingly-amused by looking at what emerged and could have been known by everybody? And the same Balzico’s “La Civetta” (1856-1860) even openly positioning herself beyond these worldly trivialities? Still, for all of them it is still very much a game – a bright light still shining – not victims like those who did the actual work, the ones, for which the hope of the regeneration of the soul, which is supposed to happen every seven years, doesn’t exist. It may be pure incidence that I communicate these days with Rainer about an article he sent in connection with some debate on some writing on religion: Hearing the Voice of God. Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann studies how American evangelicals experience the friend they have in Jesus (article by by Jill Wolfson; July/August 2012). He asked me for my opinion on it:

…. In the meantime I have had a look at the text you sent. It looks as if there is quite a lot in the book in question that is in one or another way complementing the book “Gewinn in alle Ewigkeit” (Fleischmann). The first impression is striking: “Society outside [outside of the life of the sect] doesn’t exist.” And subsequently there is immediately a second point for debate: In which way did “our generations” – at least some of us – supported a development which is actually at least in analytical terms well reflected in Thatcher’s statement that “there is no such thing as society.” It is this question, so difficult to answer and even so difficult to ask: the search for personality as social being, linked to the point that the social is not just subordination and adaption. Looking at it in terms of class analysis: How can we understand Marx’ notion of a “class for itself” as development towards respecting personality, avoiding that everybody has to look individually for meaning in some dialogue: bound to an authority, without necessarily being a religious issue but easily being religious. ….

Is that really so different from how he interprets the text? His thoughts are mainly concerned with the freedom of thought, the freedom from dogmatic incrustation and the nearness to or distance from the state. Yes, indeed, the critic of the history of religion needs surely a new approach. And surely it is about how we produce and reproduce out daily life: the goods we need, the means we use and the way we produce and live together – in a way, distribution is only second stage here. That is part of what real critique of political economy is about.