Categoria: thoughts on life and its philosophy

Anything Else to Think About? or: Re-finding Truth in Research

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

Vladimir Fedosejev and the Tschaikowskij-Symphonieorchester Moskau, performing Tschaikowskij and Shostakovich in the Large Hall of the Musikverein.

A more or less busy day coming to an end, beginning with talks about projecting a new book series (around global democracy), discussion about a film project, catching up with a good friend, answering and writing mails in the meantime and finalising the short contribution for the next Euromemo (had been easier to write the 80 pages for the recent workshop) …. and sometimes asking myself the difference between the real world and the facebook world. At least there is one commonality: it is not always easy to be clear about the difference friendships, acquaintance and colleagues. Perhaps better, it is not always clear to separate roles.

And really coming to an end then (leaving the Tchaikovsky’s concert for violin and orchestra [d-minor; the violin beautifully performed be the still young Arabella Steinbacher] and the encores aside) it is Shostakovich’s 5th symphony (also d-minor) – what a masterpiece, and indeed is there anything else that can come to mind than Schiller’s ‘Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man‘, Jehring’s ‘The Struggle for Law’ and the presentation I will give on Thursday in Graz, titled ‘Science/Scientists between Reflexive Responsibility and Penance’.
Schiller’s main concern is that what really is at stake is the balancing act between different poles, in particular the unbridled sensuous nature of human beings and the refined nature, finding its true and unique expression in arts, and being as such a matter of highest rationality: independent of unrestrained natural forces and allowing as such determination of a higher order.
In Schiller’s words
Two principal and different states of passive and active capacity of being determined (Bestimmbarkeit) can be distinguished in man; in like manner two states of passive and active determination (Bestimmung).
(Schiller, J.C. Friedrich von, 1793: Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man; Literary and Philosophical Essays, New York: Collier, 1910 [The Harvard Classics, 32]: 36 (I hope there is a better translation somewhere)
It is in his eyes not least a matter of striving for and – though only in tendency – achieving wholeness, in his idealist vision of course very much perceived and defined as holiness as the incontestable absoluteness. One does not have to follow this idealist aberration in order to agree in Schiller’s view on the two dimensions of determination: the passive and the part, the Bestimmtsein and the Bestimmung. Much later we find this of course reflected in Max Weber’s discussion on ‘vocation’.
Before I come back to the latter remark, a short note on a linked subject – a closer look at the link will be looked at later. One can easily see from here that this strive for wholeness is not an everlasting matter of development of humankind but also a matter of developing personality. And indeed, it is also a matter of the two forces permanently at work, one claiming dominance over the other. Even within certain institutions as Rudolph von Jhering  pointed righty at the beginning of his book I really have to than Lorena for making me aware of this piece) out that
[a]ll the law in the world has been obtained by strife. Every principle of law which obtains had first to be wrung by force from those – legal rights of a whole nation as well as those who denied it; and every legal right the of individuals – continual readiness to assert it and defend it. The law is not mere theory, but living force. And hence it is that Justice which, in one hand, holds the scales, in which she weighs the right, carries in the other the sword with which she executes it.
(Jhering, Rudolph (1872): The Struggle for Law; Chicago: Callaghan and Co, 1915: 1 f.)
What is now the connection between this and my presentation on ‘Science/Scientists between Reflexive Responsibility and Penance’?
It may get clear when we look at what Schiller said in the same piece:
Art, like science, is emancipated from all that is positive, and all that is humanly conventional; both are completely independent of the arbitrary will of men. The political legislator may place their empire under an interdict, but he cannot reign there.
(op.cit.: 19)
And indeed it is not so much a strictly idealist position as we see when we read on page 8
Therefore, totality of character must be found in the people which is capable and worthy to exchange the state of necessity for that of freedom.
Aren’t there obvious repercussions – reading Kant, Schiller and later Marx? And if we read further we see that this tension between dependence/independence, between necessity and freedom, between being-determined and determination, between passive and passive is very much an issue of …, indeed: The Struggle for Law, the struggle for – and here I come explicitly back to Weber – Science as Vocation.
Of course, in this perspective we may pose the question from the beginning in a different way: Re-finding Truth in Research can also be formulated as (Re-)Defining Truth in Research. In such a perspective we should not look for freedom from demand but for our own right, very much in the understanding of Schiller:
Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life. Thus the spirit of the time is seen to waver between perversions and savagism, between what is unnatural and mere nature, between superstition and moral unbelief, and it is often nothing but the equilibrium of evils that sets bounds to it.
(op.cit.: 10)
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A more or less busy day coming to an end … – and it is a more or less long fight ahead for science, for research that also acknowledges again that it is not least based on two major pillars: the one being about asking questions rather than waiting for questions to be asked. And the other being ready to accept also the role of an educator, not in an elitist understanding; but very much int he understanding of entering a dialogue and taking firm positions within it. Surely as well with both the readiness to make mistakes. And finally it means to be ready to makes these mistakes together, rather than simply claiming to be the greatest and to know only what is considered to be the ‘most important people’.
Otherwise such masterpieces as that of Shostakovich will never exist – not in arts, not in politics and not in science.

The Irish Recovery and Naughty Children

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

What will happen: writing a critical assessment of the Irish economy, approaching it in a radical way, assessing also the current Irish situation Irish in a long term perspective, I am wondering if there will be dear Irish readers who ….

Well, I remember one day few years back now. A colleague, I think he originally came from Belgium to Ireland, had been tabling publicly some fundamental critical points concerned with the Irish Universities, the prevailing clientelism and the fact that there are forces within this system claiming to work for smart developments and factually milking the system for their own sake. As said, he did it publicly, using the all-user-exchange e-mail service: mails circulated to all staff. Now, one of those days I had been sitting with colleagues down for a coffee – and this topic, more precise: his mails came up. There had been not much said against his positions. But one remark mad me  …, well one remark had been perhaps even a little bit of a surprise, not being expected amongst members of the claimed intellectually enlightened elite. Somebody asked the question: ‘But if it is all so bad, why doesn’t he go back to from where he comes?’

I don’t mind in one way: I will write and say what I think I have to write and say – and perhaps somebody will ‘send me back’ as well one day [btw., I never saw the colleague from Belgium again. Though I do not want to say that he had been physically pushed out of the way, I have to say that bullying is …, well: not nice]. Why I am writing about it here has another reason – of course, some readers know by now: nothing simple, and just a short straight line.

* Yesterday I posted on facebook:

of course madness: sitting in Finland, writing on Ireland, to be presented in Austria, and talking to colleague in Turkey on project on HR-finding out that we may meet in Germany as by chance we will be there at the same time. May introduce him then to my Irish students – taking them to Munich for study trip.

seems we are safe – Benedetto won’t be around then. Seen from another angle it is a funny idea thinking about different global players and different global games: from the top and from the bottom.

500-limit, otherwise I would have added: getting interesting info from Yu-ze in Taiwan, on Neurosociology and some news on Gramsci, of course from the south of Europe. All a question of hegemony, right?

And got some photos from back in Ireland. Really nice spot, have to go there one day to make holidays rather than hear from the holidays others make there 😉

* Contrast that with what I stated before ….

* AND NOW:

Reading through the papers that I need for the analysis of the Irish development and situation (and further development from here), looking at documents like budgets, the recovery plan, the ECB-statements, the Taoiseach’s action plan …, I can only find one of the issues confirmed, linking the different positions of “academic-pub talk about opposing colleagues” and governmental analysis together. The confirmation is concerned with one of the governance issues, only linked to the economic policy by allowing the government to proceed in such disgraceful and un-virtuous way of robbing the people, celebrating communities as self-sufficient and self-reliant and serving those who brought us onto the cemetery of the Irish tiger. I am talking about the following:

Of course, much of this can be linked to the following dimensions of ‘insularity’

  • the obvious fact of insularity in geographical terms;
  • the long-lasting  and persisting dominance of agriculture;
  • the persisting parishialisation and communitarianisation

the political ‘segmentation’, welding together what does not belong together – for instance communities and localities, claiming against each other rather than bringing together people whose common interest is based on the social class to which they belong.

And

This socio-political outline is important in order to understand the lack of ‘expressed demand’ of systematic and structurally sound public welfare and also the lack of public protest on a societal level. Family and community orientation has to be understood as being very much a matter of forbearances and inwardness of protest.

So, what do you do with the small, naughty child? ….

Sure, but there they often face the same situation – and perhaps they actually left there because of it: the readiness to assess situations by looking at a broader spectrum of historical explanations than that offered by misbehaviour of virtue-less governance. Hegemony is about more, it is also about acceptance – the larger brother beating up the smaller, saving the parents from doing a proper job.

– Having said this, may be at least some of the parents are less closed, less narrow-minded than the parochial wolves, wearing a cosmopolitan fur.

My neighbour: farmer’s wife, well educated about and having left her job in favour of marriage and farmer’s-wife existence may be about fifty years ago: she won’t read this – but I cannot recall that she said anything like what I reported above. Sitting for a nice cuppa at the kitchen table there had been some undeniable wisdom coming from her.

(see Herrmann, Peter, forthcoming: Social Policy – Production rather than Distribution. A Rights-Based Approach – as volume XIX of the socialcomparison series)

Excursus – Reality …. – or: World as Surreal Jigsaw

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

There may be good reason to think occasional writing – reference to Kant, Hegel … are bizarre, a kind of excursus, an excursion into another world of the unreal, surreal …

And there may be equally good reason to think that an occasionally look at the reality is about engaging with something surreal, something that is not real but an invention of thinking, a jigsaw of different pieces which are – and that would be the difference to a real jigsaw – randomly spread across an open field.

I frequently use the actual travel time: the time of actually moving from one place to another, hanging around on airports, being cramped into one of these tubes made from metal, wires, plastic … – the tube called aircraft and while standing at the belt, waiting for the luggage, occasionally for more or less extensive reading of different newspapers – I admit, sometimes it is just because they are there, offered for free. So censorship, own selectivity, availability simply replaced (or complemented) by chance. And I admit that especially the ‘random airport collection’ is occasionally very much a favoured one, especially as it is frequently the more ‘serious’ press that is offered to those who would easily have the money needed to buy them (or to those who paid ‘special money’ for their flight ticket). The ‘serious journalism’ not least of the business papers and the liberal press: liberal here more in the humanist sense rather than its perverted economic stunt.

And a short snapshot may be offered here, yesterday’s reading. The initial reason for writing this short ‘review’ is twofold. An article in Monday’s FAZ. Baerbel, with whom I had been sitting together in the train on the way from Freiburg to Karlsruhe – the first leg of the trip to Finland – gave it to me. An ‘analysis’ offered by Schirrmacher, titled ‘I begin believing that the left is correct’. Though the title raises the expectation to read something extraordinary, the article itself had been very much an ordinary piece about the apocalyptic mood of a bourgeois.

Than later read in the Handelsblatt, if you want: The real German Financial Times (The paper that had been established many years later as German offshoot of the original FT, which goes back to 1884

launched as the friends of the ‘Honest Financier and the Respectable Broker’, with Leopold Graham as editor

is a relative shallow brother) the news about the measures planned by Merkel and Sarkozy: ‘Core Europe hits back’, looking at the ‘anti-speculation campaign’ by the two heads of state, claiming to establish an instrument against short sales. ‘Short sales’…, sounds like ‘zero-‘ and ‘negative growth’.

The truth of zero-growth is probably that we are really facing a growth of nulls in politics and economy. Indeed, coming to the German Financial Times then, an article, criticise that there are so many Pettifoggers in the Higher Echelons, talking about the fact that Germany’s most important managers do not respect laws and contracts, ant think this is normal.

And we can read that

this is worrying: In place of a sense for justice and injustice which we would especially expect from top managers we find expertises to secure dubious practice which legal experts compose in any required dictum.

(The German term is Absicherungsgutachten).

So far so good – and we all – left and right know that we are facing a

Sick Society, to which the youth rampage in Great Britain left deep wounds

and

judges sentence the rioters in summary trial to prove the superiority of the legal system

(German Financial Times)

Ops, the sick society proves its strength literally: showing its ‘strength’, its ‘power’ by means of coercion? One has to say then that (I may add: fortunately)

The public is not impressed: The Critique of the British societal model is increasing.

How should the public be impressed? Some may even look for strength as long as the hegemonic power is able to stigmatise the youth as hooligans and looters.

But there is more at stake, getting obvious when one looks at UK plans to remove rioter’s benefits as we learn in the short note on page one of the Europe Edition of the Financial Times. As I frequently and on very different occasions pointed out: The new social state is lurking around the corner as state based on mercy and charity, any time possible subject to politicians decision to withdraw it. Again we find the search for protection, for securing measures and their legimitation by procedure rather than the legal right …

Who could deny though that some kind of regulation is needed? But does that justify such breach of principles that we thought off as fundamental and human rights?

Hans Zacher, emeritus in Munich, founder of the MPI (the one to which I am corresponding) and surely more at the conservative end of political spectrum, emphasises in his book on the Social State (which I consider as rather Kantian in its foundation) the close connection between the social and democracy, stating for instance

Therein lies another essential communality between democracy and the social. Democracy is a process. The social is a process. And both processes feed and drive each other forward.

He points as well on the appropriateness of the title of a book edited by Wolf-Dieter Narr and Claus Offe: Welfare State andMass Loyality (Cologne, 1975).

But David Marsh in the Handelsblatt has no problem in taking a broad brush in order to get rid of any Kantian notion of reason, rationality, discourse of rights, employing instead frank words: it is not about benefits for one and withholding them for others. He sees it as fact that it is

only the concentrated power that secures silence.

And back to the economy:

– also when it comes to the financial markets.

Good one may say: finally somebody who sees the need of taking control. It may well be that I am obsessed by this topic: the political, the economic and how it is separated from and merged with each other. And as much – and regrettably – both are frequently separated, here they are dangerously brought together: as if the protest by the young people, though not expressed as political protest, would be the same as the ‘protest by the bankers’, though also not expressed politically. In actual fact the self-aggrandisement of the top-managers is not really a moral abjection. It is the protest that is in some way parallel to the representatives of the heavy industry in the late 1920s/early 1930s: They are looking for expansion and for this they need political control – and this is what they are aiming at.

Could it really be financial capital that plays today the role formerly played by the heavy industry? At least it has to be noted that earlier analysis and statements, drawing on parallels between the 2008(ish) and end of 1920s-ish crisis have to be completed – and actually we may refer to an article in the weekend edition of the Sueddeutsche, where Ulrich Schadefer wrote

What an illusion – and what worrying parallel to today’s crisis, the second world economic crisis as it has to be called in the meantime.

What they mean is that the crisis lasted much longer as politicians admitted (in 1931 they called the crisis off, spoke of returning to growth and prosperity …) and that the crisis could by now means be seen as regionally limited.

If Merkel, Sarkozy and others would be willing and able to act against it (The article in the Handelsblatt states that politicians up to know helplessly watched at development but Nicolas Sarkozy and … Angela Merkel [want] to end this game that is ignoble) would doubtlessly be good.

But reading then the FT’s Europe edition one may loose hope.

Berlin and Paris rule out eurobonds

and what follows is the well-known squabble, concerned with their own – national and personal – princedom, not concerned with any ‘common good’ if such thing would exist at all.

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Finishing the Jigsaw?

The one ‘vision’ of finishing the jigsaw presents itself as total destruction: the power, creating total disorder in the name of order. One may honestly ask if the helpless reaction of a David Marsch* is not leveling the way for people like Anders Behring Breivik …

And one should ask why there is so much debate – in the Handelsblatt even a little special – on the financial market, the debt crisis and obviously related matters, but for instance only leaving a small note in the political section  in the political section on page 8 of the SZ for just briefly announcing that EON, the multinational trust, plans to lay-off 11,000 of 85,000 workforce. In the Handelsblatt it ‘scores better, being left to page 54. Admittedly the SZ has a long article on page 24 which deals more indirectly with the EON issue – but the way it is written suggests it as a distinct, somewhat distant topic.

And one may ask why there is so much talk about liberalisation, free entrepreneurship and these days the division of the German nation – until 1989 the FRG and GDR – and at the same time there is so little attention given to the fact that it had been liberalisation of the finance markets that are a major part of the crisis scenario, that free entrepreneurship led to such a power concentration that today even liberal politicians fail to keep it under control and that today the German society is deeply split by a social wall – I commented already earlier and elsewhere on this issue.

And one may consider the link between the surely in many cases helpless, desperate youth protests, the ‘protest’ by bankers, gamblers and the like, fighting tooth and nail against democratic control and the loss of hope of the middle class. An earlier edition of the Handelsblatt asks

Is it really the money? What is in many cases more important is something else: recognition. Some would say respect. What matters is the self-esteem that is rooted in the sense and certainty of being part, of being valued as human being. If somebody feels excluded of ignored does – in the worst case – not respect property of others or even respect of other people. It is also when we look at the decent of the middle classes where it is not just money, but fear of loosing the respect of society – a respect that is considered to be rightful.

Discussing middle class politics and policies is surely a matter in its own right, a wide and contradictory field. However, reeding in Saturday’s thejournal.ie about Italy austerity measures: Government ‘puts its hands into the pockets of Italian people‘ and learning that

The proposed cuts to such critical services as local transportation and welfare would have “a depressive … effect,” hurting most the underclasses and inhibiting the productive north of contributing to national GDP, Roberto Formigoni, the governor of the northern Lombardy state, told reporters

does not tell much new – and we find a similar article for instance in the German FT; but thinking at the same time about what Philipp Loepfe writes in today’s Tagesanzeiger (Switzerland), namely that Capitalism destroys itself, – a suicide based on the fact that middle classes, small entrepreneurs: the supposed core or the liberal market society is pushed to the margins by the multinational trusts … – and reading in the SZ the somewhat heartening story about a small entrepreneur of the former GDR, too old to continue the business, not finding a successor as all potential successors moved to the former West – the entrepreneur faces now the problem of not having sufficient private resources to retire …. Indeed, after The Underclass Had Been Left Behind (as Wolfgang Streeck titles in the Handelsblatt, writing about the youth protest in London, precarity moves more and more to the centre of society.

Looking at the US, all this plays not least into the hands of the political right, namely the demagogic tea-party.Ands it plays into the hands of some not less anti-growth attitudes. To avoid being misunderstood. I am the last who suggests uncritically following the mainstream growth policy – I made this occasionally clear when talking about Joseph Stiglitz and his reaction on my question during an UN-University-conference to years ago or so. But the Handelsblatt article on Tyler Cowen as ‘The Theorist of Stand Still’ shows how subtle the arguments can easily move into a dangerous direction of a new-new liberalism.

Easily celebrating ‘The Good Spirit of the Neighbourhood’ in the last article of a series in the German FT, looking at ‘Do-It-Yourself-Citizens’, going hand in hand with celebrating the ‘Entrepreneurs emerging from the Street’, and article in the same paper: it is about the new capitalists in the so-called countries of the developing world.

And it is indeed about what I had been working on over the last weeks: emphasising in Bonn during the Global Forum on Human Rights, as part of the presentation to the MPI and during discussions with colleagues: again and again criticising the holy trinity as today’s capitalist saviours suggest:

* pre-modern, feudal patronage, charity and self-help – pure individualism as talked about in the contribution with Claire

I* suppression and open violence as means of stabilising the interest of the minority – pure government; governance, dismantled from its embellishing rhetoric and wearing the veil of Corporate Social Responsibility

* globalisation of pure capitalism – the Emperor, like resurrection of a superpower to which we just said farewell.

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Today’s Trinity of father, son and holy spirit – Today’s form of securing profit, rent and wages, suggestively merged in the postmodern patchwork biography, based on and leading ‘democratically’ to precarity for everyone. – Sure, there had been even some of the top managers getting suicidal when facing the hard reality of having abused the trust of so many people, facing the reality of having been part of the machinery that destroyed the foundation of the existence of individuals as societies. They faced a kind of reality which recently presented itself to me in form of one of the great pieces of paining: Peter Paul Rubens The Large Great Judgment from 1617.

I started by saying that reference to Kant, Hegel … my be bizarre, a kind of excursus, an excursion into another world of the unreal, surreal … But in either world we surely have to search for criteria

that allow to identify what is just and what is unjust (iustum et inisutum).

         May be after all that the worlds are not so much apart as they seem at first glance.

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* Marsch (sounds like Marsh) is the German term for march, walk

Spiders and Vipers

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

It is somewhat odd – before going to the train station, I have had some time left, sitting for some time on the market square of Freiburg. Saying “odd” actually is more about something else: looking around it feels somewhat anachronistic: enjoying what could easily be the last sun beams of the year, the day still youngish, the tourists only slowly showing up, instead the locals being around. Sitting there at the Lazzarin, facing the cathedral and the large welcome sign: Benedetto XVI. The presence of extreme conservatism, of a kind of mental and intellectual parochialism, complected with the presence of the modern network-society: De Netwerkmaatschappij as Jan van Dijk coined the term.

Supposedly it is this pope who started to use twitter – and though this is likely a well invented rumour, it is well invented as it reflects that today’s power of the church is very much founded on the ability to adapt to ‘modern” means of hegemonic power. – The new mechanisms simply a replication of old networks, old communitarianism under new veils?

– twitter, facebook … like the little canals that are in their unique way characterising the townscape. A couple of inches in width, others – the larger ones – perhaps a foot, enough to grasp attention; enough for some kids, playing with little boats or plastic ducks … – around me the Italian words, mingling of different worlds. Bravi – ma bravi … – the bell of the cathedral interrupts:  loud enough to bring my thoughts back into the real world, and also sufficiently other-worldly to allow my thoughts going stray …

____________________________

Later, many of the locals are not just the philistines one may expect. Also a ‘modern, postmodern’ populace, like men of private means, some possibly in their own way vanguards … – not in need of working, living from their worldly fortune (from wherever they got it) – and taking the freedom of looking for the fortune of the world; as if the four apostles are returning on stage.

Being able to claim a natural law of goodness as they are able to behave like goddesses, beyond the depths of fighting for daily existence ….

…. or is that a wrong impression – what appears to be vanguard actually being duplicators of what the centre produced and lived already for a long time?

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Is it really and entirely by accident and by being intellectually employed by exploring questions of law that I am thinking so much about Immanuel Kant, his definition of law, and the underlying methodological issues? Or is it the parallel of mental settings: Freiburg 2011 – Koenigsberg in the middle and late 1700s. And as he had been thinking about law in that remote place, being stuck in the routines of carrying his umbrella around: every day the same hour ….– and having this very open mind, he is now employing me. The distinction between conceptus dati and conceptus factitii – the given versus the made terms. It had been the analytical distinction which allowed, actually challenges him in elaborating a system for their linkage. Such abstract question you may suggest – though it is actually very the question we discuss today again: ‘good people’, the human as it is in itself given and a ‘naturally given value’, standing apparently against the greedy people, looking for their permanent personal enrichment. ‘Goodness against grabness’. Which easily had been seen by others as good against evil, god against the deveil – obviously the old question: What to do with the apple?

And coming back to the man from Koenigsberg it is at first stance rather simple: A matter of a constitution, a matter of making

THE constitution of the most extensive human freedom according to laws which allow the freedom of everybody to coexist with the freedom of others.

Reason, here, Kant’s understanding is that of a matter of the

practical idea.

And as such Kant sees it as matter of a constitutional process – if I recall his words from 1798 correctly

The idea of a constitution that is one with the natural rights of the human beings: those who are obliged to observe the law ought to be, united, also those who are legislators

He sees it as the general idea guiding the modern forms of the state and it is an idea that is based on the platonic ideal (respublica noumenon).

But as practical idea it is also in a permanent tension with an ‘absolute idea’ (as Hegel would call it), for instance and coming back to the philosopher from Koenigsberg: the

idea of reason of a peaceful community of all people.

A(n inter)play of the absolute, the eternal and the concrete, ephemeral …

People: regions, nations, individuals reaching for the apple and forgetting over the effort the joy of eating it.

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ICE 72: Freiburg-Karlsruhe (nice: by accident I met Baerbel and we had been sitting together in the dining car — IC 203: Karlsruhe-Stuttgart — S 3: Stuttgart/central station-Stuttgart/airport — S 2: airport-Filderstadt — a short walk, sitting in the sun, some writing, after hesitating: there seems to be a swimming pool nearby … eating the role I bought somewhere on the way – some more writing, now in the room as it is already getting chilly outside – a short night in the hotel — CSA 563: Stuttgart-Prague – CSA 480: Prague-Helsinki …. — Juhani will collect me from the airport ….

About one month working in Finland – research, some teaching, also taking part in a conference. Networking – being caught in and building up links: links across countries, bridges between disciplines: leaving real expertise to others but being perhaps a little bit expert in opening some doors, contributing a little bit of the cement needed for the bridges.

And – paradoxically perhaps – destroying bridges, or loosening ties between dualities. Overcoming dichotomies by trying to enforce larger networks, including more aspects, working on creating larger networks rather than maintaining the small ones. Reaching out to the centre rather than staying in the periphery. Making the periphery centre … – and the centre somewhat peripheral … – either way getting lost, also in the thoughts and impressions: the joy I felt during the last mornings: jogging through the valley near Freiburg, breathing the air of the early morning, the smell of the hay; the joy of seeing the apple trees while walking the short distance from the local train to the hotel …

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Sure, the story goes that there had been Adam, Eve, knit firmly together. Intervention: an apple and a viper. The scene of apparent harmony had been destroyed – all so well captured for instance in Albrecht Duerer’s painting from 1507: the tension between the unchanged and unchanging paradise of remote standstill: the indulgence of the here and now or any imagined telos of a final goal and the bravery of making freedom real, facing also the danger of failure. – As much as the viper opened the weld-seam between just the two: the dyad, opening the door to a triad, which then emerged as holy trinity; as much the viper crossed the border between spirit and body, opening the space for pure spirituality dichotomous to the space of pure physicalness, Kant surely crossed borders too: opening a space beyond dyad and trinity: the space for practical idea, limited as the practice had been bound to and coined by the idea, failing to emerge as real-real, remaining in the Platonic realm of the respublica noumenon. And thus remaining caught in the trinitarian formula – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, being later indirectly replicated in bourgeois political economy where profit, rent and wages had been defined as income of same quality, overlooking that – as Karl Marx said –

[t]he alleged sources of the annually available wealth belong to widely dissimilar spheres and have not the least analogy with one another. They have about the same relation to each other as lawyer’s fees, carrots, and music.

This trinity is the equality of the bourgeois society – a society with only the one vision and virtue: profit. and the faster the movement, the faster the turnover-rate of capital is, as better: leading money as financial capital to developing itself to an independent exchange mechanism, (apparently) remote from production; pushing land as source of rent to the danger of permanent over-fertilisation and monocultural use – including the abuse in form of deforestation of the rainforest; and forcing the workforce to accept alienated conditions, supplemented by the option to accept preacious conditions – the turnover reaching stupefying speeds.

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ICE 72: Freiburg-Karlsruhe — IC 203: Karlsruhe-Stuttgart — S 3: Stuttgart/central station-Stuttgart/airport — S 2: airport-Filderstadt — a short walk, sitting in the sun, some writing, after hesitating: there seems to be a swimming pool nearby … eating the role I bought somewhere on the way – some more writing, now in the room as it is already getting chilly outside – a short night in the hotel — CSA 563: Stuttgart-Prague – CSA 480: Prague-Helsinki …. at this stage Juhani collected me already from the airport …., I am sitting in the car ….; too busy with thinking and talking about the packed work schedule for the next weeks – too busy to think about the high degree of alienation that apparently makes the normal to something so very special: the smell of hay, the look at apples growing on a tree … – and being there to be picked and eaten and even the exact place where I am. Using the words of Pollock at altera, having lost the

ideal of national sovereignty,

in tendency opposing that

nationhood is the social form that renders modernity self-conscious – conscious of being contemporary – so that the cosmopolitan spirit may inhabit a world that is ethically synchronous and politically symmetrical.**

_____________________________

It is the goal – even in a non-theological society it is still some kind of telos – though movement seems to be the only thing, claiming true importance – it is the telos. And that an unspoken Bernsteinainism seems to re-emerge is only consequence of excessive movementalism, afraid of defining clear goals, hesitating to accept the need of a constitution as matter of positive law.

For some short periods it may be true:

What we usually cal final goal, socialism as a kind of telos is in my view not impartant. It is the movement that counts.

(Das, was man gemeinhin Endziel des Sozialismus nennt, ist fuer mich nichts, die Bewegung ist alles. [Bernstein, 1899])

For short periods, as part of the constitutive process of constitutions.

_____________________________

_______________

_____________________________

* Quotes are translations of Kant-texts, though the translation is rather liberal

**  Pollock, Sheldon/Bhabha, Homi K./Breckenridge, Carol A./Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 2002: Cosmopolitanisms; in: Breckenridge, Carol A. et altera (eds.) 2002: 1-14; here: 6

I had been recently reading Ralf Dreier’s text: Rechtsbegriff und Rechtsidee. Kant’s Rechtsbegriff und seine Bedeutung fuer die gegenwaertige Diskussion (Frankfurt/M.: Alfred Metzner, 1986 – surely inspiring in many respects inspiring for writing this little epistle.

The World – Perhaps Unexpected Impression from an International Meeting

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

ENA – the European Network Academy for Social Movements took place in Freiburg. An opportunity also for ATTAC’s academic council to be involved and also to have one of its regular meetings. For me an interim stop to take part, also taking part in the ceremony during which the hugely important contribution by Joerg Huffschmid to the development of political economy had been acknowledged.

Leaving the different facets aside there had been an impression that came probably rather unexpected – and it surely is unexpected as issue popping up as part of the various reporting on the event which will be done by the organisers, participants and many others. I lived a little bit outside of Freiburg – possibly a little bit comparable with the place in which I live in Ireland. A tiny, little bit dozy village (sure, in the positive sense). My first impression hadn’t been great – though arriving in a lovely spot I thought: here you are caught, you’ll spent a fortune for taxi-transport. I could spend several bits and bites now …, but to keep it short I’ll jut leave it with Saturday morning’s  impression: I took the bus at 6:10 – we arranged an early meeting with some people and I wanted to go for a nice coffee and a bite to eat before, and perhaps a stroll through the old town in the black forest (yes: town; still also more or less tiny, dozy … – black forest, which is still a little bit the world of fairy tales where one may expect gnomes and fairies at least lurking around some corners (surely not Saturday afternoons though, when the entire place is packed with people: shopping, and speaking a language which makes me believe I lost at least 60 percent of my knowledge of speaking German). The bus trip took about 8 minutes. And it had been a small bus – actually a taxi (8 seater or so). The three people had been dropped off at the tram station: line 1, the end stop, seen in the morning: the start of the tram heading to Freiburg. I stamped the ticket, took a seat, looked out of the window …, about three other small busses arrived, people walked across the small square of the bus stop, the door of the tram had been opened … – it didn’t take long – probably half ano hour after leaving the guest house I arrived in the centre.

Sure, much is about moving from the periphery to the centre – like the mosquito to the light: from the small villages, the remote areas, the detached farm houses … . And one may discuss such a move in more general terms – in this small  perspective of commuters and in the larger perspective of global world systems. But one may also discuss the way of moving – and the actual direction. Option one: the strict divide – the centre remaining the centre, the periphery being periphery – and all living in their own way and place and pace. Option two: reaching out from the centre: huge buses, like steamrollers: an offer to those who are living int he periphery and being able to withstand the pressure, better to say: to keep with the strength of such huge mashines. Said again in a different way: Those who are in the centre of the periphery. Those living a little further back – the periphery of the periphery …,

There are some who are in darkness
And the Others are in light
And you see the ones in brightness
Those in darkness from from sight

Option three, though the centre is still point of reference, the way of bringing centre and periphery together is one of looking after the needs of the centre, adopting to space and pace.

…..

I go for a lovely espresso, have my croissant (still miss my simit with which I fell in love the months I spent in Ankara, especially as the Freiburgian croissant is much more distant to the real French pastry than the distance between Freiburg and the French border may suggest), meet the others later: Baerbel first, Gunter … – we sit down for the meeting …, I have to leave little bit early – Brigitte kindly agreed to transport some stuff for me to Graz where I will collect it end of September when I go  there for the OFEB-congress, before finally returning to Ireland. After leaving here, I head back: ENA, discussing the development of strategies bringing people from the different local groups from the different countries together, diffuse impressions, opinions, various topics, seemingly not going well together, slowly merging, like little rivulets, coming together, merging to a stream  …

_____________

Sure, until finally arriving in Graz, it is not really the quite life, my space and pace trying to keep the space and pace of the global …

And in Ireland I will see, if I find a bus, bringing  me home. If things changed since the last time that I had been there? I do not know if these small buses do exist elsewhere in Germany nowadays. If so it is a new development. Perhaps something, Germany learned from countries in the periphery: personally I saw them the  first time in Moldova, the Ukraine …, recently so common again in Ankara … and now they reached the centre …

…; learning is possible.

May be all this is just another Kantian story – he once defined

Law is the  epitome of the conditions under which the caprice of the one can be brought together with the caprice of somebody else by observing a general law of freedom.

Recht ist der Inbegriff der Bedingungen, unter denen die WIllkuer des einen mit der Willkuer des anderen nach einem allgemeinen Gesetz der Freiheit zusammen vereinigt werden kann

And as the same author wrote elsewhere

That what people cannot decide for themselves cannot be decided by the legislator for the people.

Was das Volk nicht ueber sich selbst beschliessen kann, dass kann der Gesetzgeber auch nicht ueber das Volk beschliessen.(Kant, 1793)

An easily misinterpreted sentence from his work ‘Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis’. And still a sentence that may be worthwhile to think about – as it is worthwhile to think about bus services and the like.

Four Apostles

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

The usual reading – better to say: viewing – is the Christian one. And there it is a rather affirmative one: Duerer, the time of reformation and the apparent personal inner disunity – a universal artist, comparable in so many ways with Leonardo, remaining Catholic and nevertheless sympathising with the upcoming movement as promoted by Luther.

One of the well-known paintings is the one mentioned in the title: Four Apostles. And as much as it the artists appreciation of these key figures of Christianity and their specific merits for this social movement, as much it can be seen in a more psychological way, as representation of the four humours or four temperaments … – though surely not referring to the scientific works on these topics. I took a couple of times the opportunity to visit during a short break the Alte Pinakothek, just a couple of minutes walk from the office at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich’s Amalienstrasse.

There may be another reading – a more sociological interpretation; or even better: a socio-demographic perspective of its own kind.

One may say four temperaments is about four allowed temperaments, ‘roles’ defined societally and determining what we are allowed to do and what we are not allowed: expectations, though not written in stone being carried on the strong pillars of hegemonic systems.

Frequently over the last days and weeks I had been thinking abdout it – travelling through different worlds: Poland, Turkey, Russia, Germany. Travelling in and moving on different ‘national scenes’ – though often not really knowing in which ‘representative role’; or being excitingly lost with others in floating spaces, cosmopolitan, referring to roots as  something that …, I try to recall the way I expressed it talking today with my Bolivian colleague:

accepting the difference as something from which something new, a new unity emerges which does allow, creates new differences. Relationships not as being in relationship with others but being relationship as such.

Frequently over the last days and weeks I had been thinking of it: me, being the junior,  the senior, the cosmopolitan or the country-boy, the weird person from the little island, by many still seen as laid back, parochial …

And with all not least the person representing different ages, and engaging with different ages: young people, engaged, striving for change, innovation … standing up with their visions – sanguine as apostle John. Having visions and looking for what is in the widest sense ‘formally possible’, what appears to be possible even if only by way of thinkable.

The middle aged, here the younger striving for positions: individual careers, looking for options: realism if one wants, the dictatorship of the presence …, somewhat choleric, trying ‘to get there’, as they didn’t have a choice from where to start … Choleric at times like St. Mark. And then moving towards a somewhat phlegmatic stage – St. Petrian: standing in life where life out them – striving for standing: like a stone – unswerving, the ‘vision of fulfillment in the given framework. Tribulation as price paid for …, hope. In some way the protestant who once elevated him/herself, convinced of having reached the utmost possible, convinced that all the rest is about performance – and hiding the acrimony.

Old age then: vision merging with experience now, the ongoing strive for a better world, now based on at least more knowledge, the knwoledge as acknowledgement: freedom as insight, based on the acknowledgement of facts and on acknowledgment of the value of knowledge as value in itself. Vision as  following the latency and tendency which is inherent in the presence in its elementary form. Melancholy … – possible just about the consciousness of being part of an ongoing movement, knowing about the fruit and knowing that one will now be able to take part in the harvest. Paulean – or Platonic?

In any case, having been in  contact with so many different colleagues, it is always again interesting to see how we ‘define our roles’ by accepting hegemonic expectations: ‘roles’ and standards of behaviour: change – in a ‘jestery way’ – obvious left for those who are changing themselves: growing ideas for and from those who are obviously themselves growing; stability: doggedness – the subservience, the servility of those who stopped living,  how are alive, kept on the leash like dogs, the lead taken by the master. Freedom seems to be with the elder: old, grey and not looking for permission. Permitting themselves by following experience and allowing themselves to be a little bit like … jesters. – Let us all be jesters, at least to some extent. To the extent and in the way in which Ernst Bloch spoke

of four different kinds of possibilities, allowing us with this an informed approach to understanding them in their objectivity. He points on (i) the formally possible – what is possible according to its logical structure; (ii) the objectively possible – possible being based on assumptions on the ground of epistemologically based knowledge; (iii) the objectively possible – possible as it follows from the options inherently given by the object; (iv) and the objectively real possible – possible by following the latency and tendency which is inherent in its elementary form.*

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

The Pinaktohek – the long building – standing in front of Duerer’s painting and turning the back to it, one sees at the the other end another painting: Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, épouse Le Normant d’Étiolles, Marquise de Pompadour – the painting  by Francois Boucher. Another time looming – not envisioned  by the tame Duerer, envisioned by people, much younger …, much older … than this great artist.

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

Four temperaments – for dimensions of production to: the manufacturing in the strict sense, the distribution, the productive consumption and finally the exchange? I think I will leave that for another time.

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

And of course, there is a rights perspective entailed. It is easy to speak of rights, saying that some are fundamental, indivisible and universal.

The Declaration of Human Rights states in article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Is that then all? The right can be easily seen as obligation – though this is surely debatable. But even if we do not see it as obligation, it sets a certain norm: work as employed, ‘paid’ work – and thus as part of a capitalist economy as norm.
And in fact, from here we come nolens volens back to Christianity: the founding stone and at the same time the later established pillar: either way the stronghold of the system with which inequality and subordination is intrinsically linked** – looking at the Second Epistle to the Thessalnoians in the  New Testament where we read
For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. (2 Thess., 3:10)

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

The last evening, after the concert in the cathedral I sit down at the Odeons-Square fro an espresso – music from the other side, strange: in its remoteness determined, determining and reminding that there are new tasks ahead, on already now planned for the collaboration with a colleague from the colleague at the institute. Sure not three tasks, not a Trinity. But will I just Take Five instead?

 

The way will have to show …. – perhaps here, perhaps there – today here, tomorrow there.

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* with reference to Bloch, Ernst (1959) Prinzip Hoffnung; Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp [written in 1938‐1947; reviewed 1953 and 1959]: 258-288 from: Herrmann, Peter, 2011: ‘New Princedoms‘: 197)

** I know, I discussed liberation theology as well the afternoon of the other day – and there are many different kinds of ‘liberation theology’, not all even under such name and explicit ambition …

Yes We Can

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

Friday I received a nice postcard from Eva, showing the Øresund Bridge

What can be more correct than saying

in these times full of terror I think it is important to build bridges between people.

Sitting Saturday evening in the Brunnnenhof of the Munich Residence, Adrasteia sitting next to me – we arranged to meet at the entrance as I had to working during day time (what is new). It is good being together for a while. I am asking myself what is in a name, in her name, meaning “inescapable” and also “not running away”. Like my thoughts: The time here in Munich is coming to its end now – and though I will be soonish back at the Institute I have piles of work on my desk: piles that are waiting to be cleared before I leave rather than staying here, looking forward meeting me later the year.

My thoughts are not employed by the work – but by bridges, strange bridges, bringing spotlights of life, of personal and general history together that are seemingly much further apart than Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden and Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, Denmark.

Being here for the concert of Maria Farantouri I am of course thinking about Greece: The long history, suggesting Greece as one of the main cradles of our European civilisation – the medium historical level: only in 1974 chasing the regime of the colonels, which established its despotic rule in 1967 by a coup d’état, away: establishing democracy, now facing another turmoil: the coup d’état by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF. – Though saying it this way is possibly a little bit unjust as this most recent coup had been prepared for some time: the generals left, and as many democrats came as much they had been embraced by the lethal kiss of the viper, darting its tongue in and out: the stick and carrot policies of a (now) European Union (Greece joint in 1981). My mind is caught in a whirlwind of history: The Homeric epics of the Iliad and Odyssey

written in the form of ‘cantos’, the songs, the unforgotten Canto General and the recent socio-economic developments, events and also protests which I discussed so many times with Ioanna with whom I am still in touch since she asked me to write the article (“Greece and Ireland in the same crisis shaken boat”), and, which is of course frequently popping topic here with the Greek friends.

Bridges … – before coming here to Munich I worked in Ankara – and arriving there I looked for ‘local music’, and leaving Dede Efendi and also the excellent new Turkish Jazz aside, I frequently listened to the music by Zülfü Livaneli – his music as insightful and challenging as the books I red some time ago already.

As said, sitting there, a mild late summer evening, waiting for the open air concert to begin, my flickering mind is building bridges much linger than the one spanning between the two countries in the North. Greek dictatorship cam to an end in close connection with the invasion of Cyprus and thus the intensification of the conflict between Turkey and Greece ….

… on the other hand Livaneli and Farantouri showing the harmony, tensions striving towards solution …, productive tensions building bridges.

Other things floating in my mind, from the recent terror in Norway to the ongoing crusades: crusades between Rome and Mecca and Mecca and Rome, between Westminster and the Oireachtas and Oireachtas and Westminster …  – and though I am not thinking of it in terms of work now, I briefly think about last week’s discussion with Lorena, and the book she mentioned – a small, short text by Rudolpf von Jhering. He rejects the Savigny-Puchta approach that claims a pre-existing harmony from which law, rightfulness, right emerges like a result of Platonic love. In his work on “The Struggle of Law” he sees sword and scale as inextricably linked. Right needs to be fought for. And this is an eternal effort, a striving for the permanent ‘renewal’.

Law can only rejuvenate by doing away with its own past. A concrete right, which, after once emerging claims unlimited, this eternal persistence, is equal to a child, that raises the hand towards his/her mother. It ridicules the idea of law, by calling to her as the very idea of law is permanent becoming, but what once emerged has to open a space for new becoming.

Recently, when presenting to the Institute my ideas about Human Rights, Law and Economics a colleague from the audience said after I finished, during the discussion:

But aren’t these rights we are talking about today very much still the same rights that had been claimed – and breached – 50 years, 500 years, and even longer times ago?

Of course, many old debates – also the history that seems to be repeating on a personal level. Sitting here for the concert with Maria – after having listened to her 20, 30 of even more years ago. – Did really nothing change?

I turn to Adrasteia – “inescapable”, “not running away”.

Maria, comes onto the stage – not hiding that she has difficulties to walk, not hiding her age. But the voice still full of power …, moved and moving, full of power and empowering. I look around – the typical audience: the ‘old left’, surely rebellious at times and many now civilised, settled, sedated. One may say, reaching the end of their life’s fight. Many clearly showed

Yes we can

trying to hide a tiny disguise, the mutation of the we, having been swiftly transposed to the I – the letter I and the Roman figure I as the sole unity.

Maria is captivating, enchanting:

Yes we can

As long as we face the inescapable, as long as we don’t (allow) to run away.

Maria’s long silk orange shawl moves in the light wind, hides and leaves the view on the purple dress, a long necklace – simple and good looking. The voice is strong, behind it the devotion and warm passion for another world that is possible.

Cats and Enlightenment

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

The other day I sent a mail to a colleague and friend: after he let me know about the “very latest” Apple’s laptop; and after I came across the very latest software (OS) …. and after I sent him a devastating negative critique on that software I saw by accident – he replied, saying that he could not share  the critique after installing the OS … Fair enough – maybe that I install it soon myself …, but …: there is a more complicate answer to it, one that is not really about computers …. – so here it is:

Take your point, Kenneth; and not knowing the Lion, the cat itself had not been really my point. Nor Mac/apple or any special brand … . However, I am already since some time and receptively concerned about all these “the latest” and “the best”, quickly moving on to “very latest and the very best” and moving on to … – take food, take washing powder, take computers …, well, and take education and financial markets (of course, subsequently the crisis from 2007, though predictable since 2??? – not sure when exactly in the early 2000s I published something predicting its emergence), getting obvious in 2008, being bemoaned in 2009 (after overcoming the first shock) and now a matter of usage or something like it [perhaps even habit]. Due to the complete crash of my database which until today is not sorted, I installed office I don’t know what (the latest version) – it is so complicated that I cannot handle it, things are so easy, so much “supported” with macros etc. that many things are awkward … – I am now back to the previous version, and for mail I am using mail … – this apparently doesn’t allow me to use BE, at least the spellcheck highlights everything as wrong that doesn’t follow “big brothers” AE-rule.

Talking about rule – brings me to my current position, working on law. Though most of my own work is around philosophy of law, a look at more current issues has to be part of it. As usual, I forgot the figures. Roughly then just one example: the German Social Code – BSHG – had been established in 1962, serving as foundation for the area until 2004. Be assured, there had been many serious problems around the law, and with the BSHG itself and also with the implementation. I remember my own engagement on relevant issues – criticising relevant issues …, long stories, I could tell many and long stories (though I cannot tell you out of hand the dates). At stake had been very fundamental, systemic questions, matters of implementation – and all in between. – Still, for the good or bad this law had been in place until 2004 – changes had been made but only relatively few and not changing fundamentals. In 2005 Hartz-IV changed fundamentally the entire situation. I would be the last who would say: Oh, good old times – why should we change anything? But there is something which really is of concern for me: The same minute when the institutions of the parliamentary democratic system approved Hartz-IV, the very same law had been already discussed in the special committees – and the important point is: they discussed the need for fundamental changes.

As said, I would be the last who would say: Oh, good old times – why should we change anything.

And I surely would be the last who would say: Oh good god. There is no divine power to trust:

No Saviour from on high delivers

No faith have we in prince or peer

….

[You’ll find it somewhere here ;-)]

But the reason had been – so far I am indeed not too far from the humanist thinking as it finds its roots in the citoyenitée, revolutionary at its time, though at the end conservative in its idealism – the force to be guiding: guiding by circumspection, at least striving for providence.

Further a brief note on the law: legal provisions in the US (laws, acts …) are enacted and remain in place for a very short term only – the European had been different and increasingly changes, developing an ever shorter time of turn over. in in some way o the same point: Yesterday I have had a lengthy talk with Lorena, a colleague from Brazil who works here at the institute (really enjoyed it, really brought me forward in my own thinking. We discussed a text which I wrote as part of the book mentioned the other day.

As said, I would be the last who would say: Oh, good old times – why should we change anything. But something is surely remarkable. At one stage she said: most of the literature you refer to, are the classics. There is not much you use from what had been published more recently [though I actually made reference to Hart, Luhmann and other youngsters ;-)]. She mentioned – as missing – for instance Habermas. Sure, I could have included part of his work – but what did and does he really say what had not been said much better already by Kant, Weber … ?

There is good reason for change – but it should be reasoned, not rushed ….

But I have to rush now …, going to the bookshop, getting something to read when I don’t have the privilege of the use of the library here anymore.

And have to read, red, read and write, write, write … – but all with the one point in mind: it is not anout another interpretation, it is about change – that is then the focus next week ….

On Reason and Peace

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

Something we may have to think about as well when we look at the terrible incidents that happened in Norway the last days – I had been re-reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason while working on defintional issues of law. I found something that is important enough to be thought about, also as matter of thinking about the connection between ‘managerialism’ (as another form of ‘pure reason’) and the (re-)emergence of (here: Christian) fundamentalism and neo-fascism:

Philosophical cognition, accordingly, regards the particular only in the general; mathematical the general in the particular, nay, in the individual. This is done, however, entirely a priori and by means of pure reason, so that, as this individual figure is determined under certain universal conditions of construction, the object of the conception, to which this individual figure corresponds as its schema, must be cogitated as universally determined.

The essential difference of these two modes of cognition consists, therefore, in this formal quality; it does not regard the difference of the matter or objects of both. Those thinkers who aim at distinguishing philosophy from mathematics by asserting that the former has to do with quality merely, and the latter with quantity, have mistaken the effect for the cause. The reason why mathematical cognition can relate only to quantity is to be found in its form alone. For it is the conception of quantities only that is capable of being constructed, that is, presented a priori in intuition; while qualities cannot be given in any other than an empirical intuition. Hence the cognition of qualities by reason is possible only through conceptions. No one can find an intuition which shall correspond to the conception of reality, except in experience; it cannot be presented to the mind a priori and antecedently to the empirical consciousness of a reality. We can form an intuition, by means of the mere conception of it, of a cone, without the aid of experience; but the colour of the cone we cannot know except from experience. I cannot present an intuition of a cause, except in an example which experience offers to me. Besides, philosophy, as well as mathematics, treats of quantities; as, for example, of totality, infinity, and so on. Mathematics, too, treats of the difference of lines and surfaces—as spaces of different quality, of the continuity of extension—as a quality thereof. But, although in such cases they have a common object, the mode in which reason considers that object is very different in philosophy from what it is in mathematics. The former confines itself to the general conceptions; the latter can do nothing with a mere conception, it hastens to intuition. In this intuition it regards the conception in concreto, not empirically, but in an a priori intuition, which it has constructed; and in which, all the results which follow from the general conditions of the construction of the conception are in all cases valid for the object of the constructed conception.

Kant, Immanuel: Critik der Reinen Vernunft; Zweyte hin und wieder verbesserte Auflage; Riga: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1787 (erste Auflage: 1781); Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag: 1956: 614) (I did not check the English translation reproduced here.)

Human Rights – Law and Economy

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

But I wouldn’t start from here … – Contribution to Theorising Human Rights

Indeed, it is easy to say what we frequently suggest as solution to some of the problems – the Irish way: “But I wouldn’t start from here!” And indeed, it seems to be a simple thing, just starting from somewhere else and going a smooth part, just forward. The one thing is, of course, that we frequently do not really have a choice: we are just thrown into something, 18th Brumaire: history as nightmare, made by us but under conditions we find, that out of reach for us. But for the sake of truth, don’t we have to admit that we don’t think much about from where we start – not taking account of the variety of options as conceptualised by way of a counter-reality by Musil in his  “Mann ohne Eigenshaften” (“The Man without Qualities”)?

Human Rights – Law and Economy

is the title I gave to a public lecture I had been invited to give in the series of lectures at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, a lecture which is part of my stay in Munich – generously supported by the MPI (and giving work-opportunities in the library that are tempting to stay there over night) – will present some of the tentative results of the on-going research. The aim is to see the connection between Human Rights (legislation) and economy not in terms of the need to strive for just distribution of the wealth of this planet. Rather, at the core of the work are conceptual considerations. Sure, it is correct to say Human Rights begin at the breakfast table, the need to avail of sufficient resources for everybody. But we should not forget that the greatest ‘injustice’ is a system that can claim justice on the formal level. Although this is an underlying topic of the current research – and the presentation – at its heart stands the question of different modes of production and the way in which this has repercussions in the reflection on human rights and vice versa: in which way human rights perspective may impact on developments of the mode of production.

On a very pragmatic and really trivial level, working here again for a while, one has to strive with the every day’s decision from where to start: the library, the desk work (including the need to do the homework, following from teaching in Finland, Hungary and Ireland) or with meeting colleagues for shoptalk or simply for gossiping.