Inherent Vice: Groucho Marx & Mickey Wolfmann

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 19.01.2011 16:59, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

> Hobbes is a key, but from a modern perspective, so is Leo
> Strauss.

So called "negative anthropology" is indeed a strong tradition of 
thought. See also Freud or - for that matter - Arnold Gehlen. When 
Strauss writes about Hobbes: "But the most powerful of all passions will 
be a natural fact, and we are not to assume that there is a natural 
support for justice or what is human in man" (from 'Natural Right and 
History'), no one would deny that the fear of death is a major 
motivation in people. Thing just is that (worldwide) justice is a SOCIAL 
project. If the fear of death would always have the last word, how could 
one, for example, explain the American revolution? Or the Paris Commune 
of 1871? When Strauss writes: "[Avoided] Death takes the place of the 
TELOS" (ebd.), this is an anthropological reductionism, which does, imo, 
not meet the social possibilities of mankind. If political cynicism à la 
Strauss is taking over completely, we all are actually doomed. Let me 
tell you a story I recently read in a book by Badiou. One day, in the 
late 1950s, he was walking in Paris with Sartre. And it was the time the 
Stalinist terror crimes were heavily debated, lots of people having had 
lost faith in any kind of socialism usw. "Now", Sartre said, "however 
tragic this all is, we have to go on trying to find a way to worldwide 
justice. And THEY will not want to allow this. But if we do not even 
try, we are in no way better than ants or termites ... Part of the 
Darwinist struggle for life, survival of the fittest and all that shit". 
And that's why I'll always sympathize with freedom fighters who go up 
against the Empire bzw. "the Great Game", as Pynchon calls it with 
reference to Kipling in Against the Day. "You may say I'm a dreamer 
...", yes, yes, but then again --- no: We don't have to seek consolation 
in naive Rousseauistic dreams, or idealize the Polynesian people like 
Wilhelm Reich did. It's likely more promising to develop a 
Left-Schmittesque concept of "the nomos of the earth", whereby 'nomos' 
is for Schmitt the unity of order and regional place ("Einheit von 
Ordnung und Ortung"). You could also say that for Carl Schmitt order and 
law can fruitfully only exist on a local basis ("Recht ist Recht am 
rechten Ort allein"). As an Anarcho-Socialist I'd suggest: Not a 
centralist hierarchic state, yet small heterarchic communities ...

Power to the People!

Kai