tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29566846.post2863231132765456962..comments2023-11-05T01:45:58.784-07:00Comments on The Hesperado: Montaigne: Godfather of PC MC?Hesperadohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10394374828751466705noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29566846.post-80560105988289036962017-05-03T18:20:32.587-07:002017-05-03T18:20:32.587-07:00Montaigne was a Marrano who was fascinated with Je...Montaigne was a Marrano who was fascinated with Jewish customs.<br /><br />https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne<br /><br />http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/montaigne-michel-deEggheadnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29566846.post-1526181867369913012012-03-17T13:19:29.847-07:002012-03-17T13:19:29.847-07:00One of your most interesting pieces, Hesperado. F...One of your most interesting pieces, Hesperado. For the most part a maximally entertaining balance of the abstract on the one hand, and meditation on concrete historical facts and personalities on the other.<br /><br />What you say about the bias toward primitive peoples because they are supposed to be "natural" and thus assumed to be superior to our supposedly "artificial" West, reminds me of part of Derrida's attitude to Western culture. Derrida does not privilege "nature" or primitives, but rather spent a great deal of time challenging that very bias. Derrida criticized what he took to be a central Western illusion going back to the ancient Greeks, namely the notion that nature is superior to culture, presence to absence, speech to writing. Despite all the absurdities and foolishness of "Deconstruction," Derrida in that respect agrees with your critique. But his work perhaps shows that the roots of PCMC go all the way back to the birth of Greek philosophy. Here's an excerpt from Encyclopedia Brit on Derrida: <br /><br /><i>Derrida is most celebrated as the principal exponent of deconstruction, a term he coined for the critical examination of the fundamental conceptual distinctions, or “oppositions,” inherent in Western philosophy since the time of the ancient Greeks. These oppositions are characteristically “binary” and “hierarchical,” involving a pair of terms in which one member of the pair is assumed to be primary or fundamental, the other secondary or derivative. Examples include nature and culture, speech and writing, mind and body, presence and absence, inside and outside, literal and metaphorical, intelligible and sensible, and form and meaning, among many others. To “deconstruct” an opposition is to explore the tensions and contradictions between the hierarchical ordering assumed or asserted in the text and other aspects of the text’s meaning, especially those that are indirect or implicit. Such an analysis shows that the opposition is not natural or necessary but a product, or “construction,” of the text itself.<br />The speech/writing opposition, for example, is manifested in texts that treat speech as a more authentic form of language than writing. These texts assume that the speaker’s ideas and intentions are directly expressed and immediately “present” in speech, whereas in writing they are comparatively remote or “absent” and thus more easily misunderstood. As Derrida points out, however, speech functions as language only to the extent that it shares characteristics traditionally assigned to writing, such as absence, “difference,” and the possibility of misunderstanding. This fact is indicated by philosophical texts themselves, which invariably describe speech in terms of examples and metaphors drawn from writing, even in cases where writing is explicitly claimed to be secondary to speech. Significantly, Derrida does not wish simply to invert the speech/writing opposition—i.e., to show that writing is really prior to speech. As with any deconstructive analysis, the point is to restructure, or “displace,” the opposition so as to show that neither term is primary.</i><br /><br />Deconstruction has played a large, and negative role in support of the PCMC paradigm, of course. And that despite the fact that it de-privileges nature and the noble savage. Deconstruction tends to turn relativism into an absolute, and that is one way of summing up PCMC.Traehhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09997009621742454158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29566846.post-51612999198010175972009-02-25T07:51:00.000-08:002009-02-25T07:51:00.000-08:00Okay, now I know a new word - stillicide.Redefinin...Okay, now I know a new word - stillicide.<BR/><BR/>Redefining the good guys as bad guys - ridiculously tempting! Also counterproductive. So I guess the task you've outlined is: <B>don't let our frustration with the PC Pollyannas allows us to think they are the devil incarnate. Remember that they're just unaware.</B><BR/><BR/>I think I'm going to tell all the smartest good people I know about this site. That's not very many ... you're sort of beyond the "grade level" of most people I know. But of course the moderately smart people can still benefit from Gates of Vienna I suppose. <BR/><BR/>Does anything beat Gates of Vienna for a simple recounting of events, of the kind that would establish a pattern of Islamization?B322https://www.blogger.com/profile/18257802768718375656noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29566846.post-8576882293010423272009-02-24T13:46:00.000-08:002009-02-24T13:46:00.000-08:00Blode, Thanks for your comments, I appreciate them...Blode, <BR/><BR/>Thanks for your comments, I appreciate them. I too had a teacher in college who revered Montaigne as a proto-Modern Man. <BR/><BR/>Just to comment on some of your statements:<BR/><BR/>Re: "not going without a fight" <BR/><BR/>It depends on what the nature of the "fight" is. I maintain that the largest and most central aspect of the "fight" (i.e., the intra-Western argument pro and con Islam) is not a clearly binary Good Guys vs. Bad Guys scenario, but a much more complicated situation where most of the Good Guys are on the wrong side. The tendency I see from too many in the anti-Islam movement is, when they notice the massive data that indicates that most Good Guys are on the wrong side with regard to the issue of Islam, they tend to try to simplify the problem by doing one of two things:<BR/><BR/>1) deny that massive data and continue to insist that most good, decent folks (i.e., the majority throughout the West) are on the right side in this issue<BR/><BR/>2) re-define those Good Guys as bad guys.<BR/><BR/>"Indeed, if we were to eradicate every last trace of political correctness from our minds, we would essentially lose our ability to self-criticize. I see no way around this - politesse, self-criticism, "putting yourself in the other bloke's shoes", humility - these virtues all blend into vices."<BR/><BR/>Not necessarily. There is hope that they don't -- and that hope is rooted in the massive reality that the West, in former times, had more balance about the tension between self-criticism and self-praise with regard to non-Western cultures. As with all human movements, it was and is a process, and as with all human processes, it can never be solidified into permanent stability. Nevertheless, the West was healthier in this regard for centuries, and it can become so again. Whether it must be shocked in massively horrific ways -- by a non-Western people it insists must be benign -- in order to recover that kind of rationality, only time will tell.<BR/><BR/>"The question then is, how to "shrink the cancer" or "control the addiction" or some similar kind of metaphor. But I know the answer is likely to be very long."<BR/><BR/>Re my last paragraph above, the likely way it will play out will be a combination of the slow patient stillicide of a growing anti-Islam movement within the West, combined with horrific shocks coming from Muslims. The combination of these two will help to dismantle the PC MC paradigm, but as I see it, it probably won't be realized for several decades, probably an entire century. The longer it takes, the bloodier and messier will be the solution, but I have hope that the West will win in the end.Hesperadohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10394374828751466705noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29566846.post-35879488351667317172009-02-23T16:04:00.000-08:002009-02-23T16:04:00.000-08:00This is the most interesting and best-argued thing...This is the most interesting and best-argued thing I have read on the web in months. I would love to see a couple of my dear ol' professors respond to it. A couple of them seemed to worship the ground Montaigne walked on, but I never got a clear idea if they were part of the PC MC albatross dangling from the neck of academe.<BR/><BR/>Your second-to-last paragraph skewers a number of notions I have believed in quite strongly from time to time. I wrestle with them because they are, quite simply, "not going without a fight" ... but your arguments are highly convincing. <BR/><BR/>Indeed, if we were to eradicate every last trace of political correctness from our minds, we would essentially lose our ability to self-criticize. I see no way around this - politesse, self-criticism, "putting yourself in the other bloke's shoes", humility - these virtues all blend into vices. <BR/><BR/>The question then is, how to "shrink the cancer" or "control the addiction" or some similar kind of metaphor. But I know the answer is likely to be very long.B322https://www.blogger.com/profile/18257802768718375656noreply@blogger.com