Potpourri from Charlie Hebdo -- November & December 2016, & January 2017

9 November 2016 / No. 1268, p. 12.

 

 
Under the rubric: Charlie sitting by the fire.

 

Icons. “Arendt-Heidegger: The Fall of the Idols.” By Yann Diener

            “ABSTRACT: The passion that tied Hannah Arendt to Martin Heidegger was not just of the flesh. Despite the apparent contradictions, and despite the awkwardness that resulted from it, we are obliged to conclude that this passion represented as well an intellectual bond. Emmanuel Faye’s recent book provides a new look at the complex relationship between these two icons of 20^th century philosophy.

In his recent work, Arendt and Heidegger, Nazi Extermination and Destruction of Thought (2016: Albin Michel), the philosopher Emmanuel Faye shows that Hannah Arendt, who has been considered the critic of totalitarianism, adhered for the most part to the ideas of Heidegger. After publishing in 2005 Heidegger, the Introduction of Nazism into the Philosophy, Emmanuel Faye is now interested in the relationship between Heidegger and Arendt, and in particular the role of philosophy in the world-wide diffusion of the texts of her former professor.

            The work of Arendt has become compulsory in any analysis of totalitarianisms, and yet her work embodies an apologetic for Heidegger. An anti-Semitic Heidegger, who eulogizes the “internal truth and grandeur” of the Nazi movement. Is this a contradiction? Up to now, everyone has preferred explaining this ambiguity by citing the relationship between Arendt and Heidegger (the professor and the student were lovers in the 1920s). Everyone wanted to believe that Arendt was protecting her love for Heidegger without following him in his ideas. Unfortunately, this is unconvincing.

            After rereading the texts of Arendt, which referred either explicitly or implicitly to Heidegger, and after accessing an unpublished correspondence, Faye shows that the attachment of Arendt for Heidegger is profound. She chose to adopt the ideas of her former professor, to “follow in his footsteps,” – to use her expression. The idea of Nazism that Arendt has, which is functionalist and structural, allows her to rehabilitate all of the Nazi ideologues:  she sees Nazism and its crimes as the extreme consequences of the way our mass societies function. We all knew already that Arendt was shocking when she put forward the thesis that the Jewish Councils shared in the responsibility for the extermination. Faye underlines that she goes so far as to assert their co-responsibility with the Nazis, and to reduce the Final Solution to resolving an overpopulation problem.

            In fact, both The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, two Arendt texts that constitute the foundation for much current scholarship about totalitarianism, develop a vision of modernity that is entirely Heideggerian in nature. Of course, Arendt is not Heidegger; and Faye certainly knows that Arendt did not have access to the Black Notebooks or to Heidegger’s more violent texts, those which have only now been added to the corpus of the Complete Works.

God of Thought.

But Faye also shows the effort made by Arendt to raise Heidegger up to the level of being a ‘God of Thought’, by contrasting him with Eichmann, the ‘One Who Does Not Think’. With this nightmare couple, Arendt creates what Faye calls a bipolar structure, a sort of new Modern Myth. We understand better why Arendt accepted the thesis of Eichmann at the time of his trial, and why she constructed the conceit of this banal fool, a cold executioner without ideas – although we have since learned that there was also an Eichmann, Ideological Fanatic.

            Faye’s minutious demonstration is very disconcerting, but also very important for at least two reasons. For constructing a more complex analysis of totalitarian ideas and projects, both past and present, religious or not. And, for allowing Faye to interrogate other 20^th century authors who claim to derive from Heidegger, like Sartre, Levinas, or Derrida (when Derrida critiques Heidegger, he uses Heidegger’s ideas!). And then there is Lacan. At the beginning of his teaching career Lacan depended enormously on Heidegger.  Even if Lacan was able to get past Heidegger, the disciples of Lacan – and myself first of all – depend all too much and too lightly on a Lacan who cites Heidegger. The debate, even if it is violent, has been happening on the battlefield of philosophy, but it has not yet happened on the psychoanalytical battlefield.           

            It is one of the merits of Emmanuel Faye’s book, that it encourages us to shake up our idols. So, philosophers and psychoanalysts, just another little effort to stop being Heideggerian.”

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23 November 2016 / No. 1270, p. 12.

Under the rubric: Charlie sitting by the fire.

 

Intellectual Bankruptcy. “Finished, pop-philosophy, here comes Trump-philosophy.” By Yann Diener

            “ABSTRACT: More than any other electoral campaign, the campaign that pits Trump against Clinton happened without any debate about ideas. Nothing surprising, then, that Slavoj Zizek should put in his two-cents worth, the philosopher-guru who offers as his basic argument that we should keep fleeing into the future.

Whoever said that Trump did not have any intellectuals with him? He may have had only one supporter from the university-world, but that came from someone who has the ear of a great many American and European students: Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher, who has been hosted by all the important American universities, and has become the star of pop-philosophy. This is a notion invented by Gilles Deleuze, and which consists of applying philosophical questions to trivial objects, a strategy that Zizek has pushed to the n^th degree, to the point that he has even been called the Elvis of social criticism.

            Students from Berkeley or from New York University were astonished to hear this famous thinker come out in favor of Donald Trump’s candidacy. They were baffled to hear Zizek describe the millionaire as a disgusting but necessary revolutionary, during an interview on British Channel 4, last November 3^rd.

            Zizek said in this interview that, were he an American, he would vote for Trump; then he engaged in a number of dialectical pirouettes for which he is famous. Certainly, Trump scares Zizek; but the real danger, he says, is Clinton. “Where I was entirely in agreement with Trump: When Bernie Sanders finally threw his support to Hillary, Trump announced that it was as if someone from Occupy Wall Street was backing the Lehman Brothers.”

            Zizek finished the interview by saying that he was delighted by the businessman, “who stomped on all the non-written rules that make politics possible, and upon which everyone agrees: Trump threw a monkey-wrench into all that.”

            Apologies for the fine Hegelian dialectic, but this demonstration seems to me to be just as short-sighted as the one from the worker in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region who votes Front National (Marine Le Pen’s extreme right wing party) because we have not yet tried Le Pen in a position of power, and because such a vote would certainly not fail to stir things up in the present system.    

            Again, Slavoj Zizek: “If Trump wins, the two biggest parties, republicans and democrats, will have to return to their bases, will have to rethink themselves, and then perhaps something can happen. This is my hope, my desperate hope. Trump will not introduce fascism, because America is not yet a dictatorship. But it will be a sort of big wake-up call. New political processes will be put into place. Even if I am aware that it is dangerous, and not just in terms of supremacist groups: Trump has said openly that he will name extreme rightwing people to the Supreme Court. There are dangers, but I am more afraid that Hillary will stay aligned with this total inertia, which is even more dangerous.” (Note that Zizek uses Trump’s name, but addresses Clinton by her first name.)

The End Justifies the Means.

The great Slovenian philosopher turned political scientist and seer: he assures us that fascism is not for tomorrow in the United States. Does he regret this? After all, he did claim that Hitler had not been “violent enough” [TN: in “Why Heidegger made the right step in 1933,” International Journal of Zizek Studies, I, 4, 2007]. (That must have been more of that dialectic…).

            Zizek calling for a Trump vote, is a little like Derrida declaring in 2002 that the election of Le Pen would cause a great wake-up call for the political parties. Is it possible that Zizek, who is often thought of as a useful provocateur, bubbling over with neat, subversive ideas (such as, recently, that of remilitarizing Europe), might even be a bit of an embarrassment to the extreme left with this pronouncement?  This Left that sees in him, along with his friend Badiou, their Great Thinker.

            Roland Barthes used to say that in order “to exasperate the fixed order of sentences, to break the structures of language,” one does not need subversion. You have to have an upheaval. Barthes himself did not used to predict from which horizon the earthquake would come. So we are forced to observe that for Zizek, as for Badiou, the end justifies the means: Pol Pot, or the jihad, or, today, Trump, are the disruptions necessary to overthrowing the system in place.

            Which puts Zizek on the same page as the neocon Newt Gingrich, principal actor in the “conservative revolution” of the 1990s and probable Secretary of State in the future American administration. On the eve of the beginning of the American primaries, Gingrich announced that the candidacy of Trump constituted “one of those vital disruptions whose nature it is to remodel everything.”

            And now that Trump has been elected, what does our philosophical Elvis say? He continues to strike out at Clinton, and does not criticize anything but the physical appearance of the president elect: he even writes a column in Le Monde of November 12^th entirely dedicated to Trump’s hair style!

            Zizek has passed, resolutely, from pop-philosophy to Trump-philosophy. In recompense, he is still waiting for his appointment to the deanship of some important American university, in order to be able to set into motion the great awakening of University Thinking.”

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28 December 2016 / No. 1275, p. 3.

Riss’s Editorial

“Minds like a sieve” (Les têtes passoires, or Birdbrains)

“The execution in Milan of the author of the Berlin terrorist attack by the Italian police, instantly provoked the anger of the right and of the extreme right against the Schengen zone. For Florian Philippot, of the Front National: “Let us put an end to this sieve that is the Europe of the Schengen Area.” For Eric Ciotti, of the Republicans: “Europe has for a long time been a sieve-like Europe with no controls on its external borders; it is time for Europe to rearm.” And for Nigel Farage: “If the man killed in Milan is the terrorist from Berlin, then the Schengen Area is a risk for public security, and must disappear.”

            Schengen to blame for terrorism… someone has to be to blame after all. Yet, as the JDD [NT: Le Journal du Dimanche is a weekly French Sunday newspaper] reminds us, the Schengen Agreement does not forbid reestablishing border controls. Since 1995, unhindered circulation has been suspended more than 20 times, and, in the case of “exceptional circumstances,” borders can be reestablished for a duration of up to 24 months. This is not the right argument, but it is, of course, always good to be seen to whack on Europe when we do not have anything else to say. The right-wing nationalists and the extreme right-wing parties rarely have satisfying explanations; they only have scape-goats. And, if possible, scape-goats who do not lift their voices up in protest. Like the various minorities—yesterday the European Jews, today the Roma and the immigrants. Likewise, the Schengen Agreement has the requisite quality to become the ideal scape-goat: it neither talks nor protests.

            Schengen to blame for terrorism, is a con for another reason. In France, almost all of the terrorist attacks were committed by French citizens converted to Islamism. Good little French folks, born in France, grown up in France, and killing in France. What could borders have done against these?

            The argument about the borders does not hold any water, so the right-wing nationalists try to make-do with immigration; because controlling the borders can no longer be the solution, immigration toward Europe must be prohibited. For a week now, in Germany, the AfD (NT: The Alternative for Germany, a right-wing populist political party) has been using this argument in accusing Merkel of being responsible for spilled blood because she allowed one million refugees to enter the country, among whom there were some terrorists. Welcoming such a large number of migrants in such a short space of time could not have been an easy job, and certainly carried some risks. But in an attempt to conquer new territories, Islamism is willing to forget about physical borders, because it is in minds that it first wishes to become established. No border guard can prohibit the internet from diffusing videos calling for stupid young French or Germans to join forces with Daech. We cannot build any border guard stations nor any barbed-wire fences, no matter how many miles in length, in the inside of heads. Sieve-like Europe does not exist; there are only sieve-like minds. 

Just between France and Belgium there are more than 1500 points of entry or exit. In the brain of a young brainless kid, how many billions of gray cells would one have to control in order to keep Islamism from entering through the borders of his skull? Certainly more than 1500. When one is submerged by the multitude of minds contaminated by a totalitarian ideology, one is tempted to give up trying to convince them, one by one, to return to reason. Just like in the zombie movies, physical borders do not help in protecting yourself against them. The only alternative is to take a shot-gun and shoot them between the eyes. But, then, you really cannot say that out loud. And yet, supposedly, already 75% of the jihadists in Syria have been killed in fighting in the Middle East. But, officially, terrorists are still considered to be human, and our democratic societies have the obligation to treat them as such. In order to do this, centers for deradicalization had to be created—in order to save their souls from perdition, to be able to reestablish boundaries in their troubled minds, but this time between good and evil. Centers for deradicalization are like collection at mass, one puts a small coin in the offering plate to appease one’s conscience.

            The military Chief of Staff is also passing an offering plate. He publically declared that the government needed to augment by 2% the part of the Gross Domestic Product [NT: PIB = GDP] dedicated to the Army, in order for the Army to have the means to continue the war against the zombies—or the terrorists, if you prefer. The war against the terrorists will not be won with border and border guards. Terrorists do not give a damn about borders. But then again, neither do the Rafales (TN: French military aircraft), which take off from the aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle in order to eliminate those terrorists.”

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Miscellaneous

Cartoons from 18 January 2017

 

 

All translations are by Phrontisterion. Further reading around Charlie Hebdo themes in Phrontisterion:

• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2016/09/a-rousing-charlie-hebdo-rendition-of.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2015/12/paris-and-charlie-hebdo-enlightenment.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2015/11/paris-and-charlie-hebdo-wager-on.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2015/01/january-2015je-suis-charlie.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2016/02/heidegger-treacherous-millesime.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2015/02/the-divine-right-of-kings.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2015/03/enlightenment-and-spirit-of-jihad.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2015/11/from-eric-emmanuel-schmitt-question-on.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2016/04/martin-heideggeris-lady-philosophys.html
• ·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.fr/2015/05/singing-good-and-evil-in-garden-of-lord.html

Predators of a Moneyed Sort

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson after him, former US presidents both (2^nd and 3^rd respectively), were committed to the idea of educating all the citizens of the young United States, because they were persuaded that the more general diffusion of learning would have the effect of fragmenting political and social power, which always seems, when seen through History’s prism, to want to coagulate around wealth and birthright. On September 15, 1813 John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson that by the broad dissemination of learning, “Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts (Jefferson Correspondence, Vol. XIII, p. 400).”

            A little earlier in the same letter (XIII, p. 375) Adams also expresses sympathy with the following sentiment: “The conclusion of the whole [speaking of an anonymous work that Adams had received] is that an aristocracy of bank paper is as bad as the nobility of France or England. I most assuredly will not controvert this point with this man.”

            So we are reflecting on two ideas – 1) that We the People, of philosophical necessity, must dare to darken the corridors of knowledge and learning so that Power cannot not just simply be passed down according to Wealth and Inheritance; and 2) that an Aristocracy of finances is no different from any notion of Old World Nobility – both are exceptionalist (read neo-conservatively = elitist), neither is naturally committed to the philosophical idea of We the People, and neither concept of aristocracy is based on Intrinsic Merit. The aristoi (the best) in this sense are not necessarily the best in virtue nor in personal achievement nor in excellence, but are rather those who control the Wealth.

At this moment of our incursion into History, it would seem that the metaphors are mixing anew—because, as others have once said, in this best of times and worst of times that we are busy with, a very deep philosophical Winter of our discontent is settling in for the long haul. Our Times, currently, are being made toxic by a steady climate of financial (and other) warfare and woe. Now I do not wish to diminish any sort of human suffering, but a Karl Marx would suggest that economic imbalance and woe has been the hallmark of human exchange ever since the first cave-fellow started bartering with his neighbor. According to Marx, Injustice was born the day one cave-fellow decided to overcharge the other because of some odd notion whereby one believes that over and above the material parity (and therefore fairness or justice) in the exchange, one also has some inalienable right to an additional ‘added value’, which we add on additionally, arbitrarily, to the basic or inherent value of an item. We call this additionally added-on value, profit. Marx was pretty persuaded that, in the end, both parties left the bartering table winterfied in discontent, because by paying more than the real or actual worth of the item (i.e., the item + the additionally added-on value or profit), each bartering cave-fellow pretty much thought that he had gotten the short end of the stick in the deal—that the deal was therefore no deal. This, in turn, engendered in both parties at least the psychological sense of personal devalue or insufficiency, even if perhaps not the material presence of any lack.

In the news we regularly hear about the European nations that are in economic difficulty. Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, of course, are in dire straights; and the language of bankruptcy and the withdrawal of Greece from the Euro zone is on all the media lips. There was a collective “Ça, alors!” from the French when France’s S&P note was downgraded, then the media pundits floated the possibility that Germany’s credit rating was maybe, perhaps, potentially, and possibly being threatened with a downgrade (GASP! or OMG! for the younger philosophers)—all was a-flutter & a-twitter for the coterie of bankers and financers, because it actually became imaginable that Germany might not perhaps be as ‘sound’ an investment, at this juncture, as it was Tuesday morning last! What a relief when S&P changed their mind!

But what does all this mean to the Phrontisterion philosopher who is gazing at this world (apparently) coming apart at the seams? Our media journalists tell us in the flood of news concerning the woes of these European countries that a downgrade in their S&P note means that the cost for them to borrow money from banks and other financial institutions is going to increase. So, the more dismal a country’s financial troubles become, the more it gets to pay in interest costs (i.e., profits) the Princes of Finance to borrow the money to get out of the hole—the deeper the hole, the happier and wealthier become the Princes of Finance…and the crankier it seems, which in turn drives up the borrowing rates! The Logic of Money seems to be fundamentally emotional – because the cost of borrowing money increases as one’s need for that money increases. As was suggested above (talking about cave-fellows), this situation is not new. By way of anecdote, I remember reading in some interminable history on the Wars of France that one of the French kings, who was busy trying to get on with the business of waging war with the Dutch on his northern borders, had to keep leaving the battlefield to go back to Paris for meetings (and dinners!) because some financier, from whom he was borrowing money to pay his soldiers and to keep his canonniers in shot and powder, did not think the king’s S&P rating was keen enough to keep lending against the increases in the price of shot and powder. Voilà a simple example of kings of countries bending the knee to princes of finance in the name of supply and demand economics.

My problem with this situation is philosophical in nature, because, although I generally keep my own financial house in order, it is evident from this analysis that I must not be a very insightful economist; for I cannot find a reasonable defense for Predation of this sort. Now the principle at work in this type of logic is obviously Predation, and it is a Predation that goes straight for the jugular vein. Scenario One: Greece has no particular economic woes, but just needs a little regular jingle in the pocket to keep the Hinges of State lubricated (her S&P rating is high); so Bankers and Investors lend money cheaply. Stately Pockets are a-jingle, Bankers and Investors are making profits from the interests on their loans – everyone is happy.

            Scenario Two: Greece has significant economic difficulties (for any and all possible reasons, so her credit rating is downgraded), and the Hinges of State are rusted completely closed; so although Bankers and Investors continue to agree to lend money (albeit under increasing duress), they significantly boost their lending rates and shorten repayment times. Let’s pretend I’m Greece, and let’s do the math. I have a BIG debt [debt-1] because I am a big thing called a State and I have to pay for all the state employees like police and military, in addition to all my infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, metros, buses, public buildings, hospitals, museums, airports, ships, etc. I don’t have quite enough jingle in my coffers to cover all my immediate BIG debt payments and costs, because things get more and more expensive as we go along, so I borrow money to cover that debt (which means I acquire debt-2 to make the payments on debt-1); but I now also have to pay interest on debt-2, which means that while I still have the equivalent of debt-1 (although d-1 is now paid off by the acquisition of debt-2), I must now also pay whatever higher interest the Bankers and Investors are requiring for the borrowing of debt-2.  So I now have d-2 + high interest rates.

One learns from uncritical Bright-Lights of the media that the justification for the higher interest on debt-2 is that, in Scenario Two, Greece has less ‘credibility’ because it has significant liquidity problems (and isn’t it just so obvious that Greece has no collateral to guarantee its debt!), and therefore has to keep borrowing additional money to pay its debtors. The Lenders and Investors have become skeptical that Greece will actually be able to pay back its full debt (d-2 + higher interest rates + additional short-term loans, etc.), either entirely or on time (this explains the cyclical downgrade of the S&P rating), a skepticism that is otherwise well-justified because these same Lenders and Investors did the math before lending to Greece, and they know that the interest payment alone for Greece, not to speak of the debt itself, is phenomenal, and pretty much beyond the possibility of repayment by mere mortals, even though they be such as these illustrious Guardians of Olympus.

So what have we learned from this philosopher’s doing of the math? One: he should not quit his day job. Two: the Lenders and Investors always make money, and they are making a ton of money in this situation – we must not forget that, for such as these, Interest equals Profit, including for those Lenders and Investors who are presently speculating on the successes and failures of the various European states. Three: that the more money Lenders and Investors lend and invest (whose money is this anyway?), and therefore the more profit they make, the grumpier they become and the more they charge for lending and investing. Four: that Lenders and Investors do not seem to be interested in Big Ideas, neither in the idea of working out the kinks in a Democracy, nor in the idea of the Greek State, nor even in the more complex idea of whether this particular incarnation of Greece fails or succeeds as a national entity. These Lenders and Investors are interested only in guaranteeing good returns on their investments. Five: that Lenders and Investors consider themselves above and beyond the interests of ordinary men and states.

And, finally, Six: that in the world of ideas the philosophes of America’s youth, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, have lost this battle for an idea—soundly. The American Revolution of the 18^th century had its fifteen minutes in the Light of men’s Reason thanks to the Founding Fathers; the Industrial Revolution of the 19^th century, although still on life support in some places, is in America mostly just resting on its laurels under some shade tree; and Wall Street financialization, the Tacit Revolution of the 20^th century, has carried the day, chucking out on its way the ideas and principles of Old Glory’s philosophes while We the People forgot to pay attention. We are become a Nation of philosophical Foundlings, for while We the People were out working hard trying to scratch out a living, the –cracy of the People was exchanged for a –cracy of the Pluts.

In our version of a brave New World, Wealth has come to trump Education; and the Aristocracy of bank paper in which we live, breathe, and have our being is, in truth, no different from the nobility of Old Europe – it is neither committed to the philosophical idea of We the People, nor even interested in personal virtue, or personal achievement, or personal excellence. So the winner is: Wealth, and its devotees who harvest and consume the fruit of other men’s labor.

Is it still time for We the People of the United States of America to charm these new Financial Aristocrats back into the safely of our philosophical keep? Or is that page of America’s history forever turned?