Kermit switched the samples!
Aug. 16th, 2005 02:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
So, back around February, I was thinking I should start eljaying to put my insightful predictions on some kind of record, since I had successfully predicted that a minute-after-the-last-minute NHL agreement would be reached (oops) and that the Liberals would survive the budget vote due to Conservative defections (well, it turned out to be one big one instead of a few little ones).
Of course, since I've started eljaying, I haven't been able to come up with any new ones. Until now: it is my fearless prediction that the story that Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for stanazolol will turn out to be false; my theory is it was trumped up to get him to say what he actually tested positive for (if it wasn't just malicious or mischievous). Back in 1988, people were wondering why Ben Johnson would have been taking an obsolete, blunt-instrument steroid like stanazolol.
High temp today, here: 26. Dewpoint then: 11. High dewpoint: 16.
High temp today in TO: 28. Dewpoint then: 12. High dewpoint: 17.
Still hasn't been warmer here than in TO a single day since I've started keeping track.
Today, read Joseph S. Catalano, "Good and Bad Faith: Weak and Strong Notions" (in Sartre and Existentialism, Vol. 5: Existentialist Ethics, ed. William L. McBride) and James Schmidt, "Habermas and Foucault" (in Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity, ed. Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves and Seyla Benhabib). Also re-read Real Fillion, "Freedom, Responsibility, and the 'American Foucault'" (Philosophy and Social Criticism 30, 2004).
Catalano argues for a "strong" interpretation of "bad faith", as against the "weak" one which I've tended toward: the weak one has it that bad faith is inescapable and good faith impossible because we can never get away from the tension between the in-itself (our facticity, essence, what we are) and the for-itself (our freedom, existence); the strong one has it that we are in bad faith only as along as we are unconscious of the contingency of ourselves as in-itself. From a philosophical perspective, it's not an important point--it's just semantics--but from a scholarly perspective, it could be a useful reference as I'm trying to get my interpretation past the Sartreans. One thing that seems off about it is that it identifies bad faith with self-deception, but on my understanding bad faith is a narrower category--it's other-directed self-deception, social behaviour based on self-deception. (That was actually clarified for me by an article co-written, in French, probably 30 years ago, by Lorraine Code--I forget where I came across that.)
Schmidt's piece was helpful in zeroing in on what is particular about Habermas's critique of Foucault (as opposed to Taylor et al.'s): Foucault, as Foucault, is necessarily "cryptonormative" (i.e., on his own terms, he's not entitled to any normative judgments, so he has to sneak them in) because his methods treat truth-claims externally, i.e., in terms of their conditions of possibility and their effects within a discourse, an apparatus of power relations, what have you. So, Foucault as Foucault can only tell you the conditions of possibility and the effects of normative propositions that might found his political criticism; he can't subscribe to any. Schmidt, however, takes the good Foucauldian line that this just doesn't matter, because Foucault as Foucault doesn't have to justify his criticism to anyone; reasons for resisting are apparent to the resisters, and that's good enough.
That's also pretty much the line taken by Fillion, though his piece is more nuanced and I still haven't quite put it together yet.
It looks like the Foucault-Habermas piece is the path of least resistance right now--really ought to have another go at Being and Nothingness again (ulp)before I have another go at the Eyes Wide Shut paper.
Of course, since I've started eljaying, I haven't been able to come up with any new ones. Until now: it is my fearless prediction that the story that Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for stanazolol will turn out to be false; my theory is it was trumped up to get him to say what he actually tested positive for (if it wasn't just malicious or mischievous). Back in 1988, people were wondering why Ben Johnson would have been taking an obsolete, blunt-instrument steroid like stanazolol.
High temp today, here: 26. Dewpoint then: 11. High dewpoint: 16.
High temp today in TO: 28. Dewpoint then: 12. High dewpoint: 17.
Still hasn't been warmer here than in TO a single day since I've started keeping track.
Today, read Joseph S. Catalano, "Good and Bad Faith: Weak and Strong Notions" (in Sartre and Existentialism, Vol. 5: Existentialist Ethics, ed. William L. McBride) and James Schmidt, "Habermas and Foucault" (in Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity, ed. Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves and Seyla Benhabib). Also re-read Real Fillion, "Freedom, Responsibility, and the 'American Foucault'" (Philosophy and Social Criticism 30, 2004).
Catalano argues for a "strong" interpretation of "bad faith", as against the "weak" one which I've tended toward: the weak one has it that bad faith is inescapable and good faith impossible because we can never get away from the tension between the in-itself (our facticity, essence, what we are) and the for-itself (our freedom, existence); the strong one has it that we are in bad faith only as along as we are unconscious of the contingency of ourselves as in-itself. From a philosophical perspective, it's not an important point--it's just semantics--but from a scholarly perspective, it could be a useful reference as I'm trying to get my interpretation past the Sartreans. One thing that seems off about it is that it identifies bad faith with self-deception, but on my understanding bad faith is a narrower category--it's other-directed self-deception, social behaviour based on self-deception. (That was actually clarified for me by an article co-written, in French, probably 30 years ago, by Lorraine Code--I forget where I came across that.)
Schmidt's piece was helpful in zeroing in on what is particular about Habermas's critique of Foucault (as opposed to Taylor et al.'s): Foucault, as Foucault, is necessarily "cryptonormative" (i.e., on his own terms, he's not entitled to any normative judgments, so he has to sneak them in) because his methods treat truth-claims externally, i.e., in terms of their conditions of possibility and their effects within a discourse, an apparatus of power relations, what have you. So, Foucault as Foucault can only tell you the conditions of possibility and the effects of normative propositions that might found his political criticism; he can't subscribe to any. Schmidt, however, takes the good Foucauldian line that this just doesn't matter, because Foucault as Foucault doesn't have to justify his criticism to anyone; reasons for resisting are apparent to the resisters, and that's good enough.
That's also pretty much the line taken by Fillion, though his piece is more nuanced and I still haven't quite put it together yet.
It looks like the Foucault-Habermas piece is the path of least resistance right now--really ought to have another go at Being and Nothingness again (ulp)before I have another go at the Eyes Wide Shut paper.
