The Question of God: Sigmund Freud And C.S. Lewis - 1/6 hiperf289 2008-12-21 | Based on a popular Harvard course taught by Dr. Armand Nicholi, author of "The Question of God," this 2004 series illustrates the lives and insights of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a life-long critic of religious belief, and C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), a celebrated Oxford don, literary critic, and perhaps this century's most influential and popular proponent of faith based on reason. The series focuses upon the perennial questions: What is happiness? How do we find meaning and purpose in our lives? How do we reconcile conflicting claims of love and sexuality? These excerpts focus on this: How do we cope with the problem of suffering and the inevitability of death? [1/6] A panel discussion (led by Nicholi) with atheists, agnostics, and theists regarding the origins of morality - is morality God-given or part of our evolutionary heritage? For Freud, "cultural experience" and "expediency" are the sources, while for Lewis it is a "discoverable," transcendent law authored by God...
Thomas Manns condemnation of antisemitism (1942) hiperf289 2011-03-24 | Mann, speaking on the BBC, regards the then current antisemitism as a "wrench to unscrew, bit-by-bit, the whole machinery of our civilization..."
Carl Jung discusses Freud, 1959 (Freud, bottom left; Jung bottom right) hiperf289 2011-03-20 | Jung recounts his initial reading of Freud in 1900 and then their meeting in 1907... the two not only developed a professional but also a personal relationship and even analyzed one other's dreams... one of Jung's problems with Freud's approach was the latter's "disregard of the historical conditions of man" -- for Jung we are always products of our great historical past, in a macro sense...
Hubert Dreyfus on Merleau-Ponty, Part 1/2 hiperf289 2011-03-18 | U.C. Berkeley philosophy professor Dreyfus discusses the importance of Merleau-Ponty's renowned focus on the "body" to "grip" reality's "gestalt" for "skillful coping" ... for Merleau-Ponty it is the our physical body with its "skills" that allow us to "relate to things" and others via "intercorporeality" which is deemed "magical" ... the body is always "geared" toward the world...
Hubert Dreyfus on Merleau-Ponty, Part 2/2 hiperf289 2011-03-18 | U.C. Berkeley philosophy professor Dreyfus discusses the importance of Merleau-Ponty's renowned focus on the "body" to "grip" reality's "gestalt" for "skillful coping" ... for Merleau-Ponty it is the our physical body with its "skills" that allow us to "relate to things" and others via "intercorporeality" which is deemed "magical" ... the body is always "geared" toward the world...
Paulo Freire on Marx and Christianity hiperf289 2011-03-18 | Brazilian educator and critical theorist Freire discusses the connection between the impoverishment of local persons (a "negation of their being") and how this predicament moved him toward a this-worldly reading of Christianity, via Marx -- a form of liberation theology...
William Faulkner accepts the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature hiperf289 2011-03-14 | Faulkner was cited by the committee "for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel" ... look for him at about the 6.45 mark ...
Thomas Mann in Malibu, California hiperf289 2011-03-14 | Footage of Mann in southern California where he lived during most of the 1940s... it was here that he wrote his last major novel, 'Doktor Faustus,' arguably, his most powerful and heart-felt work...
Julia Kristeva on Pre-Oedipal Language hiperf289 2011-03-13 | Kristeva remarks that poetic language is not only "feminine," but arises from the pre-Oedipal, narcissistic stage of psychic development; she deems it "musical" and relates it to the basic mother-child relationship... Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake' and Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the end of 'Ulysses' bears witness, she feels, to this unique phenomenon...
Walt Whitman Reads from America (1890) hiperf289 2011-02-22 | An allegedly authentic wax-cylinder recording of Whitman reading from his poem "America" (found in 'Leaves of Grass,' Book XXXIV, 'Sands at Seventy,' 1888) "Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old, Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love..."
Georges Bataille, Madame Edwarda, Fou-tchou-li hiperf289 2011-02-22 | From a 1997 French documentary on Bataille; a dramatization from his 'Madame Edwarda' (1937), where the sacred and the profane merge with Edwarda, the prostitute, claiming that "I'm God" ("je suis Dieu")... The last part shows photos of a 1905 Mongolian torture victim, Fou-tchou-li who was subjected to "língchí ,"—slow-slicing—for killing his master, the prince of Inner Mongolia, Aohan Banner... Bataille includes this in his last major work, 'Tears of Eros', remarking: "What I suddenly saw and what imprisoned me in anguish—but at the same time which liberated me from it—was the identity of these perfect contraries, divine ecstasy and its opposite, extreme horror."
Jean-Paul Sartre and the Politics of Collective Freedom hiperf289 2011-02-19 | Here, we learn of Sartre's 1960s commitment to Marxism, but also his later belief that "perpetual revolt" against the established order was the only feasible ethic that supported and promoted his existential notion of radical freedom... greatly influenced by the French student revolts of May, 1968, Sartre's politics became more aligned with revolutionary anarchism, which later came to alienate some of his supporters... his refusal of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature underscored his overall position...
Fine Art Mentioned in Prousts Swanns Way... hiperf289 2011-02-19 | Set to Cesar Franck's 'Sonata in A major for Piano and Violin' (1886) which might have been the source of 'the little phrase' that so moved Swann in regard to his love for Odette:1- Sandro Botticelli, "The Trials of Moses," Sistine Chapel, Rome (1481-82): The Daughters of Jethro:'... Standing there beside him, her loosened hair flowing down her cheeks, bending one knee in a slightly balletic pose in order to be able to lean without effort over the picture at which she was gazing, her head on one side, with those great eyes of hers which seemed so tired and sullen when there was nothing to animate her, she struck Swann by her resemblance to the figure of Zipporah, Jethro's daughter, which is to be seen in one of the Sistine frescoes. [. . .] He placed on his study table, as if it where a photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro's daughter. He would gaze in admiration at the large eyes, the delicate features in which the imperfection of the skin might be surmised, the marvellous locks of hair that fell along the tired cheeks; and, adapting to the idea of a living woman what he had until then felt to be beautiful on aesthetic grounds, he converted it into a series of physical merits which he was gratified to find assembled in the person of one whom he might ultimately possess. The vague feeling of sympathy which attracts one to a work of art, now that he knew the original in flesh and blood of Jethro's daughter, became a desire which Odette's physical charms had at first failed to inspire in him. When he had sat for a long time gazing at the Botticelli, he would think of his own living Botticelli, who seemed even lovelier still, and as he drew towards him the photograph of Zipporah he would imagine that he was holding Odette against his heart.' (I: 314-15, 318)2- Gentile Bellini, "The Sultan Mehmet II," National Gallery, London (1480)3- Johannes Vermeer of Delft, "View of Delft," Mauritshuis, The Hague (ca. 1660-1664)4- Giotto di Bondone, "Vices and Virtues," Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (1305-06): "Injustice" 5- Giotto di Bondone, "Vices and Virtues," Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (1305-06): "Justice"6- Giotto di Bondone, "Vices and Virtues," Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (1305-06): "Charity" and "Envy"7- Jacques-Emile Blanche, Proust, (1892)
Georges Bataille Discusses Literature and Evil on French Television hiperf289 2011-02-18 | Bataille discusses L&E on a May 21, 1958 French TV show, "Lectures Pour Tous" with Pierre Dumayet... this not all that well-known work is one of Bataille's best and offers unique, powerful and moving reactions to Emily Bronte, de Sade, Proust, Kafka, and others... the essay on Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights' is among the finest on this still intense, unapologetic novel of harrowingly dark romantic love... Bataille deems WH as a supreme example of "ecstatic... hypermorality... (with a) transgression of the moral law... the law of reason."
Derrida On The Truly Exceptional Moment When Writing Of Grammatology hiperf289 2009-01-05 | Here, Derrida describes the breakthrough experience underlying two of the essays in his most famous work, "Of Grammatology" (1967) - this text, which offers key deconstructive critiques of speech vs. writing, Rousseau/Levi-Strauss on 'Nature, Culture, Writing,' offered an "interpretive edge, a lever" that Derrida felt he did not actually create himself - he is thus "responsible" and "not responsible" for what he wrote "as though (he was transcribing) something that had imposed itself upon (him)"... he does not want to ascribe a "religious sensibility" to this feeling, but clearly believed that "something had taken hold of (him) that was powerful, a lever for interpretation, for reading the (Western philosophical) tradition, (allowing) him to formalize and economically decipher that which is dominant in our culture"...
The Question of God: Sigmund Freud And C.S. Lewis - 4/6 hiperf289 2008-12-21 | 4/6: By the 1950s Oxford's C.S. Lewis became the most popular spokesperson for Christianity in the English-speaking world... in 1956, Lewis married Joy Davidson Gresham, a Marxist, atheist, poet/writer... at the time of the marriage, it was known that Joy was suffering from bone cancer, though it later went into remission... however, in 1960 the cancer returned and Joy died... Lewis mourning resulted in his 1960 book, "A Grief Observed," which describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that Lewis originally released it under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the work with him ... the book was "a portrait of grief and a struggle with his own faith"... Lewis lashes out at God (ala Job) with the seemingly unsolvable question: how can such great anguish have been permitted?
The Question of God: Sigmund Freud And C.S. Lewis - 2/6 hiperf289 2008-12-21 | 2/6: A continuation of the panel discussion; archival footage of Freud (narrated by his daughter Anna) in the last decade of his life (the 1930s) when he was terminally ill with cancer - this led him to examine the psychology of death once again, focusing on the wish not to die (as he later states: "the unconscious does not believe in its own death - it behaves as if it were immortal") as well as the growing scourge of Nazi anti-Semitism - in 1934 he began to write one of his last works: "Moses and Monotheism" arguing that Moses was actually Egyptian, and his introduction of monotheism led his followers to murder him...
The Question of God: Sigmund Freud And C.S. Lewis - 3/6 hiperf289 2008-12-21 | 3/6: The guilt of killing Moses actually created Judaism however, this guilt would be assuaged only by the later sacrifice of Jesus and the introduction of Christianity which the Jews rejected... thus, for Freud, the world repays Judaism with eternal hatred - following the Nazi 'anschluss' of Austria in 1938, Freud left for England... Freud, an atheist and now an exile, interpreted his own impending death in terms of psychoanalytic theory - the result was the completion of "Moses and Monotheism" which outraged both Jews and Christians... Freud died in 1939 from a physician-assisted overdose of morphine "not asking for consolation... (embodying) a rebellious defiance and conqueror's stance"...
The Question of God: Sigmund Freud And C.S. Lewis - 5/6 hiperf289 2008-12-21 | 5/6: Two years after Joy's death, Lewis fell into a coma as a result of heart problems; however, he recovered but then died months later; the panel now discusses the question of suffering and death in terms of God's omnipotence and love...
The Question of God: Sigmund Freud And C.S. Lewis - 6/6 hiperf289 2008-12-21 | 6/6: The panel discussion regarding suffering and death continues - Nicholi concludes with this: "It may be that Freud and Lewis represent conflicting parts of ourselves. Part of us yearns for a relationship with the source of all joy, hope and happiness, as described by Lewis, and yet, there is another part that raises its fist in defiance and says with Freud, 'I will not surrender.' Whatever part we choose to express will determine our purpose, our identity, and our whole philosophy of life."
Jacques Derrida And The Question Of The Animal hiperf289 2008-12-18 | Here, Derrida explains his long-standing interest in the question of the 'animal' ... he regards it as a 'stupidity' to categorize different species under the abstract, reductive heading of 'animal' and even feels that such categorization is the historical root of violence toward these beings, culminating in today's massive industrial usage which in a late interview he deemed 'genocidal torture' ... in terms of (historical) philosophical attitudes toward animals, he regards his position as rather unique - even those who strongly challenge conventional philosophical thought (Heidegger, Levinas, Lacan) are guilty of this great prejudice - as he says: 'Wherever something like the animal is named, the gravest, most resistant, also the most naive and the most self-interested presuppositions dominate what is called human culture (and not only Western culture); in any case they dominate the philosophical discourse that has been prevalent for centuries' ...
Justice vs. Power - Noam Chomsky vs. Michel Foucault, Part 1 hiperf289 2008-07-01 | In 1971, American linguist/social activist Noam Chomsky squared off against French philosopher Michel Foucault on Dutch television ... the program was entitled 'Human Nature: Justice Vs. Power' and offered sharp contrasts between the more traditional view of 'human nature' and what would become a postmodernist perspective ... Chomsky, following a rationalist lineage going back to at least Plato, believes that there is a foundational 'nature' and that its positive aspects (love, creativity, recognizing and embracing justice) must be realized, while Foucault remains skeptical of any such notion... for him, the issue is not so much whether 'justice' or 'human nature' 'exists,' but how they have historically (and currently) function in society ... in regard to justice, he says (this is not included in the clips): "... the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power..." The point of any political struggle, for Foucault, is to alter the 'power relations' in which we all find ourselves ...
Justice vs. Power - Noam Chomsky vs. Michel Foucault, Part 2 hiperf289 2008-06-30 | In 1971, American linguist/social activist Noam Chomsky squared off against French philosopher Michel Foucault on Dutch television ... the program was entitled 'Human Nature: Justice Vs. Power' and offered sharp contrasts between the more traditional view of 'human nature' and what would become a postmodernist perspective ... Chomsky, following a rationalist lineage going back to at least Plato, believes that there is a foundational 'nature' and that its positive aspects (love, creativity, recognizing and embracing justice) must be realized, while Foucault remains skeptical of any such notion... for him, the issue is not so much whether 'justice' or 'human nature' 'exists,' but how they have historically (and currently) function in society ... in regard to justice, he says (this is not included in the clips): "... the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power..." The point of any political struggle, for Foucault, is to alter the 'power relations' in which we all find ourselves ...
A Hoot! Kierkegaards Life, Animated! hiperf289 2008-01-03 | Danish philosopher and proto-existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), has his life put to animation in this quirky little piece! Watch for his father Michael speaking from the grave and Kierkegaard's anti-Hegelianism! ¡Este es grande!
Derrida: What Comes Before The Question? hiperf289 2007-12-27 | In this intriguing overview of his famous notion of the 'trace,' Derrida critiques the long-standing philosophical 'authority of the question' by examining the conditions for questioning itself ... he argues that presence always presupposes 'Otherness' (a 'primary affirmation') which embodies a 'return'...to a 'different temporality older than the past and beyond the future' - a different 'past,' 'present,' or 'future' ... Derrida seeks a 'rapport' with this Otherness that allows for any conventional understanding of presence or the present ... such rapport, he feels, would promote a different experience with the past or future ...
Heideggers Retrospective On The Task Of Thinking hiperf289 2007-12-27 | Here, on German television, Heidegger repeats the importance of his long-standing concern with the forgetting of the question of Being, but then offers an interesting analogy between the (few) physicists who understand how a radio or television works and equally scarce 'thinkers' who have a proper understanding of the question of Being ... In his 'Introduction to Metaphysics' (1935), Heidegger remarks: "... philosophy is always the concern of the few. Which few? The creators, those who initiate profound transformations. It spreads only indirectly, by devious paths that can never be laid out in advance, until at last, at some future date, it sinks to the level of a common-place; but by then it has long been forgotten as original philosophy."
Nietzsche At Weimar hiperf289 2007-04-09 | Nietzsche's final years (1897-1900) were spent in this Weimar home under the care of his sister Elizabeth ... in the clip, archivist Andrea Bollinger questions the usual syphillis diagnosis, remarking that the philosopher's 11-year vegetative state was not typical of the disease ... also mentioned is Elizabeth's role in editing Nietzsche's last work (left unfinished), "The Will to Power," the famous 'transvaluation of highest values'...
The Nietzsche Haus At Sils-Maria, Switzerland hiperf289 2007-04-08 | This is from the 'Nietzsche Haus' web site: "At the beginning of July 1881, Friedrich Nietzsche visited Sils for the first time, staying at the home of the Durisch family (today's Nietzsche Haus), where he rented a room on the first floor. From 1883 to 1888, he returned here every summer. He had found a place that gave him peace and enabled him to concentrate, a landscape which - as he said himself - was "blutsverwandt" (related by blood). Here, he worked on a number of books during his 7 summer stays (1881, 1883-88), e.g. Part 2 of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", whose key idea of eternal recurrence came to him in a moment of inspiration on the shore of the Lake of Silvaplana." In 'Ecce Homo,' Nietzsche wrote: "... "this highest formula of affirmation that is at all attainable, belongs in August 1881: it was penned on a sheet with the notation underneath, '6000 feet beyond man and time.' That day I was walking through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana; at a powerful pyramidal rock not far from Surlei I stopped. It was then that this idea came to me." Nietzsche biographer Leslie Chamberlain offers commentary...
Hermann Heidegger And Hans-Georg Gadamer On The Cabin hiperf289 2007-03-24 | Heidegger's famous Black Forest cabin at Todtnauberg (where he wrote many of his key works, including 'Being and Time') is shown here by his son Hermann, commented upon by literary critic George Steiner in terms of its influence, and remembered by acclaimed German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer... Gadamer, recalling visits to the cabin, felt that Heidegger looked like a rural Black Forest resident, dressed as a 'handyman,' but that Heidegger's 'eyes' showed great 'imagination' - undoubtedly underscoring Heidegger's unique, philosophical mission...
George Steiner: Heidegger And Poetry hiperf289 2007-03-24 | Here, literary critic Steiner comments upon the influence of Heidegger's unique view of language - i.e., that "language speaks us"... Derrida, Foucault, post-modernist views in general, are heavily indebted to Heidegger's rather unconventional perspective...
Heidegger And Jean-Paul Sartre hiperf289 2007-03-24 | Heidegger's influence on French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is well-chronicled - as the clip states, Sartre's main work 'Being and Nothingness' (1943) was conceived as a companion piece to Heidegger's 'Being and Time' (though Heidegger would later repudiate Sartre's view, labeling it 'metaphysics'). Sartre, seen here with long-time companion Simone de Beauvoir, was a key figure in reviving Heidegger following World War II... Heidegger biographer Hugo Ott also comments upon this post War influence...
Reactions to Heideggers Being and Time hiperf289 2007-03-24 | Martin Heidegger's 1927 magnum opus 'Being and Time' ('Sein und Zeit') is regarded as a twentieth-century philosophical classic... such notions as temporality, angst, authenticity, resolve, The One, The Other, being-toward-death, everydayness, etc., became standard verbiage in later Existentialism... here, philosopher Andrew Benjamin, literary critic George Steiner, and Hannah Arendt biographer Elizabeth Young-Bruel discuss the impact of this monumental work...
Edward Said On Orientalism hiperf289 2007-02-25 | Best known for his monumental 1978 work, "Orientalism," Edward Said (1935-2003), literary critic, Palestinian activist, and former Columbia professor (English and Comparative Literature) helped initiate 'post-colonial studies' arguing that all discourse, particularly discourse about other cultures, is inherently ideological: "My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient's difference with its weakness. . . . As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge" In this clip, questions are raised about the West's nefarious judgments of Muslims -- with which they rarely have direct contact -- and the cross-cultural role of Hollywood and the mass media in terms of creating ideological categories: "Orientalism operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting." The piece begins with major U.S. media venues wrongly indicting Muslims for the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in 1995 ...
Alain Jaubert On Friedrich Nietzsches Influence hiperf289 2007-01-29 | Jaubert's 2001 French-language documentary - 'Nietzsche, un voyage philosophique,' begins with Nietzsche's political influence on World War 1 Germany, Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler ... Copies of Nietzsche's 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' were given to German troops during WW1, while both Mussolini and Hitler were enthusiastic proponents of at least some of Nietzsche's writings ... Hitler regarded Nietzsche as a "prophet" of National Socialism and the photograph of Hitler with Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth (shown in the clip and as its icon) is common ... that Nietzsche was vehemently opposed to anti-Semitism, standing armies - late 19th century German culture in general - was overriden in the quest to portray Nietzsche as a fascistic proponent of a 'master race' ... Because of this association, Nietzsche's philosophical reputation - mostly in English speaking countries - was largely discounted and, to some extent, remains problematic to the current day ... All of this should promote close critical analysis - especially in relation to the notion of 'influence' and what that might mean in a case such as this ...
Lena Hades Oil Cycle From Nietzsches Zarathustra hiperf289 2007-01-28 | These surreal oils by Russian artist Hades were part of a mid-1990s series illustrating certain scenes within Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' ... the music is Nietzsche's 1862 composition 'Ungarischer Marsch' ('Hungarian March') for piano ... In order (using English translations of the German text in the works): __ "I tell you: one must still have Chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star..." 1997, oil on canvas, 54 by 70 inches _ "And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall yet testify to the power of the sun into which he hath gazed,- did ye know that before?" 1996, oil on canvas, 35,5 by 43,3 inches _ "Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit." 1996, oil on canvas, 31 by 39 inches _ "Deep yellow and hot red- so wanteth my taste- it mixeth blood with all colours. He, however, who whitewasheth his house, betrayeth unto me a whitewashed soul". 1997, oil on canvas, 35,5 by 43,3 inches _ "Round, fair, and considerate are they to one another, as grains of sand are round, fair, and considerate to grains of sand." 1996, oil on canvas, 31,5 by 39,4 inches _ "Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves." 1996, oil on canvas, 31,5 by 39,4 inches _ "Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies." 1996, oil on canvas, 39,4 by 39,4 inches _ "With mummies, some fall in love, others with phantoms: both alike hostile to all flesh and blood .." 1997, oil on canvas, 35,5 by 43,3 inches. _ "If ever I have played dice with the gods at the divine table of the earth, so that the earth quaked and ruptured, and snorted forth fire-streams..." 1997, oil on canvas, 54 by 70 inches. _ Incipit: (The Dwarf) 1997, oil on canvas, 47,2 by 67 inches. 1997, oil on canvas, 54 by 70 inches.
Nietzsche - Last Days Footage - 1899 hiperf289 2007-01-28 | Whether these clips are authentic has been debated, but, they a remarkable look at Nietzsche's 'last days' in Weimar in the summer of 1899 (the photo stills by Hans Olde are common) ... Nietzsche died on August 25, 1900 from pneumonia, eleven years after his well-chronicled mental breakdown in Turin...
Late Clips Of Sigmund Freud (1932, 1938) hiperf289 2007-01-28 | In these brief clips, psychoanalysis founder Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is first seen in Vienna in 1932 speaking with archeologist Emanuel Loewy, then in 1938 signing the Royal Society's charter book and lastly celebrating his 81st birthday... the latter clips were taken in London where Freud and his family were forced to move from Vienna following the 1938 Nazi Anschluss (he died in London a year later)... at this time, Freud completed his last major work, "Moses and Monotheism," which offered a controversial account of Judaism's genealogy... Freud argued that Moses was actually Egyptian and that he had attempted to force monotheism upon his followers; as a result he was murdered but the guilt of the deed later forced the Jews to atone by actually creating the religion as its presently known... another theme of the work was the historical phenomenon of anti-Semitism (obviously, culminating in the Nazi regime)... Freud, who was a Jew (though atheistic), wrote: "The deeper motives of anti-Semitism have their roots in times long past; they come from the unconscious, and I am quite prepared to hear that what I am going to say will at first appear incredible. I venture to assert that the jealousy which the Jews evoked in other peoples by maintaining that they were the first-born, favorite child of God the Father has not yet been overcome by those others, just as if the latter had given credence to the assumption. Furthermore, among the customs through which the Jews marked off their aloof position, that of circumcision made a disagreeable, uncanny impression on others. The explanation probably is that it reminds them of the dreaded castration idea and of things in their primeval past which they would fain forget. Then there is lastly the most recent motive of the series. We must not forget that all the peoples who now excel in the practice of anti-Semitism became Christians only in relatively recent times, sometimes forced to it by bloody compulsion. One might say they all are "badly christened"; under the thin veneer of Christianity they have remained what their ancestors were, barbarically polytheistic. They have not yet overcome their grudge against the new religion which was forced on them, and they have projected it on to the source from which Christianity came to them. The facts that the Gospels tell a story which is enacted among Jews, and in truth treats only of Jews, has facilitated such a projection. The hatred for Judaism is at bottom hatred for Christianity, and it is not surprising that in the German National Socialist revolution this close connection of the two monotheistic religions finds such clear expression in the hostile treatment of both."
Michel Foucault On Disciplinary Society, Part 1 hiperf289 2007-01-28 | In 1983, Foucault's responded (in audio format) to questions about arguably his most influential work, "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" (1977)... specifically, the focus was the orgin of the prison system as it relates to the emergence of what he termed - 'disciplinary society.' The 18th century prisons, he contends, were based upon 17th century disciplinary institutions - mainly, schools and the army. Their social arrangement became the basis for diffused societal regimentation - Bentham's panopticon, was the theoretical model - a centralized observation device in which the disciplinarian observes the disciplinee - but not vice-versa ... The first 4 images are from DP: 1. The book's cover 2. A close-up of the cover 3. An alcoholism lecture at Fresnes prison 4. 'Plan of the Panopticon,' by Bentham, 1843 5. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Michel Foucault On Disciplinary Society, Part 2 hiperf289 2007-01-28 | Here, Foucault argues that the prison is one facet in the overall 'rationality' structuring disciplinary society - questions raised regard methods used to coerce persons to behave in certain, predictable ways and the best means to achieve this end ... Foucault offers this observation near the conclusion of DP: "The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the 'social-worker'-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements" (p. 304)." The images: 1. Plan for a Penitentiary, 1840 - prisoner kneeling before an observation tower 2. Interior of the Statesville Penitentiary, Joliet, IL 3. Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, PA 4. Texas Death Row prisoner, 1994
Michel Foucault On Pleasure Vs. Desire hiperf289 2007-01-28 | In this 1983 audio clip, Foucault responds to questions about his last project - the multi-volume "History of Sexuality" (three of a planned six were published) ... here, he discusses the shift from the ancient, Greco-Roman sexual ethic that involved 'pleasure' as the primary motif, to the modern (often psychoanalytic) notion of 'desire' which became the modern 'key' to unpacking the 'essence' of the 'human being' ... In the HOS, Foucault traces the historical genealogy of this transformation and in the first volume offers critiques of what he regards as a precarious, entrapping construct - 'sex,' he says, 'is the most speculative, most ideal, and most internal element in a deployment of sexuality organized by power in its grip on bodies and their materiality, their forces, energies, sensations, and pleasures.'
Images From The Writings Of Michel Foucault hiperf289 2007-01-28 | These were culled from a variety of French philosopher Michel Foucault's works - from the early "Madness and Civilization" (1965) through the last two published volumes of "The History of Sexuality" (1985-1986) - and some key essays ... In order: 1. Michel Foucault, cover illustration for Alan Sheridan's 'The Will To Truth'; 2. The Ship of Fools ('Madness and Civilization') 3. Marquis de Sade, by ManRay ('The Order of Things') 4. 'Las Meninas', by Velazquez ('The Order of Things') 5. Friedrich Nietzsche, by Munch ('Nietzsche, Genealogy, History') 6. Don Quixote, by Picasso ('The Order of Things') 7. Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon ('Discipline and Punish') 8. Jeremy Bentham ('Discipline and Punish') 9. Philippe Pinel ('Madness and Civilization') 10. Friedrich Hoelderlin ('The Father's "No" ') 11. David Ricardo ('The Order of Things') 12. Georges Bataille {'Preface to Transgression') 13. Jorge Luis Borges ('The Order of Things') 14. Rene Descartes ('Madness and Civilization') 15. Maurice Blanchot ('The Thought from Outside') 16. Georges Cuvier ('The Order of Things') 17. Xavier Bichat ('Birth of the Clinic') 18. Robert Damiens ('Discipline and Punish') 19. Raymond Roussel ('Raymond Roussel') 20. Plato ('The Use of Pleasure') 21. Herculine Barbin, the cover of Foucault's study ('Herculine Barbin') 22. Franz Bopp ('The Order of Things') 23. Antonin Artaud ('Madness and Civilization,' 'The Order of Things') 24. Plutarch ('The Care of the Self') 25. Gustave Flaubert ('Fantasia of the Library') 26. Pierre Rivierre, the manuscript's first page 27. 'This Is Not A Pipe', by Magritte ('This Is Not a Pipe') The music is from American composer Morton Feldman's "Coptic Light" (1986)
Jacques Derrida On Deconstruction And Christianity - Part 2 hiperf289 2007-01-28 | In November, 2002, Derrida was part of a conference in Toronto entitled 'Other Testaments' ... here, in audio format, he focuses on the connection between deconstruction and the changing nature of Christianity - especially in contemporary times ... the notion of Christianity's 'unpredictability,' that it has the ability to 'transform' itself places it closer to Derrida's approach... Christianity today, for Derrida, is an 'unpredictable earthquake'...
Jacques Derrida On Deconstruction And Christianity - Part 1 hiperf289 2007-01-28 | In November, 2002, Derrida was part of a conference in Toronto entitled 'Other Testaments' ... here, in audio format, he focuses on the connection between deconstruction and the changing nature of Christianity - especially in contemporary times ... the notion of Christianity's 'unpredictability,' that it has the ability to 'transform' itself could place it closer to Derrida's approach... Christianity today, for Derrida, is more akin to an 'unpredictable earthquake'...
Jacques Derrida On Prayer - Part 2/3 hiperf289 2007-01-28 | Derrida offered extended audio comments regarding his unique, somewhat Kierkegaardian notion of prayer (as recounted in his 1991 work 'Circumfession') at the 2002 Toronto conference, 'Other Testaments'... Prayer, Derrida contends, is an 'absolutely secret' act though it also involves 'common ritual (and) coded gestures' ... it is fundamentally 'childish' and God is regarded as both a 'harsh, just' father and a 'forgiving' mother... prayer must also embody a sceptical 'suspension of belief and certainty' as epitomized by Kierkegaard and, in another way, by Nietzsche; the realization that the object of prayer is indeterminable is another key notion in this unusual position...
Jacques Derrida On Prayer - Part 1/3 hiperf289 2007-01-28 | Derrida offered extended audio comments regarding his unique, somewhat Kierkegaardian notion of prayer (as recounted in his 1991 work 'Circumfession') at the 2002 Toronto conference, 'Other Testaments'... Prayer, Derrida contends, is an 'absolutely secret' act though it also involves 'common ritual (and) coded gestures' ... it is fundamentally 'childish' and God is regarded as both a 'harsh, just' father and a 'forgiving' mother... prayer must also embody a sceptical 'suspension of belief and certainty' as epitomized by Kierkegaard and, in another way, by Nietzsche; the realization that the object of prayer is indeterminable is another key notion in this unusual position...
Jacques Derrida On Prayer - Part 3/3 hiperf289 2007-01-28 | Derrida offered extended audio comments regarding his unique, somewhat Kierkegaardian notion of prayer (as recounted in his 1991 work 'Circumfession') at the 2002 Toronto conference, 'Other Testaments'... Prayer, Derrida contends, is an 'absolutely secret' act though it also involves 'common ritual (and) coded gestures' ... it is fundamentally 'childish' and God is regarded as both a 'harsh, just' father and a 'forgiving' mother... prayer must also embody a sceptical 'suspension of belief and certainty' as epitomized by Kierkegaard and, in another way, by Nietzsche; the realization that the object of prayer is indeterminable is another key notion in this unusual position...
Jacques Derrida On Kierkegaardian Secrecy hiperf289 2007-01-28 | In his 1992 work 'The Gift of Death' ('Donner la mort'), Derrida examines the ethical/religious writings of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka (1907-1977) as well as Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Tembling' ... in Part Four - 'Tout autre est tout autre' ('Every other [one] is every [bit] other') - there is detailed discussion of Abraham's secret calling by God to sacrifice his son Isaac ... for Kierkegaard this marks absolute 'subjectivity', the incommunicable existential truth of one's being ... Abraham becomes a 'knight of faith' acting solely upon his belief in God's calling, suspending ethical injunction ... in terms of this radical interiority - a subjectivity that actually divests one of usual moral 'selfhood', Derrida writes (the clip's voiceover):"How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself and without my being able to see him in me? And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is "my" secret, or in saying more generally that a secret *belongs*, that it is proper to or belongs to some "one," or to some *other* who remains some*one*? It is perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy, namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no-one. A secret doesn't belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place.... The question of the self: "who am I?" not in the sense of "who am I" but "who is this 'I' that can say "who"? What is the "I," and what becomes of the responsibility once the identity of the "I" trembles in secret?" ('Gift of Death,' p. 92)
Jacques Derrida - Deconstruction And The Eccentric Circle hiperf289 2007-01-27 | In this clip, Derrida first argues that we should not assume that 'history, institutions or society' are in any sense 'natural' - that they are constructs in which deconstruction operates ... then, an important quote is read from Derrida's 1986 work, 'Memoires for Paul De Man' (a piece about the late Yale literary critic De Man, memory and friendship) which states that deconstruction is not ancillary to a work being critiqued; rather deconstruction is at play within the work, in an 'eccentric circle' surrounding the usual 'center' ... deconstruction does not supervene after the 'completion' of a work - it is present within that work, at times more obviously (e.g., Plato's 'Sophist') than at other times (e.g., the last section of Plato's 'Phaedrus') ...
Speech Is Blind - Jacques Derrida On Echo And Narcissus hiperf289 2007-01-27 | Here, Derrida discusses the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, linking ideas such as Echo's repeating of Narcissus' last words (in whatever he spoke), to the non-transparency, the 'blindness' that he feels characterizes all speech ... however, Derrida maintains that Echo is able to 'appropriate' Narcissus' language in such a way that it becomes hers, in a sense, subverting Hera's punishment... he finally asks how two such 'blind' persons can love one another...
The Science Of Ghosts - Derrida In Ghost Dance hiperf289 2007-01-27 | British filmmaker Ken McMullen's improvisational, non-linear film, 'Ghost Dance' (1983) concerns itself with various 'ghosts' (e.g., Kafka, Marx, Freud) and the issue of memory (the past) and how it functions in the present ... French philosopher Jacques Derrida plays 'himself' in the film and comments upon ghosts as they pertain to cinema and representation itself ... cinema, for Derrida, 'is the art of ghosts' and he regards himself - as portrayed in the film - as yet another ghost in whom he 'believes' ... modern technology (specifically, telecommunications), he says, instead of vanquishing ghosts, actually multiplies them ... however this is not necessarily negative - its quite the opposite - 'long live the ghosts!' he exclaims near the end of the clip ... the late Pascale Ogier plays 'Pascale' who is questioning Derrida ...
