Gans on the Centre
Some here might find this Chronicle interesting. I suspect the following paragraphs are entering the liberal vs. absolutist GA discussion:
To begin anew: the human is defined by the transcendental status of the centre of the human scene, which can be attained only through the deferral of appropriative action and its mediation by the sign, the aborted gesture of appropriation. Human beings come to usurp the central position in “sacred” kingships and empires, but the notion that human sovereignty is itself transcendental, rather than a role consecrated by the transcendental in the interest of the human community, leads to the leader-worship common to the totalitarian dictatorships of the past century and the démocratures of our own.
The originary hypothesis does not imply a particular political system. But I must say that I am thankful for the liberty that liberal democracy, even in its currently troubled state, allows me to investigate these propositions in a manner that no dictatorship would ever permit. Which is why, whatever technological progress may occur in dictatorships, they will never produce revelatory ideas of fundamental anthropology, and indeed have no desire to, since their very claim to legitimacy comes from the conviction that our “brave new world” is no longer what it once was, and needs no longer concern itself with its original anthropological foundation.
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I don't see why any "dictatorship," whether it be Franco's in Spain, Pinochet's in Chile, or Mussolini's or even Hitler's (as long as it was carried out by Aryans) would prohibit these anthropological reflections. Only the USSR I think would outright forbid them. And Gans has spent the first part of his Chronicle arguing that secular modernity renders such reflections unintelligible, precisely because it "need no longer concern itself with its original anthropological foundation." Perhaps a regime that recognizes its dependence upon traditions, and the need for a shared concept of the good would be more interested in such reflections.
But I certainly agree that human sovereignty is "consecrated by the transcendental in the interest of the human community" rather than being "itself transcendental." The question is whether the sovereign is sovereign.
Anyway, this is a great level at which to conduct such discussions, and the Chronicle provides a very compact and lucid account of some of the central tenets of GA.
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A Kuhnian anthropological model would be different than a Kuhnian model in the natural sciences. There is, indeed, no place for God in the natural sciences, but the natural sciences don't account for human being. There's no center to the universe, but there is a center to every human community, gathering, or even conversation. A "scientific" model of thought that doesn't take that into account is not rendering it's competitors obsolete; rather it is imposing upon itself limitations that make it irrelevant to understanding any social order. I actually don't think the whole atheist/deist "debate" or "dialogue" is either possible or likely to be particularly interesting. Both positions, as presently constructed, work within Enlightenment models of "philosophy" and "religion" which need to be rendered obsolete. It's the terms of the debate that need to be superseded, not one side or the other. I also don't think much of the "stage model," since all of the development from "lower" to 'higher" social forms involves the centralization of power, but more centralized doesn't not invariably mean more civilized, or moral, or ethical. Centralization is a precondition of those things, but the interesting question is how centralization takes place--and there's no stagist way of accounting for that. Humans in a community can either clarify or obscure their relation to the center, and existing conditions can make it easier or harder to clarify it, but they are not pre-determined by "history" to do one or the other.