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October 25, 2005
One form of philosophical modernism is a radical self-reflexivity and self legislation that stands against heteronomy. It is a Kantian conception that was then historicized by Hegel.
In Nietzsche and Philosophy Gilles Deleuze says that:
Kant is the first philosopher who understood critique as having to be total and positive as critique. Total because "nothing must escape it"; positive, affirmative, because it cannot restrict the the power of knowing without releasing other previously neglected powers. But what are the results of such a vast project?...There has never been a more concilitary or respectful total critique....Kant merely pushed a very old conception of critique to the limit, a conception which saw critique as a force which should be bought to bear on all claims to knowledge and truth, but not on knowledge and truth themselves; a force which which should be bought to bear on all claims to morality, but not on morality itself.
That's insightful. It indicates why total critique turns into a politics of compromise.
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If say a devotion to logic and scientific methodology is "heteronomy" (H.), that in itself does not mean H. is mistaken. Pluralism, however much liberals praise it, does not have some necessary ethical character. Around LA there now burgeoning muslim centers, new catholic cathedrals, protestants, and then pagan types: I think in terms of "religion" as well as philosophy ( imagine someone who claims that the thought of both Sartre and Russell are valid ways to "truth") pluralism may be a great error, and a complete undermining of secular values. I would contend secularism demands a type of objectivity and rationality; a big part of that secular code is a demand for facts, for due process, for equity. Heteronomy easily becomes a type of superficial relativism: and at least in the US political H. is a problem--life in Utah being quite different than Life in SF. I don't think the politcial system of either Utah or the Bay Area is equitable or even Jeffersonian, but pluralism is part of the root problem. '