Reason makes human society possible; but a society whose members would be only reasons would vanish as a society. What could a being entirely rational speak of with another entirely rational being? Reason has no plural; how could numerous Reasons be distinguished? How could the Kantian kingdom of ends be possible, had not the rational beings that compose it retained, as the principle of individuation, their exigency for happiness[?]

— Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 119

Tags: levinas, reason, rationality.

Labels: ethics, levinas

Something occurred to me just now in Ikea. Why is it that few people these days still "believe" that opening an umbrella indoors is bad luck, while so many persist in pointedly not walking under ladders?

Shortly after this rare flash of inspiration, I witnessed someone accidentally smash a mirror on the floor. Concerned for my safety, I paid for my candles and left as quickly as possible. What? Have you ever been to Ikea for plant pots and a suitcase and not left with a bag full of candles?

I thought as much.

Tags: ikea, superstition, ladder, umbrella

Labels: humour

I have to say that I sympathise with Ken Livingstone on this one. Not, obviously, because I believe he should be placed beyond criticism; far from it. But, having channelsurfed in to Dispatches last night, I can see he has a serious point. Although I've been tacitly aware of Dispatches' increasing alarmism, sensationalism, and decline in good journalistic practice, I was genuinely shocked by how bad last night's programme was. I watched about ten minutes, and so riddled was the programme with conflation, innuendo, implication, scaremongering, conspiracy theory, and unsubstantiated tripe that I had to switch it off for the sake of my blood pressure.

I once thought Channel 4 was above all this, but Dispatches is now very much caked at the bottom of the same barrel from which Horizon, Panorama and Tonight are scraped from week to week.

Tags: dispatches, livingstone, channel4.

Labels: media, politics

Congratulations to old friend Mark Selby, who won his first title as a snooker professional this evening. On the same evening, another of my childhood friends played his first Piano Concerto on Radio 3. And this week, my best friend got engaged. I'm so happy for all of them.

But it leaves me with a sensation of a life passing me by; they're all out there living notable lives, as I sit here watching them, listening to them fulfilling dreams I once had. But I'm tapping away on a laptop and getting ready to go into work in an office in the morning. I enjoy the things I do and love the friends I have; but I suppose few of us have the lives we once expected.

Tags: selby, markselby, snooker, masters, radio3, friendship, friends, piano.

Labels: friendship, music, snooker

Tags: thomaskirche, leipzig, thomas.

Labels: germany, music, photography

Of all the unintelligent things you might expect people to say in the aftermath of a narrowly averted plane crash, these comments from the pilot's neighbour must be among the more bizarre. According to Mrs Firminger, he was able to land the plane because he's so good looking:

Mrs Firminger said she was not surprised Mr Burkill dealt with the situation so well.

She said: "He's absolutely gorgeous. He's all you imagine an airline pilot to be. He's very good looking, very calm.

So the next time you fly, try to check out the pilot first.

Tags: heathrow, crash, pilot.

Labels: humour

Is the most amusing and depressing thing I have heard in a long time. (Thx Nick)

Tags: verizon, math, maths.

Labels: humour

This site doesn't get much traffic, but things are looking up:

So, thank you for your support. I will always wear it.

(As a sign of my gratitude, if anyone can tell me where the last remark comes from, I'll give you a Werther's Original.)

Labels: blogging

One of the foundational "principles" in Emmanuel Lévinas' philosophy is of proximity. For Lévinas, the "experience" (that is, experience in a prior-to-consciousness, non-experiential sense) of another person is what awakens me first to his/her suffering, and, through that, creates my own identity. The other person is the luminosity which allows me to — be.

Whether or not you are generally able to sympathize with this kind of transcendental philosophy, proximity as a concept seems quite apt to me — to be dramatic about it, you could say we have something of a crisis of proximity today. A good number of us spend our time on Facebook trying to stay in touch with people who were once friends but to whom we are no longer physically close. Proximity — in a place of habitation, work, or worship — is the force that creates friendships, and I wonder if the attempt to keep the same intensity of relationship across a rarely-travelled distance is misplaced effort. People often stay in touch out of some kind of guilt, but the waning of a friendship, like the passing of any creative act, is not something to be lamented.

An awakening to the centrality of the proximitous other, the neighbour or "Nächste" (Hermann Cohen's term) is, for Lévinas, a call to responsibility which exceeds the freedom implied by the "choice" of friendships: my neighbour is always the next person to come around the corner.

Tags: levinas, friendship, facebook.

Labels: friendship, levinas

A friend and I went walking in Chapel-en-le-Frith today, and it was rather like the last episode of series three of Peep Show, where Mark and Jeremy get "lost" on Exmoor and later Mark, having angered a crow, has to sleep in a disused barn and piss on his legs to keep himself warm.

I exaggerate a little, but it was very muddy and some of those cows gave us distinctly dodgy looks.

Further to the post on Kenya, and from continuing my reading of Levinas:

The specific nature of rhetoric (of propaganda, flattery, diplomacy, etc.) consists in corrupting this freedom. It is for this that it is preeminently violence, that is, injustice — not violence exercised on an inertia (which would not be a violence), but on a freedom, which, precisely as freedom, should be incorruptible. To freedom it manages to apply a category; it seems to judge of it as of a nature; it asks the question, contradictory in its terms, "what is the nature of this freedom?"

— Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 70

Tags: levinas, kenya, freedom.

Labels: levinas, politics

While watching a Channel 4 News report on the carnage in Kenya just now, it occurred to me that there are (at least) two ways of interpreting the situation. First comes the position that this is what happens when a democratic election result is manipulated and the population realises that they have been duped. The second possibility is that the democratic process has in this country hardened and legitimised the polarisation of the political spectrum. I am interested here in the second proposition, but before addressing that I'll say that the first doesn't ring true for me. These are not the mass popular protests of the kind that brought communism down, but rather rival civilian factions warring with each other, the state's soldiers having little control over either. A close-run, legitimate election, in which Odinga might have won, could quite conceivably have yielded the same results.

It seems to me that the situation in Kenya is actually of great conceptual interest for proponents of democracy (like myself), because it has long been my opinion that there is something missing in our account of why democracy is good, and more importantly, under what conditions it can be effective. An old woman in the Channel 4 News report wailed at men on her street, "Stop! Stop this killing! We will end up killing each other and we will all be dead. I will never vote again." The subtext of her remark seemed to me to be: It's voting that caused all this trouble. Could it be so? Is the act of deciding, choosing between one or the other, an act so close to the irrationality of violence that it could have itself have caused killing?

The question I am really approaching here is: What provides the basic unity of purpose that allows democratic society to persist without obstructive levels of violence? The closest contemporary British political language gets to this difficult question is "national identity". The sheer wateriness of such a term perhaps, and fortunately, represents nothing less than the fact that such a unity of purpose is not seriously under threat in British society. But in Kenya a gash down the centre of democratic legitimacy is showing itself.

So if not national identity, then what is this thing that "guarantees" the viability of a democracy? Well, I agree with the first part — that democracy is a necessarily national/ist project, a set of values which can only operate within the positivistic thresholds which nationalism presumes to establish. But it is more than this, because there have been many strong and popular nationalisms which have nevertheless proved to be short-lived. At this point my own thinking on the subject runs out, but I do recall some reading I did a few years back — of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan and Carl Schmitt's Political Theology. These thinkers are far more dogmatic about the conditions for open political society, arguing for concepts of sovereignty and civil religion to be taken into account. What is called into question for "left-liberals" is the orthodoxy that democracy is a solution to factionalism. Rather, I suggest, democracy may only begin to work once the historic factional moment has passed.

I can't reach any conclusion on this, other than to say that what is going on in Kenya seems to me to be a call to think more precisely about the conditions for democracy. Democracy without a prior, national, civic identity is like an asthmatic taking one inhaler to open the airways, but forgetting the steroids that prevent inflammation. The end result is suffocation.

Tags: democracy, kenya, open, society, opensociety, freedom, liberty, liberal, liberalism, war, schmitt, carlschmitt, hobbes, thomashobbes, politics, political, theory, theology, sovereignty, religion, civil, national, civic, nationalism, identity, civilreligion, channel4

Labels: politics, theology

The great force of the idea of creation such as it was contibuted by monotheism is that this creation is ex nihilo — not because this represents a work more miraculous than the demiurgic informing of matter, but because the separated and created being is thereby not simply issued forth from the father, but is absolutely other than him.

— Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 63

Tags: levinas, creation, totalityandinfinity

Labels: levinas, religion

Further to this post, here is a Levinas comment on conversation:

Conversation [...] cannot renounce the egoism of its existence; but the very fact of being in a conversation consists in recognizing in the Other a right over this egoism, and hence in justifying oneself.

— Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 40

Although I'd say there is an uncertainty about Levinas' view of Proust's magnum opus (see Levinas' essay, "The Other in Proust"), there is an interesting affinity between the two men here, about which A.H. Pollock has written.

Tags: levinas, proust, conversation

Labels: levinas, proust

Lacking anything of my own to say this new year, I'll just post this anonymous poem (beautifully set to music by Benjamin Britten, if you're in the mood to spend 79p)

Here we bring new water from the well so clear,

For to worship God with, this happy new year;

Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine,

With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine;

Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her toe;

Open you the west door and turn the old year go;

Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine,

With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine;

Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her chin.

Open you the east door and let the new year in!

Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine,

With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine.

Tags: newyear, carol, britten.

Labels: music