What’s at Stake in Hermetic Reterritorialization? from An und für sich by Jacob Sherman, Assistant
Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of
Integral Studies.
Joshua Ramey’s The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal is such a rich, provocative, and deliciously inconclusive book
that I have had trouble deciding upon the shape of a response. The details of
the book – the excavation of Deleuze’s hope for an eschatological community of
immanence, the reading of the Deleuzean (and Peircean) sign as a kind of
arcanum, the rigorous thematization of the shamanic in Deleuze’s process
philosophical wagers, etc. – all demand careful, further engagement. Ramey’s
work has the potential, alongside Kerslake’s, to change how many of us read
Deleuze – not because the Deleuze he shows us is entirely foreign or monstrous,
but because he seems to be a Deleuze we suspected of being there all along but
could never quite catch sight of.
I am left with the strangely giddy feeling that I won’t really have
finished Ramey’s book until I’ve gone back and reread an entirely nonidentical
Deleuze all over again. Until then, however, I can venture an initial response
to the book as a whole. The title and subtitle announce two different projects…
Why risk this? Why risk Deleuze’s reputation (I am being serious here) and the
future possibilities of philosophy as spiritual and transformative practice by
tying them to something so spooky, so regularly reviled, so politically
ambiguous as hermeticism? It cannot be simply a matter of rectifying a
historical oversight in our interpretation of Deleuze… I suspect that Ramey
seeks to divine a new shape for philosophy in the hermetic tradition rather
than, say, in Hadot’s ancient philosophical schools, because of the degree of
creativity that hermeticism not only thematizes but also unleashes… I’m
sympathetic to this reading of Deleuze, but I am also not sure how
finally to reconcile this with the Deleuze that I have been trying to read for
years.
Elisabeth Ellis (ed.), Kant's Political Theory: Interpretationsand Applications, Penn State University Press, 2012, 256pp., ISBN 9780271053776. Reviewed by Helga Varden, University of Illinois
Although Habermas has increasingly become preoccupied with and
inspired by Kant's legal-political philosophy -- and especially Kant's main
writing on the issue, the Doctrine of Right in The Metaphysics of
Morals -- the same was never true of Rawls. Rawls was clearly inspired
by some of Kant's shorter, political essays, primarily in his thinking about
global justice in The Law of Peoples, but most of the Kantian ideas
developed as part of his theory of "justice as fairness" utilize core
ideas in Kant's ethical writings, including some of those captured by the
categorical imperative… Ripstein argues that even if we assume away our
"crooked timber," or our typical tendencies to act in ignorant,
biased, selfish, or vicious ways, we still need justice. And to fully establish
justice, we need states (the rule of law). Against much Kant interpretation
(including the majority of the other articles in the anthology) and other
prominent theories of justice, such as those we find in Hobbes, Locke, and
Hume, Ripstein defends the claim that for Kant "neither justice nor the
law is remedial." … Hence Kant asserts that a united will provides a
means for overcoming or, to use Ripstein's language, "remedying"
antagonisms (163). Similarly, contemporary Kantian approaches, like those of
Rawls and Habermas, mistakenly search for the construction of some procedures,
"rational will formation," or "cosmopolitan institutions that
could guarantee peaceful and just relations around the globe." (153) … To
understand what Kant really means in his legal-political
writings, we need to look elsewhere. In particular, we need to appreciate a
particular (also controversial) interpretation of Kant's Religion within
the Boundaries of Mere Reason, the plausibility of which is seen as
stemming from a particular interpretation of various historical facts that
influenced Kant deeply (including in ways Kant himself wasn't aware).
With the advent of the vital life force into the world we see what
some have called “the law of the jungle” and others “survival of the fittest”
as the basic principle of the life energy. Even for human beings, we start from
this basis and only add ethical and moral considerations later as mind-nature
begins to develop and make itself felt in transcending the basic instincts of
the vital force.
Sri Aurobindo comments on the nature of the vital power in its action
in the world… The rule of return on energy is operative here by providing
results based on the ability to harness and master the powers of the vital
force. There may be an element of self-control, discipline or focus of energy,
but these are implementations of the law of vital force and their goal, and
their result, is to enhance the success of the vital life nature.
Response to Ned - Human Freedom of Growth - Integral Yoga Talks
by Debashish on
Sun 30 Nov 2008 03:42 AM PST Profile Permanent
Link
Our growth from "inadequacies and flaws" are not better
achieved on the mountaintop; it is through action that we must
grow. 5:17 pm on Tue 27 Jan 2009 07:21 PM PST Permanent
Link Well said, Mr. Sane! An effort in this direction, to create a culture
of dialog and social forums for conducting these, is the need of the hour. But
all this presupposes the acknowledgment of personal finitude, the openness to
the other and the willingness to aim for integrality, as you point out.
Re: Yoga, religion, and fundamentalism in
the Integral Yoga Community by Lynda Lester by Rick on Sat 24 Jan 2009 10:35 AM
PST | Profile | Permanent
Link
I feel that “Evolution II” is a powerful account, though filtered
through Satprem’s sensibility. “The Tragedy of the Earth” is a wonderful book;
Aeschylean, Sophoclean. Because a human is fraught and peppered with
imperfections need not stop that human from attempting the transformation where
others are standing back, commentating and clucking away. I see Satprem a
flawed hero. I feel that Sri Aurobindo and Mother must value all the better
angels of our nature (for instance, the more successful parts of the recent
biography); and feel they value Satprem for his courage that resonates in the
very cells of being.
Satprem at his best—is Satprem. Fiery intensity may look like
fundamentalism but it was not religion he was founding—it was yoga he was doing
and that he is living in its authentic fires. It was not what he was looking
behind at; it was what he was always moving towards that interests me. It was
no belief to merely warm our pale hands at as we stand, not too close, to the
thin little fires of the mind. (I would look more at the mental fundamentalisms
that limit the perspectives—of us all.)
The term “outrage industry” seems to have been coined in 2008 by Jeffrey M.
Berry and Sarah Sobieraj of Tufts University. They used it to describe the
methods of “certain kinds of advocacy organizations and media outlets” who
promoted “a highly polarized view of American politics”. Berry and Sobieraj
concluded that, for such groups, manufacturing outrage was an effective
strategy that was “likely to persist”…
Here I must pause to look at the terms “hurt sentiments” and “hurt
feelings”. When I first came to India years ago I was puzzled whenever I read
in the newspapers that a riot had been started by a group whose feelings had
been hurt by something another group was supposed to have said or done. In the
US, at least when I was growing up, “hurt feelings” were something that only
little children were likely to be troubled by.
