The historical procession of hermeneutics states: As we alter the meaning and interpretive structure of the world, so too does the world alter us. Thus, we effect the affect, yielding a different future with differing effects. Although this does speak to the structural tenets of culture’s hermeneutic framework, there is no normative method at work here per se; and as such, we see the vacuous nature of conservatism: the normative object to be conserved through moral and social ideology is never `real’, failing to exist in anything but an ephemeral and hyper-transitory sense. Put differently: any sense of normative imperative which might suggest an ethical or moral imbue to the world, and thus any sense of “reason” which might seek to conservatively hold this or that value-premise aloft, is an effect of will-to-power and its pragmatics. One will only seek to conserve a particular perspective if one has already bought into the normative structure of an objective “good”. This position requires that beings be rendered fixed, defined, and statically objective. With such a position, three unresolvable problems arise: First, in affixing the “good” to an objective state-of-being, one errantly assumes knowledge and privileged access to the meaning of the “good”; this as though the “good” is a noumenal essence to which “right thinking” might correspond. Of course, the proverbial rub comes in when two opposition sides of a perspective both declare their centrality-of-right. Secondly, privileged epistemic access is presupposed relative to “believing” in the presence of any such `fixed object of truth’. In other words, to conserve one must blindly assume that the object to be held `is’ (and thus one must violently impose an order-of-meaning over and upon that which is to be conserved, all the while imposing the will-of-possession over and upon said being-as-held). In this, the roots of objectification come forth, rendering all manner of person, place, and thing objectively defined. Finally, conservation, in its need to elevate and reify its particular rendition of the “good”, fails to realize that the import of this “good” is wholly bound-up and intertwined to the presence of the “bad”. The “good” to be conserved in any moral or ideological doctrine can only be of epistemic import insofar as the “bad” exists in dualistic proximity. Furthermore, this “bad” must be equally efficacious relative to the “good” if either is to have conservatism’s want of meaning. With this we again come around and see how one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, and vice-versa. The “truth” of the “good” is always but a perspective of “belief in the good”; and all such “beliefs” are hollow tautologies, each circularly begging its own question of validity through appeal to the authority it erects as “good”. In short, there is a reciprocal relation of identity equivalence active within any such proposition of value. The “conservative”, in his longing for an antecedent “better” time or condition, mindlessly overlooks the fact that any downward eschatological spiral grounds within this antecedent period. You only move down the slide if you have first started at the top; and one only access the top of the slide if one seeks to `go down’. The presence of the `slope’ already presupposes the facticity of every point along its gradient curve. Think about! The very roots of that held “bad” must be intertwined to the dynamic-of-good one seeks to conserve qua a previous time. Hence, looking for a return to “good Christian values”, or the seemingly simple times of a bygone era, blindly overlooks the fact that the devolution so loudly decried as a “bad”, and against which the bulwark of the “good” is to be constructed, must be rooted in the oppositional relation of the original dyad. This means that what the conservative believes is “good” is precisely that which is necessary for that which he decries as “bad”; and sans the “bad”, that held aloft as “good” would succumb to meaninglessness. As noted before, there is no meaning in the `high’ sans the presence of the `low’, no meaning in the satiety of something filled if there is no concomitant sense of deficit qua emptiness. In this, Nietzsche and Rorty are much nearer the mark than may appear at first glance: the sum total of the world is but a series of interpretive perspectives, each influenced and filtered through the pragmatics of the epoch’s dictum-of-power and its nihilistic valuatory structure.50 --FOOTNOTE-- 50. Hence, both the “true” world of metaphysics and theology, as well as the apparent world of conjecture and myth, become nothing but fable, both with no underlying truth-validity. There is no way for “truth” to be imposed upon the disjunctive lack of that which is always held away in absence when this concealment is managed by the very same dynamic which professes revelation. In this, the “false” & “true” likewise become fables. The inclusion of any part of a duality sans the `other’ renders the abstractly proffered part-as-a-whole only as such—complete—as a lie and form of semblematic self-deception (a simulacrum or manufactured mimesis). We only “believe” the answers thus yielded by metaphysics and theology to be complete via an evasion of what is privatively withheld and lacking therewith (α/λήθεια). This is the underlying dynamic of truth which Nietzsche makes problematic, and to which Heidegger addresses in detail. In this, metaphysical “answers” are incomplete by semantic necessity (which is itself manifest via the necessity of the epoch’s semiotic design). (A Single Star in Sight, (c) Metaunstable 2011 Lyrics of Bell/ArtifexAstrum (P) 2012)
Posted on: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 02:15:55 +0000
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