Wednesday, January 24, 2007

ICE BERLIN PART 111 ( the pot stews now)

Sometimes philosophy specialists forget or ignore the really existing scene. This is not to say that all philosophers do this. But what is this freedom and liberty that we often find ourselves debating? If there has always been a tension between everyday talk and the talk of philosophers there is also the tension between the really existing world, the perceived world and the pure world. What is this damned freedom and liberty?

According to George Bush jnr this freedom and liberty ( and all) is written clearly for all to see and feel. No questions needed and no debate. Just look at the signs on the USA concentration camps and see for yourself. Or just suffer a speech. It was said many times that if people had really read and listened critically to the words of Adolf Hitler then the Jews would not have been killed. But Jews were killed. Murdered. The same is with the present George W Bush.

Now we hear Bush talking about oil and terror and war and budgets and now he does not talk of freedom or liberty. Before all this was freedom and liberty but today ( God Bless) oil comes back. The left wing, like Chomsky, must be smiling and crying ! But this is a real issue, i think, when Berlin is discussed. What is the real existing freedom and liberty and what connection is there to oil and to politics and capitalism?

This means to ask the kind of question that tries to handle the issue of a logic within a socio-economic movement. This means to ask "What is History"? Does it move? Or is there only you and me that move? Can there be progress or can there even be a kind of logic in capitalism? Can there be a logic to such historical movements and still yet an active participative "agent" that says yes and no and acts upon this. Is there, as Vico puts foward, a kind of logic to development or history?
Or are we merely in "voluntary servitude"?
Are we merely "Amusing Ourselves to Death"?

Somewhere here there is sense in studying Isaiah Berlin even if the pot might begin to stew a bit. To argue against Maggie Thatcher and her poodle Bliar is to take these kinds of questions seriously. Can society exist?

23 comments:

zola a social thing said...

I have tried to make this thread as a new thread ( the other threads remain active) but this thread has, I think, another dimension.

First it tries to keep philosophy on the everyday ground as we know it.

Second it brings in the work of ice berlin in historical senses ( determination and inevitability etc.

Third it is topical. The Bush speech and the Bliar lot on their justifications for their versions of liberty and freedom etc etc.

I must travel to helsinki tonight ( I sleep on the night train going south and it takes about 11 hours to get to helsinki from my home). I must try and lecture and run a workshop god bless me.

Back on Saturday morning i am. Really I am too old for all this stuff but they pay me.

Hope these threads continue.
It is a bit of a risk but who cares for that.
A few more jokes would be nice.
This old bastard is working his arse off here !!!

have not had so much fun since me first mother in law died as Bob Monkhouse said.

Anonymous said...

Maggie Milk Snatcher famously said '....there is no such thing as society'.
Sparked some conversation with that one, she did.
Was she correct or not?.
Does that not depend on how you see the place of the individual?.
If we are all like marbles in a giant box, then you can easily remove one without much trouble.
If we are like cells in a honeycomb then removing one is goint to destroy those round about.
I tend towards the second viewpoint whereas Thatcher clearly didn't.
And as the vast majority are in a kind of voluntary servitude, anyway, she acted accordingly.
She was entirely wrong - but she acted correctly within the confines of her ideology.

Bush has quite clearly ditched the 'War on Terror' in favour of the War against Islamo-fascism' as his mantra. Sad thing is that many who know they were duped last time will embrace this new war with relish.
Saddam Hussein must be looking down on it all with glee.

Anonymous said...

Safe journey, Zola.

Anonymous said...

Zola is away. Let's jump.

Anonymous said...

No!. You first.
Can't do it. Scared. Why?.
Got erased from CiF. First time.
Cif is getting as bad as the Burrow.
Vinegar Tits obviously loves Berlin.

Anonymous said...

Come back Zola, all is forgiven.

zola a social thing said...

Good morning campers
My God you have behaved well !!!!
Just back after another 11 hours on the night train ( and the restaurant wagon, hic, hic ...) .... what day is it?

Anonymous said...

welcome back, ZoZoBear.....
good time ?
Missed us ? Missed you............

zola a social thing said...

hic ... yes...hic...
where am I?

Anonymous said...

Probably bollock-naked in the Pond.

anticant said...

Welcome home, Zola. As I've been banned from using public transport for the past two years by the medics, I can only contemplate your long train journeys and restaurant car imbibings with fond nostalgia. [Restaurant cars are a thing of the past on UK trains anyway.]

walkthisway said: "Cif is getting as bad as the Burrow." Fair do's please! No-one else's comments have ever been erased in the Burrow except my own [because of typographical errors, and then immediately replaced]. I know I have complained about the tone and temper of some comments, but unlike CiF I DO NOT CENSOR OPINIONS and never shall.

If you want to raise issues about the Burrow, please do it there. And incidentally, have a look at the wide range of comments on Grayling's CiF post about blogging anonymity. Very interesting! But I don't comment there myself any more on principle because I object to both the censorship and the erratic way it is operated.

Anonymous said...

Stumbled on this.
http://geobay.com/fdd6aa
Funny, but sad.

Found a funny one here too.

'If you want to raise issues about the Burrow, please do it there.'
What?. Listen to yourself!.
'And incidentally,..I don't comment there myself any more..'.
That is the nature of attempts at control. Subtle, but not so.
What are you saying?.
'I can comment about a site where I don't post - but you shouldn't'.
Oh!. Didn't realise.
In your burrow, suggest what you want. I will not be censored by the MisterMonistIvan cabal. Course not.

zola a social thing said...

Good morning campers welcome to your Butlins red coats ( or were they blue coats? Can't remember ) carival of desire day.
As it is Sunday and as poor Zola struggles to get a brain back to functioning mode ( only half a hic today - getting better all the time .... damn that restaurant wagon)I am making this day a antiserious day and a day for total silliness and spirit of carnival delights. Today, Sunday is to be Dionysus day.

But later I will get back to Ice Berlin and re-ignite your academic cinders - cannot keep you lazy all the time you know.
So enjoy your holiday when you can.

zola a social thing said...

BTW : If there are any bits of advice for hangover medicines now is the time to give them .... and quick.

Funny I cannot imagine Ice Berlin with a hangover. Funny that.

Goethe loved his wine and Sibelius was an expert boozer but Berlin? I imagine him ordering water with ice please.

anticant said...

walkthisway: if you will persist in twisting my words, I can't stop you. I don't know who "MisterMonistIvan" is. "walkthisway" seems a rather controlling moniker to me. are you another billstickers? I am simply not interested in your silly cybergames, having serious real-life issues to cope with.

zola a social thing said...

Wakey,Wakey : you orrible lot. Back to Ice Berlin soon as the Workers Playtime transfers to tennis and/or the new thread on hedgehogs and foxes above.

Stand the men at ease Sgt major but wake the buggers up for a six o'clock start with clean boots and spotless white belts .....

Anonymous said...

http://geobay.com/a8c777 Guardian
GrumpyKantankerous, lighten up.
That link shows how the rightwing attempt to stifle debate failed once before. Can't be done, at the moment.
If you want to do a competition in the Burrow for the most macho/controlling name, do let us know.
Fee fie fo fum I recognise a couple names from there.
Right, Zola, say the alphabet for me.

zola a social thing said...

A is for alienation
B is for Bacchus
C is for Cash Nexus
D is for Disenchantment
E is for ex-static moments of Being
F is for Fetish commodity fu.ckin forms
G is for Gemeinschaft
.....
...

All of which are sadly lacking any appreciation in the writings of icey berlin or

Anonymous said...

Wrong on all, or most, counts, IMHO.

A: Alienation. Berlin dealt with it. This, after all, was someone who could get inside any Romantic's head. Or rather, heart.

C: Cash nexus. He abhored it, and all such attempts to replace human relationships with it; and trying to analyse of 'cash out' what we humans do in such a way was one of our biggest mistakes, Berlin argued. Far more things than money makes the world go round.

D: Disenchantment. He was in some ways as much a explorer of such themes as Weber was.

E: Ecstasy: See entry under alienation.

F: Commodity Festishism: he didn't have too much to say on it, specifically; but then again, see entry under C. And he'd probably agree on the main thrust of the thesis along with Marx. Especially seeing as Marx nicked it from the Romantics.

G: Gemeinschaft. I don't think there was any other liberal thinker who explored the tensions between individual and community better than Berlin; all of this well before that individualism/communitarian debate got all so trendy in 1980/90s political theory.

(B: Bacchus: No idea how hard, if at all, Berlin hit All Souls' wine cellar; the biggest, and most expensive, in Oxford. Allegedly.)

zola a social thing said...

Now we are in the ring
Place your bets ladies and gentlemen.
Butwhatif is running favourite.

BTW : Marx did NOT nick from Romantics he nicked from the Greeks and ( dare I say it) the Scots.
Good - that is the "F" sorted.

zola a social thing said...

Can "society" exist"?
Or can "community" exist?
That opens up again G.

zola a social thing said...

For "E" - the ex-static is surely a part of enchantment and we might fray along from there ( weber or no weber)as the routine world erupts.
So that is point "E" opened up.

Remember Butwhatif the hiden-hedgehog from berlin.

zola a social thing said...

As for "C" Butwhatif and all I find myself penitent. I will fix that and try again. Wrong i was.

But perhaps Berlin was more idealist in this sense of the cash-nexus as he seemed to deny the logic of capitalism as being something more than the "humanistic" interpretation.

I must re-consider this bit before our toby cuts me legs off with his sharp sword of reason.

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