It does.

Or, if if it doesn't, as you bemoaned this is not a thread on regulating weapons.

This is a thread that could apply to people in Britain, Spain, Germany, etc. etc. can participate in.

It doesn't matter.

It relates because thems could have taken the means into their own hands and forced the gov to not take their land other than "move on" to be vagabonds elsewhere.

Oh, suppose I say, "There is a genocide in Gaza", then the response -- not from you but due to media -- would be "Israel has a right to defend itself"

But that's not what they're doing. They're committing a genocide.

Yet if they succeed, as the United States did, they'll win. If they eliminate everyone then they'll get to keep the land. We passed on the genocide stick to them.

How do you vote to influence that?

The reason the 2nd amendment is germane but off topic is that it's not how you'd pursue the bullet -- you don't revolt by appealing to the supreme court that your revolution is justified because of the 2nd Amendment.

Yeah, they are, but I want to sideline that notion for this topic.

Yet the question is -- the ballot or the bullet? How do we justify each position, philosophically?

Just doing my job, sir.

And, yeah, it's a disturbing thought.

Can we not appreciate the irony AND be disgusted by the reaction to a political assassination? — DingoJones

Sure.

I'm still disgusted with the means of politics. I've often found that raising this disgust about other such scenarios results in excuses so I'm a bit skeptical.

I want to point to the genocide in Gaza at the moment more than this sensationalist plot in asking the question, though. I am looking for a wider perspective than this one event.

Since Kirk was an outspoken 2nd amendment proponent, and was literally killed while answering questions about shootings, the whole firearm thing seems germane. — RogueAI

OK -- in that way I'm interested in a 2nd amendment discussion, but I want it to be a sub-plot: first political violence in the world and then 2nd amendment.

Vice-versa I feel like, tho this is germane, it'd turn into a debate we've had many times before, whereas I'm trying to use a case which might spark some thoughts that aren't the talking points.

Charlie Kirk is a complete unknown to me. Every day anonymous strangers are killed whom I cannot mourn. — BC

I envy your position lol.

I think organizing is the only way out, which I take to be the same as what you say here, with anarchist modifications:

we are not at that day now, and we do not seem to be on the verge of that day.

Vigorous, focused, competent political activism is still a better bet for a civil society, good government, — BC

Can we not turn this into a discussion about firearms? Is that remotely possibly here? — Outlander

I have no desire to turn this discussion towards the 2nd amendment and all that -- I've stated my case that I'm in favor of the Australian buy-back program, in some capacity.

I'm asking about what a group ought do when they realize voting not only didn't work this one time, but won't work because it's set up that way.

Consider the Electoral College that still exists in thinking about this.

Yeah...

Even so I think this way, or try to:

31
Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn't wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.

I feel like it's bad of me, but it is how I feel -- making your own bed and all.

We must carry on, yes.

I'm using Malcolm X as a philosopher. He has a point -- I guess the question is, philosophically, "How do we carry on?"

We don't know.

Also, the motivation doesn't matter to the question: I am inspired by the current event, but am broaching a larger question about political philosophy.

Here the bullet was used, whatever the motivation.

Oddly the ballot could not be used against a speaker that seems to have influence -- was there a politician who said, "Defund Charlie Kirk"?

Probably somewhere if we dig deep enough but you know that voting for that politician wouldn't do anything to his private career that happened to be political.

I remember you talking about the group of anarchists you housed with.

I figured you'd prefer if they could stay rather than be pushed out.

Suppose you encounter a government official who as ejected you from some grounds on the basis that the municipality claims those grounds and your people don't meet code.

Is that the same? Would you avoid having your sentiments outraged? Let them speak their words, even though those words result in your collective being ousted?

Which is the political question: The Ballot or the Bullet?

How do we, in a philosophical sense, tackle this question?

Charlie Kirk didn't deserve what happened to him in the sense that all he did made him worthy of punishment: But we're in a time when speakers of movements are legitimate targets for the propaganda by the deed.

And -- c'mon, he really was in favor of the 2nd amendment even if it results in gun violence.

I don't celebrate political violence, and I don't condemn it -- it's like condemning physics -- this is how we still do things.

6 days ago PBS said over 60,000

The part that makes me wonder is how much violence we're already responsible for.

And that is pretty fucked up.

If people aren't familiar with Malcolm X then the question I'm posing is with respect to political violence and its justifications.

The bread-and-butter interpretation I'd give is: if the ballot works then sure.

But if it doesn't, then there's only one unfortunate answer.

There is, in addition, a certain irony that Charlie Kirk advocated for the 2nd amendment on the basis that random murder is the price to pay for freedom.

I added a link to my OP to give context for the thought.

The only part that I see in the guidelines is:

Social media

We want to encourage thoughtful posts, not just share quote-tweet or viral clips with little to no substance. As a result, posts containing links and embeds to social media are deleted, shorts as well

Unless I'm missing something, at least. I could be.

The reason I post this is because of the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk. It's also a classic speech for political philosophy and worth visiting on its own right, but that event is why I thought of this.

It does when I think on it in a universal sense -- it's not like I know which way is what. That's sort of Kant's point: Keep on arguing which way you want, it'll be interesting, but it won't effect scientific knowledge and you'll never know which is what.

If Kant thought it worthy addressing philosophically then I have a hard time arguing determinism isn't even plausible in the manner you described.

A response without jargon:

There's a sense in which each side can assume the first truth and explain the other. That's the confusion of an antinomy.

But what if this particular form of determinism isn’t at the individual level, but at the level of reality itself? In other words, if I am not born, reality generates an alternative person who has the same impacts on the world around them, while each decision made by them is still made through free choice. Or something like that. I'm not normally one for speculative bullshit, but there it is. — Tom Storm

I think then we're running into a kind of antinomy -- which, if we follow Kant, would make it indeterminable via knowledge but we can reimagine the world we experience in either way.

To go dialectical: The kind of determinism you espouse at the level of reality can (but not must) accommodate a libertarian free-will. If we are free, then any bounded ipseity -- no matter what they choose -- will also be free.

Depends on if you take a determined series of events as necessary or freedom as necessary: two kinds of causality that result in antinomy when thought upon.

I am one for speculative bullshit, but I like to clean it up a bit. It's fun.

I was doing so well without having heard this word. Now? The future is uncertain. A new word can cause the world to veer off in unexpected directions! — BC

What thoughts do you have on the unexpected directions?

I actually wouldn't make that inference: Supposing we are all free then this other would have to be similarly so.

I'd suggest that the identity between worlds couldn't possibly happen, as the scenario sets up, so there's no conflict to me choosing differently -- what else would another world be? Unless, of course, I'm just not there -- perhaps we could make a distinction here between "other worlds" and "alien worlds"; simply not existing seems to have an alien flavor to it -- as something I could never experience.

Something I haven't been able to talk about, but am getting an idea about now, is Adorno's use of "philosophical experience".

I think what he's ultimately defending is the notion that philosophy can produce positive knowledge: At one extreme we have Kant's "intellectual intuition" which would forbid a human being from being able to think towards positive thoughts about the metaphysical, for instance, which Adorno is speaking on (not sure what else to call a materialist criticizing Hegel but utilizing his dialectic than at least metaphysical-adjacent)

In a way I am imagining that this philosophical experience is something akin to an intellectual intuition, but not as expansive as Kant's notion of the intellectual intuition -- rather something a bit more human that still requires training, expertise, and so forth (as the sciences also need), but not something that, by so doing, is undercut by the antinomies: In a way we might say, though this is me trying to make sense of things rather than reading other interpretations, that ND is a theory of intellectual intuition insofar as we understand that he's not claiming to have the mind of God or something -- only that philosophy makes progress.

Here's a fun thought you're inspiring in me:

Supposing that most of us are not irreplaceable there is a sense that even if the me that I feel myself to be right now does not exist that I could, for all intents and purposes, exist -- my individual ipseity would be bound to another that I do not experience, but the place I hold in the world would still be fulfilled.


***


But then when I think a little more locally I think that we aren't exactly replaceable one for another: it's the particular relationship between myself and my loved ones and such that's important. What is not important there is one's effects on The World Scene, as if the world were some kind of testing grounds to demonstrate and pursue our own perfection.

Rather it's smaller, gentler, quieter than the world events at large: But also meaningful to me.

The first answer that come to mind @Jack Cummins was "Supposing I could somehow see this world that doesn't have me in it I doubt I'd care because here I am in my world being myself. My existence matters to me, but that's only after having been brought about, whatever that consists in."

In a way my existence mattering to me, at the other extreme, is a social act: There's a certain point where you are expected to brush your own teeth, for instance. That amount of individual care is expected by our loved ones: they want the best for us as vice versa in the ideal sense at least.

But insofar that I cease to engage in the world with an eye towards others then we run into the story of self-improvement, comparison towards others, achievement: In a way a new kind of sociality, but one which is a dance of individuals pitted in competition with observable metrics such that we can eliminate the useless amongst us. (And crow when our enemies are defeated)

The Privilege of Experience

Now we're getting into some dialectical reasoning: Adorno, by prioritizing the subject and experience thereby obtains the purest objectivity where the subject is the reflection of the objective.

Further the positivistic view of truth is used to reflect on this truth that Adorno is seeking: whereas a managed, positivistic viewpoint eliminates the subject in favor of an objectivity which maximizes communication between nodes, flattened to the point that one can easily substitute for the other Adorno's use of subjectivity allows each truth, invoking Spinoza, to be an index of itself: So this particular care towards the small, individual, unique experience of the object actually requires a subject, and this play between the subject/object forms a sort of overlapping set of truths.

Like before, since there's a page break, I want to try and summarize this section. With some of the questions I have above about particular passages I could be off, but at a more general level I'm thinking:

This section starts with the vertiginous and moves towards the Solidified. I'm reading the second section as tied to the first: The Vertiginous undermines this sense of an eternal truth which doesn't change, but since truth, as Adorno wants to discuss it, is a fragile affair this isn't something which undermines philosophy.

The middle point is meant to reassure us that ND is not a relativism.

And the final point is meant to bring out the Solidified, which I gather is important given his criticism of Hegel's philosophy dominating the object with the concept -- here, though this is a dialectics, is a material philosophy.

But, I'm fine to let that go, and continue, because it's not really related to the reading. However, the final paragraph in that section, in my mind, alludes to teleology. Heidegger on the other hand, I believe, appeals directly to teleology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Understood.

Given what we've said so far it ought not surprise you that I disagree ;)

But that'd be for a thread on teleology rather than reading a book together.

The distinction between "ready" and "present" is teleological, — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps this is no surprise given our disagreement thus far: But I don't think that the distinction is teleological. Which stops your line of reasoning that Aristotle is relevant.

I don't think he is.

It could be we're at an impasse at this point? I've said my bit and you've said yours -- but we're still in the introduction so there's much more to read together. It's OK if we don't see eye to eye. We can still help one another in reading the text from different perspectives.

Take Heidegger's distinction between present-at-hand/ready-to-hand.

Prior to Heidegger -- at least so the story goes from his lips -- ontology was focused upon the present-at-hand.

Heidegger disputes that -- negates it.

But he doesn't just say "No"

Instead he broaches a question: How can we make the question "What is the meaning of being?" make sense again?

Broaching the question is the encounter with the groundless/bottomless. But negation had to happen prior -- a realization that our thought is not "all there is" even though we thought, due to this being ontology, that's all there was -- to even form the question which then leads to a distinction as it develops.

We can judge a specific ontology as groundless, or bottomless, if we think that the claims of that ontology are ungrounded, or unsound, but that would just mean that we disagree with the ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm thinking that "hitting bottomlessness" is not something we ascribe to other thoughts as much as is an encounter with the vertiginous. We don't judge a specific ontology as groundless as much as, in the course of thinking identity as primary, we encounter the failings of thinking.

If bottomlessness is where we find truth then, no, we don't just disagree with an ontology: We're seeing something new through the act of negation rather than simply denying it as false.

Then bottomless, or ungrounded, is just an avoidance. Instead of addressing what we disagree with, we simply dismiss the ontology as groundless or bottomless. So the charge of bottomless, or groundless, is just a nothing charge, useless and meaningless, while those who make the charge are acting out bottomlessness..

Hopefully the above addresses your concerns so that this does not follow.

However, hitting bottomlessness is absurd to me. Therefore, I suppose I can conclude that I have felt that moment of seeing the absurd, as "hitting bottomlessness". — Metaphysician Undercover

To take back what I said far too flippantly yesterday:

This is close, I think, but I want to make a distinction between the absurd and the groundless on the basis of the opening to this section: In one sense "the absurd" can be a terminus of thought and in that way I think it'd be wrong to interpret Adorno. Rather it seems "the groundless" is the beginning of thought proper that is not merely mirroring activity.

So rather than an empty and quiet absurdity it seems we have the vertiginous groundlessness which is a beginning rather than an end to thought. So insofar that "hitting bottomlessness" leads to some new thought then I think we're close in our thoughts.

Dialectics and the Solidified --

Thought is always negative but does not leave what is solid behind. That which is immediately perceived begins as a moment of the solidified and then upon reflection is mediated. While Hegel tried to ground dialectics in this mediated immediacy Adorno claims he did not leave the domination of the object by the subject behind as much as covered it up with "Geist"

The following I'm having trouble disentangling:

The Hegelian Logic foots the bill for this in its thoroughly formal character.
While it must according to its own concept be substantive, it excises, in
its effort to be everything at the same time, metaphysics and a doctrine
of categories, the determinate existent out of itself, in which its
beginnings could have legitimated itself; therein not so far away from
Kant and Fichte, who Hegel never tired of denouncing as the
spokespersons for abstract subjectivity.

Especially the first clause of the second sentence: "While it must according to its own concept be substantive, it excises, in its effort to be everything at the same time, metaphysics and a doctrine of categories, the determinate existent out of itself"

"While it must according to its own concept be substantive" where "it" = the Science of Logic

"it excises..." -- I'm trying to figure out which of the latter clauses this is connecting the first clause to.

"in its effort to be everything at the same time" must not be the clause because it immediately follows so this feels more like a parenthetical notation or an aside from the main point. But "it" is still Hegel's logic.

it's the next two that have me scratching my head: does the logic excise metaphysics and a doctrine of categories, the determinate existent out of itself, or both and the comma is effectively an "and"?


***

Next paragraph:

The spirit wins the battle against the non-existent enemy -- I take it "the enemy" are examples like Krugian's feather, and that Hegel's response is a "stop thief"

I'm guessing "stop thief" is riffing on the common phrase? So Hegel is, effectively, yelling an accusation in order to stop what seems to be a reasonable ask of a universal philosophy? Or is there such a thing as a thief who takes stops from others?

I think Adorno is taking Hegel to task here for being assured in the concept because his logic primarily deals with the conceptual and leaves behind the non-identical. And this is seen by seeing through the autonomy of subjectivity which, in turn, leads to several consequences that unravel to show the solidified beyond the concept.

***

Consciousness has a certain naivete. If it did not then thinking would lose itself and become naive. If the experience of consciousness did not create resistance to the facade (what I'm gathering is this naive experience in consciousness and then the reflection upon that naivete) then thought and activity "would only be dim copies"

I'm gathering that this is the sort of thinking he's speaking against, i.e., identity-thinking: whereas Adorno wants thought to have more to it than merely representing activity or reflecting it.

***

"What in the object goes beyond the determinations laid upon it by thinking, returns firstly to the subject as something immediate; where the subject feels itself to be quite certain of itself, in the primary experience, it is once again least of all a subject."

This naive certainty is not a subject but the return of what is in the object after determinations are laid upon it: we call a ball "round", but that ball could be an American football (it is round after all) or an International football (spherical) -- the object will return what is beyond the concept "round" and we'll be able to distinguish further, but this immediate experience -- the naive realism of the immediate -- is not fully determined by our concepts. There is still the non-identical, and this immediate return of the object is the least subject-like consciousness.

***

"The confidence that the whole seamlessly emerges out of that which is immediate, solid and simply primary, is idealistic appearance [Schein]. To dialectics immediacy does not remain what it immediately
expresses.It becomes a moment instead of the grounds. At the opposite pole, the same thing happens to the invariants of pure thought. "


So this "least subject like' experience is still an idealism when taken as a ground. Only by taking it as a moment in the dialectic, with its opposite (thought) do we obtain truth of the solidified.

And it's interesting how Adorno is speaking against a philosophy which emphasizes invariance as the seat of truth -- Platonic realms underlying the mere shadow of our experience as a classic example. We think "permenance" is the marker of the Solidified, but the marker of ideology is when these moments become solidified as transcendence -- the exact opposite of the Solidified in ND.

But, Adorno finishes, Idealism is not per se ideology, but rather is something which hides in the substructures of "something primary". I'm guessing that this is the conclusion for this section, but I am having more difficulty with it than the previous one.

the "something primary" for Hegel is the dialectic, I think. Whereas Adorno is trying to bring in the non-conceptual Hegel is the example he's using to note how the identical, and the unchanging, are markers of the solidified, but that for ND the solidified is taken in a negative, non-idealistic capacity.

I'm having a hard time, felt what? The moment I saw the absurd, or the moment I saw multiplicity? Or is multiplicity absurd for you? I don't know if I've ever really felt either one. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then the answer is "no" ;)

But how does "ontology hits bottomlessness" make any sense? — Metaphysician Undercover

Didn't I answer this?

As a moment in a dialectic rather than a literal ground we stand upon.

"Hitting bottomlessness", I'd say, is the moment you see the absurd: that which is beyond the categories.

Or, to use Heidegger, ontology hitting bottomlessness is realizing that there's a difference between the present-at-hand (that which has a bottom) and the ready-to-hand (that which has now been fished out of the bottomlessness to contrast with our bottom)

On a personal level I'd say it's the moment when you see multiplicity -- and all you can say is "it's multiplicity, but I'm trying to make sense of it"


Have you ever felt that?