As an aside, there are lots of metaphorical possibilities that can be applied to the intellectus / ratio / will triad. I like the idea of reason as a boat with the skipper as ratio, the compass as intellectus, and the rudder as will. The compass "intuits" directionality, the skipper interprets the compasses readings and decides through a chain of reasoning where (s)he should steer the boat in accordance with them, and the rudder enacts the actual work of pushing the boat in the required direction. All three are needed for reason to be actualized.

A short riff on this in a much less systematic way than dealt with in the essay. Spoiler alert: this is much less a critique than an affirmation.

In Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la Rose (1230), we see: “Reason the beautiful, a gracious lady, a humbled goddess…plead[ing] with the lover as a celestial mistress, a rival to his earthly love.”(1) Likewise, in his De Consolatione Philosophiae, Boethius’s Lady Philosophy seems semi-divine, her head effortlessly “pierc[ing] within the very heavens.”(2) This is Reason as “intelligentia obumbrata…the shadow of angelic nature in man.”(3) Nor were these lofty notions confined to the Middle Ages. Aristotle saw man’s “rational soul” as “the most divine element in us.”(4) Plato likewise saw the “golden cord” of reason as “holy”.

"Holy" and holistic. Reason is the proper mode of action in relation to the immediate quality of sense experience, which is in itself a relation that transcends subject and object (it’s pre-symbolic). The telos of reason then is to seek to maximize the quality of such experience in general through specific responses that actualize its quality. In this sense, conscious reasoning involves a detour through symbolic reality to mould the will into a shape fitting to an immediate and intuitive understanding of the ongoing quality of experience that has the potential to deepen and expand subjective experience. It's subjective experience finding itself gradually in and through the word (if we are to be Hegelian about it).

But if reason is posited as lacking its own ends, this, of course, leads to freedom lacking an end.

“the move to define freedom in terms of power, “the ability to choose anything,” as opposed to the earlier view of freedom as: “the self-determining capacity to actualize the good.”

Nominal freedom, the right to respond to passions in varying ways---passions which themselves are provoked in ever more varying ways and to which we respond primarily in order to satisfy our sensuous appetites---takes precedence over ontological freedom, the space to respond according to reason, the telos of which is to increase the quality of subjectivity’s relation to its world—“to actualize the good”.

This castration of reason and freedom is too a castration of subjectivity that tends to lead to self-instrumentalization and self-commodification (of course the Frankfurt school has a lot to say about this, but I’m going to leave them aside here).

Knowing involves a union of knower and known.

The importance of this sort of “union in knowing,” which is both a “being penetrated” by what is known and an ecstasis, a “going out beyond the self to the known,” for Dante cannot be overstated.

The idea of union in truth is important because truth can only be grasped in a relation that is pre-symbolized, that is, therein lies its justification and grounding. Without a unificatory relation of subject / object, there is no way to ground or justify propositions that join the two linguistically. Regardless of level of abstraction, including mathematical abstraction, the dissolving of subject and object in a relation at the direct edge of experience is crucial as a base on which to build rational understanding.

The higher faculty is intellectus (noesis in Greek). Intellectus is the faculty of intuitive understanding; it is contemplative, receptive, and rooted in insight. For the medievals, reasoning must begin with this sort of understanding, otherwise it would simply be a sort of rule following divorced from intelligible content.

This is where an openness to that direct edge of experience comes in and where nominal freedom, the freedom to choose from sensual options becomes much less relevant than ontological freedom, which is first and foremost an intuitive divination of the quality of these options that lends us the power to reject those of them that lack quality, or do not fit with the telos of reason which again is to deepen subjectivity’s access to the truth as direct intuitively accessed experience (wisdom) rather than mere second hand linguistic knoweldge.

This condition arises when the rational soul (intellect and will)—the part of man that can know and desire the Good as Good (28)—is subjugated by man’s lower faculties.

I think the particular lower faculty we are predominantly directed to in contemporary life is novelty as a good in itself rather than a signal to be investigated and evaluated by the intellect. That is, novelty is presented as a means for the will to directly manifest the experience of pleasure in a bypassing of the intellect.

Since the will always desires “what is truly better” through its “natural love,” an attraction to the “worse over the better,” involves a projection of goodness onto what lacks it. This is a failure of the “rational love” that is conditioned by the intellect. It is to love things more or less than they are worthy of being loved. Of course, Dante does not subscribe to a simplistic notion where things are simply “good or bad” in themselves. The intellect must guide the person precisely because goodness is defined in terms of proper ends, ends which must ultimately be oriented towards man’s final end, ascent.

If we were to take seriously the idea of the intellect as a means to intuit the likely quality of potential behaviours instantiated by the will, or the ratio as a means to process the meaning of the possibilities of action in relation to a proper intuitive understanding of them, our contemporary milieu would look very different. In fact, in terms of power hierarchies and the accumulation of capital that largely determines them, it would be utterly transformed.

This really resonates with my recent readings (Schiller on aesthetics, Byung-Chul Han on technocapitalism, and John Gray on Utopian engineering), and it represents just the type of thinking we need now with the gap between ideological "freedom" and actual freedom becoming ever wider. As an aside, I think Italian theorist Franco Berardi with his idea of poesis and rhythm as paths of resistance forms a useful bridge between Schiller and Byung-Chul Han. Anyway, thank you for this stimulating and very well written piece. I'm interested in discussing it more with you when your identity is revealed.

Also love it :starstruck: . Please make this into a series and get it published or self-publish. :pray:

This is a brilliantly executed take-down of a poisonous ideology. It methodically dismantles a mindset that, though many of us intuitively see as incoherent and unsupportable, continues to be a dominant force in modern life. Thank you to the writer for putting forward such a detailed and structured argument. Everyone should read this.

This paper is substantive, a work of passion and intellect. — Amity

I agree. It's properly edifying. And the length shouldn't put anyone off. It's well worth reading it all. I'll come back and say more later.

Glad it's sorted now. :up:

You may be right and my reasoning might be too cautious. It wouldn't be the first time..

what is unfair about making the essays public? — hypericin

Nothing---unless an author submitted on a reasonable understanding they were going to be private. We just don't know if that's the case, right? I think that's @Amity's point. However, that's just my take and I am just one vote. From a purely personal point of view, I don't mind either way.

(It might be that some or other author entered on that basis or that it is particularly important to them, I mean).

I had forgotten about the private/public thing and @Jamal was just trying to be helpful. However, I vote along with @Amity to keep them private at least until authors are revealed and decide publically to change that if that was the original expectation. Seems fairer.

"On Quality" - Robert Pirsig (published posthumously)

Good as a short introduction to Pirsig's thought.

"Event" -Slavoj Zizek. Good start. Relevant to something I've been writing.

Consdering buying:

"The Radical Luhmann" Hans-Georg Moeller

The sample is really good. I'll probably buy the full thing when I've got through reading some other material.

Brothers Karamazov — Hanover

I have been reading that for years.

but now I fear it will be too large and will crush my chest with its weight. — Hanover

I suppose it's one of those books that grows on you.

I'm good with adding a PF Essay tag in addition to the title of the paper so that it's easily discernable without clicking on the sub-forum, though clicking on the sub-forum ought to filter out for the essays alone if that's what someone wants to focus on. — Moliere

Not sure we need the tag. It sounds a bit cumbersome to me.

Ha, we'll see, I guess. Anyhow, I am going to resume observer status for a while. Good night.

I see where you're coming from. So, it became a rights issue because a group of women objected and yes, the public should pay attention. But I don't think there is an absolute answer as to whether they were right or wrong. The situation is contingent on the objection which is contingent on the cultural context, which is contingent on local cultural values. If this group hadn't objected, and perhaps in another country there might not have been an objection, this issue wouldn't have arisen and wouldn't have needed to. It's culturally conditioned and would seem, in this case, to be very difficult to universalize. That's just my take. I'm not deep into this and I have no objection to attempts to argue for either side. It could be interesting.

What about women's rights? Nobody even wants to mention the issue that brought on the recent UK ruling. Aren't women's rights enough of a concern to even talk about it? — frank

Part of what constitutes values are balances of rights and these are intertwined with socially determined definitions. I know cis-women, for example, who would virulently object to excluding trans women from womanhood and consider it a (trans)woman's right to use the woman's bathroom as much as a woman's. And even if we accept your premise and speak of biological women's rights in opposition to trans-women's rights, we still identify a conflict of rights in the overall sphere of human rights between some* biological women who object to certain things---e.g. trans women using their bathrooms---and trans women. So, I think we are indirectly speaking about rights just by discussing who is affected in what way and so on.

*This is important. In Ireland, as in Thailand, people are free to use bathrooms in accordance with their gender identity. And women in those countries don't generally consider that an impingement of their rights. We are back to culture. This is a very contentious issue in the U.S. and in perhaps some other countries, but it can only become a rights issue in a cultural context where biological women decide trans women impinge on their rights by doing certain things or being in certain places they consider exclusive to them.

Personally, like most Irish and Thai people, I see no problem with bathrooms being used according to gender identity and there is no significant problem that I am aware of socially that is specific to biological women's attitudes either, so in those cultural contexts, the issue just doesn't really arise. When it comes to sports and gender-affirming care though, that needs a lot of careful working out based on scientific evidence etc. I don't think there are simple answers and I don't have a position because I haven't researched it enough.

Thank you for clarifying.

(I only interjected really to make the point that the important difference seems to be one of cultural values not what social reality as defined by social institutions is currently telling us.)

Search engines and dictionaries are usually pretty good indicators of social reality though. Law is another important institution and perhaps @Michael being from the UK is a better person to engage you on that specific point.

Well, for example, I typed "Is a transgender man a man?" into Google and got the result:

"Yes, a transgender man is considered a man. The term "transgender man" refers to an individual who was assigned female at birth but identifies as a man. Their gender identity is male, and they live as a man."

The reason I got this result is that the dominant current discourse of developed nations (social reality) does indeed go against biological reality. That doesn't preclude you arguing that it shouldn't be the case though.

My understanding of what you are doing is expressing a cultural value that was formerly implicit due to the absence of a trans discourse, but you would like to be explicitly accepted in opposition to this new discourse. It seems then that you and your interlocutors have different values that you would like to be discursively dominant. As it stands, the idea of gender being separate to biological sex is dominant in most developed countries. Everyone has a right to openly argue for their discursive preferences, but that dominance can be demonstrated as an institutional fact. E.g. Webster's and the Oxford dictionary recognize gender as having a legitimate meaning that can oppose biological sex.

All I am saying here is that a focus on arguing for your values would seem more productive than denying an institutional social reality. Social discourses can change but for now, it is what it is.

Deadline fast approaching if anyone needs a reminder...

Black Mass - John Gray

Strong critique of utopian thinking throughout post-enlightenment western political thought right up to recent American neocon foreign policy, especially re war on terror etc. Little in the way of solutions though.

Berardi is a cultural critic, particularly focused on technocapitalism. His best known book is "Uprising", but I haven't read that. Anyhow, he provides a useful framework that dovetails with authors like Mark Fisher, Byung Hul Chan, Bernard Stiegler etc. and I particularly like his emphasis on poetry.

Breathing: Chaos and Poetry---Franco "Bifo" Berardi

A bit uneven but where's it's good, it's very good.

Let's leave it there then. Thank you for the chat.

However, there are issues. — Malcolm Parry

There clearly are issues and it's up to you as a society to work them out to your preference. But any rational social policy should be logically consistent with itself at least. It's not logically consistent to base a policy of disbarring people from women's spaces on women being disturbed by the physical presence of men and then base entry to those spaces not on physical characteristics defining such presence but ultimately on something that can be entirely unseen like chromosomes.

However, if a trans man wishes to use the female restroom they would be allowed as they are female. — Malcolm Parry

That means your objection is not based on what someone looks like or what physical bits they have. And, if so, what does it matter whether trans women pass for women?

Well, it's culturally dependent. Where I live---Thailand---we are very much there. The idea of preventing trans women from using a woman's bathroom isn't at all on the radar. I don't think it's an issue in my home country of Ireland either.

I get you in terms of the U.S., but I'm trying to work out on what one could consistently base an objection when biological sex and gender have no necessary connection because they are based on different categories of reality and gender is technologically mutable. Does it mean that objectors want anyone regardless of their biological sex to get arrested if they look too masculine? That, as I said, is inconsistent with wanting to protect biological women from encroaches on their space by biological men because it discriminates on a level, the physical, that now has no necessary connection to the biological in practice and so the objection could be applied to biological women as well as biological men.

On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects: Gilbert Simondon

I very much like Bernard Stiegler's approach to technics and he was highly influenced by Simondon. So, back to the source here.

Challenged on what basis? Physically, a trans man---who you must want to be in women's bathrooms because you claim they are women due to their biological sex---can easily look more like a man than a trans woman, so it can't be a physical basis because that would contradict your exclusive focus on biological sex.

If it won't be policed then everyone effectively has a choice and what choice is taken might vary with time. So, we effectively agree.

I'm not interested in trying to brow-beat anyone into changing their definitions. But, seeing as who "passes" is not something that can be objectively policed---e.g. trans men, who, under your biological-sex-first definition, are women, but many of which wouldn't pass for women either in terms of their physical appearance, and so logically you would allow in women's bathrooms without passing physically---I don't see much of a practical difference here.

But regardless, technologies of body modification have reached the point where there need be no obvious physical way to determine who has what chromosomes. And even if there were and you were to enforce that, you would be putting trans men into women's bathrooms, many of whom look like the men you supposedly want to keep out of bathrooms because of their physical appearance. So, biological essence really recedes into irrelevancy as a consideration. Woman are not made uncomfortable (if they are made uncomfortable at all) by someone's chromosomes.

Let's call it recent to the public sphere of debate. But, yes, as far as I've heard, the general idea of gender not matching sex is not recent at all. It's just been differently culturally processed. So, yes, thanks for the correction.

Another Mark Fisher fan. :up:

Let's pretend unique musical forms aren't dead (nor history either) and 1000 years later, people are listening to Drock music. Why aren't we listening to Drock music now? Is that equivalent to the question of the OP?

@Quk

You seem to be on the right track. I'd condense your ideas into saying music has established itself as a form of cultural expression and so it goes on. I wonder though how much variation there is before we've kind of tried everything. Things feels Mark Fisherish, like we have and Drock music is just a vain dream. But maybe it's a musical unknown unknown, a kind of sonic black swan we can hope for but never truly anticipate. Drock on...

There is absolutely no comparison and men should be completely removed from the debate itself as they simply aren't biologically equipped to understand (and therefore participate in) said debate. — Outlander

That's not entirely unreasonable. But I think it's worth anyone of either sex pointing out in relation to my earlier comment that we're always dealing with layers of culture. There is nothing biologically natural about separating places to urinate and defecate. It's cultural, and we get to decide the cultural norm. The historically recent phenomenon of trans people (edit: as being a subject of public debate) is just another cultural layer that we need to deal with and we get to decide the norm. In fact, we're obligated to do so.

There are different ways to do that and, of course, we ought to be respectful of each other's sensibilities since no matter which way you work it, someone is going to have an ostensibly "reasonable" objection based on their feelings. However, it's disingenuous, I think, to conduct the debate as if layer 1 of contingent sociality (separated bathrooms) is somehow inextricable from our biology such that we can bypass it as an issue for debate. This falsely and covertly positions layer 1 as determined by some biological essence and therefore similarly falsely and covertly positions any compromise taking into account layer 2 (the nascent needs and desires of trans people) as inadmissible.

Layer 1 is culturally sedimented because at some point we made that choice based on the circumstances of the time, which were not a simple matter of biological essentialism as things have not always been that way. And now, a long time later, the circumstances have changed and therefore we need to make another choice, but again, based on social reality. Because that is all that is relevant here. Let's not distract from that.

Indeed, Harry's biological essentialism is a queer ideology.

:up: What strikes me is that there are certain presumptions built into saying this or that is or isn't art, which are easy to miss, and which often include knowledge of the artist's intention, and the apprehension or misapprehension of the artwork's viewers, and the validity or lack thereof of particular institutions of art. When it comes down to it, for anything beyond the obvious, only the hypothetical cultural "person", society personified, can and does validly make the judgement.