griffith seminar 150306

Mark Bahnisch: 

Mark Bahnisch Heidegger, Strauss and Schmitt: Apocalypticism, Neoconservatism or Politics – Understanding the 21st century eclipse of globalisation with 20th century philosophers Seminar paper, School of AMC, 15 March 2006

Walter Benjamin: 

Walter Benjamin The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play a winning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a countermove. A puppet in Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboard placed on a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this table was transparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback who was an expert chess player sat inside and guided the puppet’s hand by means of strings. One can imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called ‘historical materialism’ is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.

Context: 

Context Research programme Political theory/sociology Historical macrosociology Interest in the relationship between hope, social change and political possibility The longue duree (Braudel, Wallerstein) The political as a sociology of secularised theological concepts (Schmitt) Ideas and action (The philosophers)

Methodology: 

Methodology Weber – ideal types Against causal reductivism “Value free” analytics The work of destruction/deconstruction clearing a (political path) Poststructuralist phenomenology

The problem I: 

The problem I Memorably, Marx (1977 begins The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon with some sardonic observations about history and its repetitions:   Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language  

The problem II: 

The problem II What is the status of “globalisation”? What are we talking about? Where did globalisation go? Are we living in apocalyptic times? What happened to liberalism (as a system of rule)? Under the sign of Marx and Mill Has history ended?

Meaning and/in history: 

Meaning and/in history Post-traditionalism and identity Narratives of historical meaning Dante Shift post-Reformation – to a different (teleological) theology What about postmodernity? Utopia, apocalypse or something else?

Against globalisation : 

Against globalisation Distinguishing cultural and economic interconnectivity from political discourse Periodisation Inadequate as a social-scientific concept A utopic political discourse – problems of legitimacy

The eclipse of globalisation: 

The eclipse of globalisation It was always already contaminated from within Power and the state When did liberalism disappear? What is left of liberalism? (or right of liberalism?)

Wars of Empire: 

Wars of Empire Contradictions at the beginning of the 21st century Perry Anderson (2005) – philosophers of perpetual peace justify perpetual war From liberal humanitarism to what?

The philosophers: 

The philosophers Strauss Exoteric writing and the arcanii imperii

The philosopher king?: 

The philosopher king? Thymos The end of history OR The last man? Apocalyptic politics

The philosophers: 

The philosophers Heidegger Dasein and being towards death and theology the Latinisation of the world

Carl Schmitt: 

Carl Schmitt This thought and work repeatedly presaged the fearsome world that was announcing itself from as early as the 1920s. As though the fear of seeing that which comes to pass take place, in effect had honed the gaze of this besieged watchman. Following our hypothesis, the scene would be thus: lucidity and fear not only drove this terrified and insomniac watcher to anticipate the storms and seismic movements that would work havoc with the historical field, the political space, the borders of concepts and countries, the axiomatics of European law… etc. Such a ‘watcher’ would therefore have been more attuned than so many others to the fragility and ‘deconstructible’ precariousness of structures, borders and axioms that he wished to protect, restore and ‘conserve’ at all costs. Derrida (1997: 107)

Carl Schmitt: 

Carl Schmitt Friends and enemies Left and right Schmittians With Schmitt but not Schmittian

For a phenomenological political analytic: 

For a phenomenological political analytic Agonism not antagonism Phenomenology, sociology and the political Understanding the 21st century otherwise

In place of a conclusion: Benjamin: 

In place of a conclusion: Benjamin Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus

In provisional place of a conclusion: 

In provisional place of a conclusion My wing is ready for flight, I would like to turn back. If I stayed timeless time, I would have little luck. Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit, ich kehrte gern zurück, denn blieb ich auch lebendige Zeit, ich hätte wenig Glück. Gerherd Scholem, ‘Gruss vom Angelus’

In provisional place of a conclusion: 

In provisional place of a conclusion A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Discussion: 

Discussion