Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 21:35:19 -0500
Subject: Re: Reason & Metanarratives


I have found this exchange extrememly informative; many thanks.

>The problem though isn't in rewrites but in the insistence that science
>alone holds "the truth"--that its findings--its way of describing the
>world--is more "factual" or better than other ways of explaining the
>world.  Science insists on this by way of its methodology--the prejudice
>that accords greater value to a method which seems to be rigorous--the
>prejudice that associates rigour with greater truth value. . . . . . . .

>What do you mean by a "self"?  You realize that most post-structuralists
>would reject language which retains the idea of a self or subjectivity?
>Foucault talks about the body in his later writings but he's not talking
>about subjectivity in the Cartesian sense (anymore than Nietzsche is).
>
>Anyway, I look forward to you response!
>Best regards,
>Matt

But aren't all non-scientific understandings necessarily dependent on a
self-concept (problemmatic as it may be) to state and experience them,
while the "scientific" explanation is precisely the (putatively) objective
and thus purged of self? Does not the abandonment of subjectivity leave us
with nothing but science; and vice versa, he abandonment of science leave
us with nothing but subjectivity?

> This
>reminds me of Gadamer's debate with Derrida where Gadamer said that
>basically we all have good will towards one another, we all wish to be
>understood, and Derrida responded by asking how can one even
>begin by presuming this existence of "good will"?

>From a wholly non-scientific perspective Derrida vs. Gadamer on human
goodness is a replay the astrological disagreement between the former's
deep, Cancerian cynicism about human motives (cf. July-born Proust and
Kafka), vs. the latter's rainbowy Aquarian idealism of such Februarians as
Swedenborg and Buber and Ruskin.



Best wishes,
Mark Shulgasser