Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 23:04:23 -0500
Subject: Re: new .sig


At 07:25 PM 12/21/97 PST, you wrote:

>Is that really the "threat of extinction" or rather the possibility of 
>extending the boundaries of the self?  We grasp the other in a way in 
>which we are unable to grasp or under-stand ourselves.  By meeting the 
>other and speaking to him/her (of what is a mystery to us) we meet the 
>other which we harbor within ourselves as an unknown.  And in this 
>meeting we grasp the other within, and we grow.
>
>... -- a movement of 
>defense against a mystery which seems as a threat to the self, but which 
>also may be grasped as the possibility of extending the self.


I'm not sure what you mean by "extending" the self.  When I think of
extension, I am reminded of Arendt's take on Kant's reflective judgment:
the enlarged mentality.  In short, good judgment means thinking from the
position of everyone else.  I think that Lyotard's work is directed against
this sort of self-extension.  

It strikes me that The Differend is an attempt to work away from this kind
of thinking about the relationship between self and other by thinking of the
relationship between addressor and addressee.  The Differend suggests that
neither the addressor or the addressee exists prior to the event of the
phrase.  Both addressor and addressee are instances that arise within the
phrase.  

It is not that your address makes me the addressee and therefore I am
obliged to respond (because indifference is impossible and silence is a
response), but rather I always find my "self" as the addressee (a situation
which is far from the threat of extinction).  

Mark Bower