Dear Sirs (and potentialy Madams),
A professor of philosophy who want to close down the humanities? Is that
a not very charming attempt at provocation (in the vein of the once
celebrated coloumnist in the Durban-based morning paper Mercury who went
by the name of _Agent Provocateur_)?
If it is so that Monseiur Palma is opposed to Humanities as Science in
particular he would be well informed to know that the head of the School
of Post-Graduate Studies at the University of kwaZulu/Natal some years
ago, Professor Johan Jacobs, was a staunch champion of precisely this
concept. As a representative of a younger generation Palma places
himself -- as would be expected -- in opposition to Jacobs'. Cute.
When it comes to various left-leaning academics' random views on
political matters in a country where they were neither born nor have any
present residence, should we not compare this to Palma's great
un-akcnowledged philosophic mentor's random views on an ethnic group to
which he himself didn't belong? The idea of establishing an egalitarian
polity without religion is otherwise hardly new in the political circles
where Palma, Chomsky and their freidns move.
Lastly, when it comes to science an its economy, Bernard Maris, who was
murdered in the attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie
Hebdo, proposed that Michel Houellebecq is a far more intelligent
speaker on these matters than any disciplined economist every were
(perhaps with the exception of Keynes). The day of Maris' murder,
Charlie Hebdo had a drawing of precisely Houellebecq on its cover. And
matters aren't made any less curious by the fact that Houellebecq's
recent _Soumission_ was released on the exact day of the attack.
Be that as it May (successfully divorsed from Europe or Not), Maris --
himself educated as economist -- claims his discipline to be "not only a
vague ideology, but a precise, evil, damaging ideology that is even
worse that religions were." Ideology today doesn't belong either to the
left or the right: it belongs to the economists, which is to say
economic neo-liberalism, and if it is one thing Houellebecq closes his
mind to it is liberalism -- an ideology of free individuals where
everybody fights everybody else, where there is no society, no
community. No love. No benevolence.
Maris: "There is no economic science; what exists is the suffering that
is hidden behind the supply, the demand, in other words the poetry and
compassion that is persistently trampled down by the iron heel of the
market."
Yrs,
--
-- If thinking is what distinguishes man's
nature, then surely the essence of this nature, namely the
nature of thinking, can be seen only by looking away
from thinking. (Martin Heidegger) --
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
