I have been told a hundred times
in the last forty years that my fifties notions of what's real won't stand
up. And if fifties notions of
reality won't stand up then fifties notions of society and gender and justice
and language and human nature and progress won't stand up. No metaphysical center, no
foundation, no starting point for confident reasoning. (The fact that the confidence was most
often exhibited by white European males, though philosophically irrelevant, was
no help.) I lost my belief in a
reality.
But it's been coming back. Listening to statements by Alexis
Tsipras during the financial crisis I found myself calling them "remote" and
"distant."
"Austerity is not part of the
European treaties; democracy and the principle of popular sovereignty are."
"We are working hard for a
deal without austerity, without the bailout which has destroyed Greece."
"The strong message of the
Greek people will be that Greece will return (to) democracy,"
"We proved that even in the
direst of times, democracy cannot be held to ransom, but remains a supreme
value and means of resolution.
We showed that democracy won't be blackmailed."
What is that distant from? I say "reality" and perk up
my philosophical ears. My friend,
whose ears are flat, says, "What's the big philosophical deal? Reality is a pile of money Greece needs
and can't get without meeting the conditions of those in possession of it. The face of reality is the face of
Angela Merkel, stating the conditions.
That's obvious, and can be stated simply."
Well, you make a big
philosophical deal when you can't end a philosophical pain you've been given
and see something in the world
that might relieve it. I listen to
Angela Merkel and think, "Ah! A reality if there ever was one." I go to Jacques Derrida and say,
"I don't need a metaphysical
center; I've got Angela Merkel."
Having an Angela Merkel is
having a reliable report on something in your way, and can't change, and, if
you want to satisfy your desires, have to deal with. That something here is conditions of a contract, but it
might as well be the conditions of what philosophers speak of as "the
world." It's what Derrida
removed the center from, a removal which was for me like removing my belly
button. Painful.
At any rate we've got
something in Tsipras's words that gives a sense of distance, and those words,
we find, give a sense of greater distance than do the words of Yaris Vanouflakis,
his finance minister ("Greece should simply announce that
it is defaulting ... stick the finger to Germany and say 'you can now solve
this problem by yourself'").
Being able to measure relative distance gives us confidence. There must be something out there that
we're measuring distance from.
What is it? What better
word than "reality"? It
means, as above, "something in your way, and can't
change, and, if you want to satisfy your desires, have to deal with." Like all of nature.
Human reality is less solid
but we still compliment people or political philosophies for being
"realistic" about it. At
the moment I'd give the highest compliment to the IMF people who after Greece
had accepted Merkel's terms said they wouldn't accept them without giving
Greece some relief on payment of the debt. Their argument, in the good old peasant terms I hear, was
that "you can't get blood out of a turnip," and Merkel's strict
conditions were turning Greece into a turnip. "Lighten up or you won't get anything at all."
That's a tickle, finding
somebody more realistic than Merkel, unless you see a higher, or Machiavellian,
realism in her. Like: She
goes to the head of the IMF and says, "Look, Christine, there's no way I
can allow a Communist leader like Tsipras anything he can call a victory. But we can't stand around watching all
the suffering we're going to cause either, and I would like to get some
blood out of this turnip. So how
about, after we sign the agreement, with Tsipras on his back, and all the other
far-left parties noticing, you jump in with a nice humanitarian offer, we go along
(showing our essential compassion), and everybody goes home happy."
"Just what I've been thinking," says Lagarde, and they bump
fists.
No comments:
Post a Comment