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@@ -215,20 +215,22 @@ This is pure Hegelianism. You are trying to extract the whole from the particula
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"This, within a repressive society, even progressive movements threaten to turn into their opposite to the degree that they are willing to accept the rules of the game. Generally, the function and value of tolerance depend on the equality prevalent in the society in which tolerance is practice. Tolerance stands subject to overriding criteria, its range and its limits cannot be defined in terms of their respective society."
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"This, within a repressive society, even progressive movements threaten to turn into their opposite to the degree that they are willing to accept the rules of the game. Generally, the function and value of tolerance depend on the equality prevalent in the society in which tolerance is practice. Tolerance stands subject to overriding criteria, its range and its limits cannot be defined in terms of their respective society."
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### Dialecticism of Tolerance
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### Dialecticism of Tolerance
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-She is demanding the dialectical treatment of tolerance, where tolerance is going to meet intolerance, thesis meets antithesis, and the synthesis is going to be a repressive tolerance, or a liberating tolerance, that's going to be tolerance that's not actually tolerant, but that's going to lead us toward a new and better-liberated future. Tolerance gets the dialectic applied to it, and you get this totally tilted playing field , which is the logic of the world today. Conservatives must be censored, in fact they must be PRE-censored - nto enough that they lose freedom of speech, they have to lose the freedom to even think the thought - stop the idea from even entering their mind. Cognitive liberty put under threat by repressive tolerance. In the Neo-marxist era, we are now talking about the dialectic being still central - the operating system continues - the dialectic on tolerance.
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+She is demanding the dialectical treatment of tolerance, where tolerance is going to meet intolerance, thesis meets antithesis, and the synthesis is going to be a repressive tolerance, or a liberating tolerance, that's going to be tolerance that's not actually tolerant, but that's going to lead us toward a new and better-liberated future. Tolerance gets the dialectic applied to it, and you get this totally tilted playing field , which is the logic of the world today. Conservatives must be censored, in fact they must be PRE-censored - not enough that they lose freedom of speech, they have to lose the freedom to even think the thought - stop the idea from even entering their mind. Cognitive liberty put under threat by repressive tolerance. In the Neo-marxist era, we are now talking about the dialectic being still central - the operating system continues - the dialectic on tolerance.
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-Essay on Liberation:
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+### Essay on Liberation:
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"The Dialectics of Democracy
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"The Dialectics of Democracy
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-If democracy means self-government of free people with justice for all, then the realization of democracy would preusppose abolition of the existing pseudodemocracy. Thesis, democracy, antithesis, pseudodemocracy because there are actually systems of power. Justice for all? well, not everyone gets justice, so we don't live in a democracy, we live in a pseudodemocracy (antithesis), so we need a synthesis of this.
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+If democracy means self-government of free people with justice for all, then the realization of democracy would presuppose abolition of the existing pseudodemocracy."
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-In the dynamic of corporatism, the fight for democracy thus tends to assume anti-democratic forms, and to the extent to which the democratci decisions are made in parliaments on all levels, the opposition will tend to become extra-parliamentary. The movement to extend constitutionally professed rights and liberties, the daily life of the oppressed minorities, even the movement to preserve existing rights and liberties will become subversive to the degree to which it will meet a stiffening resistance of the majority against an exaggerated interpretation and application of equality and justice."
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+Thesis, democracy, antithesis, pseudodemocracy because there are actually systems of power. Justice for all? well, not everyone gets justice, so we don't live in a democracy, we live in a pseudodemocracy (antithesis), so we need a synthesis of this.
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+
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+In the dynamic of corporatism, the fight for democracy thus tends to assume anti-democratic forms, and to the extent to which the democratic decisions are made in parliaments on all levels, the opposition will tend to become extra-parliamentary. The movement to extend constitutionally professed rights and liberties, the daily life of the oppressed minorities, even the movement to preserve existing rights and liberties will become subversive to the degree to which it will meet a stiffening resistance of the majority against an exaggerated interpretation and application of equality and justice."
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This logic is playing exactly right now under these so-called equity and racial and other social justice movements. So what do we have?
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This logic is playing exactly right now under these so-called equity and racial and other social justice movements. So what do we have?
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Thesis: democracy antithesis: pseudodemocracy (because of power dynamics).
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Thesis: democracy antithesis: pseudodemocracy (because of power dynamics).
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Synthesis: Ideal Democracy (Marcuse wrote about this elsewhere. Communists also refer to this - position themselves as ideal democracy because, for them, if everybody's not perfectly equal (same money and opportunity) you can't have true democracy, because certain people can't speak up as much, they aren't going to be able to get the polls as readily, won't have the same ability to participate or the same access. Not a true democracy until there's perfect equity).
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Synthesis: Ideal Democracy (Marcuse wrote about this elsewhere. Communists also refer to this - position themselves as ideal democracy because, for them, if everybody's not perfectly equal (same money and opportunity) you can't have true democracy, because certain people can't speak up as much, they aren't going to be able to get the polls as readily, won't have the same ability to participate or the same access. Not a true democracy until there's perfect equity).
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-They subvery language -> democracy meets this argument (its antithesis), so we have a synthesis of an "ideal" democracy, but the adjective gets dropped so that when these people speak of democracy, or tolerance, they mean not regular tolerance, but discriminating tolerance. Democracy presupposing that we're in a communist-like situation before it counts. This is how their language games are constructed. This is why they have so much double-speak.
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+They subvert language -> democracy meets this argument (its antithesis), so we have a synthesis of an "ideal" democracy, but the adjective gets dropped so that when these people speak of democracy, or tolerance, they mean not regular tolerance, but discriminating tolerance. Democracy presupposing that we're in a communist-like situation before it counts. This is how their language games are constructed. This is why they have so much double-speak.
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The neo-Marxists are certainly going to have been tied up with this idea of the dialectic, regardless of how much they associate with Marx. The dialectic is applied to the dialectic in a reflexive pattern which concentrates it.
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The neo-Marxists are certainly going to have been tied up with this idea of the dialectic, regardless of how much they associate with Marx. The dialectic is applied to the dialectic in a reflexive pattern which concentrates it.
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@@ -238,11 +240,11 @@ Constant thread, throughout this dialectical engine, applied to itself to create
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## Theodore Adourno
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## Theodore Adourno
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1966 - Post modernism emerging in France. Adourno writes a book called "Negative Dialectics". It seems to be the case that these guys have gone Post-Hegelian.
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1966 - Post modernism emerging in France. Adourno writes a book called "Negative Dialectics". It seems to be the case that these guys have gone Post-Hegelian.
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-The Critical Theorists are normally called Neo-Marxists, the post-modernists describe themselves as Post-Marxist -> they've given up on a Marxism. They retain much of the same underlying ethos, btu they don't believe it works and they become negative and disparing and create an upsidedown world version of it that just is cynical.
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+The Critical Theorists are normally called Neo-Marxists, the post-modernists describe themselves as Post-Marxist -> they've given up on a Marxism. They retain much of the same underlying ethos, but they don't believe it works and they become negative and disparing and create an upsidedown world version of it that just is cynical.
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-Publishing of Negative Dialectics, extraordinarily critical of Hegel, Foucault is Critical of Hegel, but Derrida is VERY critical of Hegel. Leotard a bit in the Post-modern condition. We see this shift with some thinkers. Post-modernists and Adourno undergo a shift to a post-Hegelian structure. To go Post means to have retained the essential core of the approach, while deciding that the specific projects that had been launched on that core must hhave been done incorrectly and have failed. So you abandon the specifics while retaining the essential core.
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+Publishing of Negative Dialectics, extraordinarily critical of Hegel, Foucault is Critical of Hegel, but Derrida is VERY critical of Hegel. Leotard a bit in the Post-modern condition. We see this shift with some thinkers. Post-modernists and Adourno undergo a shift to a post-Hegelian structure. To go Post means to have retained the essential core of the approach, while deciding that the specific projects that had been launched on that core must have been done incorrectly and have failed. So you abandon the specifics while retaining the essential core.
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-In a sense, in later writings by Adourno the Post-Modernists seem anti-Hegel, but they're not really - they're post Hegelian. Disparing of the idea of the synthetic project, but not disparing of the idea of colliding thesis and antithesis. If you read Derrida's Deconstruction, or Foucault's ideas where you expose the contradictions and the progress of history. The contradictions of progress. The contradictions of calling anything knowledge at all. These are still a Thesis / antiThesis colliding projects. But these guys aren't looking for a Synthesis. They don't want that final 3rd step. They're post-Hegelian where hey've adopted the dialectical core, but abandonned the idea that a synthesis is necessary.
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+In a sense, in later writings by Adourno the Post-Modernists seem anti-Hegel, but they're not really - they're post Hegelian. Disparing of the idea of the synthetic project, but not disparing of the idea of colliding thesis and antithesis. If you read Derrida's Deconstruction, or Foucault's ideas where you expose the contradictions and the progress of history. The contradictions of progress. The contradictions of calling anything knowledge at all. These are still Thesis / antithesis colliding projects. But these guys aren't looking for a Synthesis. They don't want that final 3rd step. They're post-Hegelian where hey've adopted the dialectical core, but abandonned the idea that a synthesis is necessary.
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Adourno - Negative Dialectics
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Adourno - Negative Dialectics
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Derrida - deconstruction
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Derrida - deconstruction
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@@ -273,7 +275,7 @@ The couch can be a table!
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We can attack the idea of tables because they are different from one another, but we call them table. Let's leave it them at their particulars.
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We can attack the idea of tables because they are different from one another, but we call them table. Let's leave it them at their particulars.
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-General thrust of the dialectic remains. We still collide ideas with their opposites, their antithesese, their contradictions, their negatives (Hegalian frame). But we don't need to put the broken pieces back together, because we're extra cynical. Adourno thinks he has the ticket for a good future, btu the post-modernists tend to be more cynical.
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+General thrust of the dialectic remains. We still collide ideas with their opposites, their antithesese, their contradictions, their negatives (Hegelian frame). But we don't need to put the broken pieces back together, because we're extra cynical. Adourno thinks he has the ticket for a good future, but the post-modernists tend to be more cynical.
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Negative Dialectic doesn't have any clear examples of what the solutions are.
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Negative Dialectic doesn't have any clear examples of what the solutions are.
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@@ -291,7 +293,7 @@ Patricia Hill Collins gets into this in "Black Feminist Thought". Proto-critical
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At the birth of woke, in 1990, in the pinnacle book of Black Feminist Thought with the same title, we read:
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At the birth of woke, in 1990, in the pinnacle book of Black Feminist Thought with the same title, we read:
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"Black Feminism remains important because US Black Women constitute an oppressed group. As a collectivity, US Black women participate in a dialectical relationship, linking African American Women's oppression in activism (oppression and activism have to be related dialectically).
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"Black Feminism remains important because US Black Women constitute an oppressed group. As a collectivity, US Black women participate in a dialectical relationship, linking African American Women's oppression in activism (oppression and activism have to be related dialectically).
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-Dialectical relationships of this sort mean that two parties are opposed and opposite. As long as black womens' subordination within intersecting oppressions of race, class,gender, sexuality and nation persist, Black Feminism as an activist response to that oppression will remain needed. In similar fashion, the overarching purpose of US Black Feminist thought is to resist oppression. Both its practices and the ideas that justify it. If intersecting oppressions did not exist, Black Feminist thought in similar oppositional knowledges would not be necessary. As a critical social theory, black feminist thought aims to empower Black African American women in the context of Social Injustice, sustained by intersecting oppressions. Since black women cannot be fully empowered unless intersecting opprressions themselves are eliminated, Black Feminst thought supports broad principles of social justice that transcend US Black womens' particular needs."
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+Dialectical relationships of this sort mean that two parties are opposed and opposite. As long as black womens' subordination within intersecting oppressions of race, class,gender, sexuality and nation persist, Black Feminism as an activist response to that oppression will remain needed. In similar fashion, the overarching purpose of US Black Feminist thought is to resist oppression. Both its practices and the ideas that justify it. If intersecting oppressions did not exist, Black Feminist thought and similar oppositional knowledges would not be necessary. As a critical social theory, black feminist thought aims to empower Black African American women in the context of Social Injustice, sustained by intersecting oppressions. Since black women cannot be fully empowered unless intersecting opprressions themselves are eliminated, Black Feminst thought supports broad principles of social justice that transcend US Black womens' particular needs."
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Dialectical Relationships. Dialectical thinking. already core to understanding how Black Women as a collectivity (political group) are related to all the other axes of oppression and how they are to understand their own oppression, and how these oppressions bang up against each other and compete against ecah other and clamor for attention. The goal is to create solidarity ( to be affected through Intersectionality). The next book after this one is "Intersectionality" (1993?).
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Dialectical Relationships. Dialectical thinking. already core to understanding how Black Women as a collectivity (political group) are related to all the other axes of oppression and how they are to understand their own oppression, and how these oppressions bang up against each other and compete against ecah other and clamor for attention. The goal is to create solidarity ( to be affected through Intersectionality). The next book after this one is "Intersectionality" (1993?).
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@@ -308,7 +310,7 @@ A twisting and concentrating line from Hegel to Patricia Hill Collins in Black F
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Theory and practice have to both be put into play. Marx derived the idea of praxis, theory put into practice, from these same ideas.
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Theory and practice have to both be put into play. Marx derived the idea of praxis, theory put into practice, from these same ideas.
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-"Thus far, this volume has synthesized two main approaches to power.One way of approaching power concerns the dialectical relationship linking oppression and activism, where groups with greater power oppress those with lesser amounts. Rather than seeing social change or lack of it as preordained and outside the realm of human action, the notion of a dialectical relationship suggests that change results from human agency. Because aAfrican american women remain relegated to the bottom fo the oscial hierarchy from one generationfto the next, US Black women have a vested interest in opposing oppression. This is not an intellectual issue for most American women, it is a lived reality. As long as black womens' oppression persists, so long will the need for black feminist activism. Moreover, dialectical analyses of power poitn out that when it comes to social injustice, groups have competing interests that often generate conflict."
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+"Thus far, this volume has synthesized two main approaches to power.One way of approaching power concerns the dialectical relationship linking oppression and activism, where groups with greater power oppress those with lesser amounts. Rather than seeing social change or lack of it as preordained and outside the realm of human action, the notion of a dialectical relationship suggests that change results from human agency. Because aAfrican american women remain relegated to the bottom fo the social hierarchy from one generation to the next, US Black women have a vested interest in opposing oppression. This is not an intellectual issue for most American women, it is a lived reality. As long as black womens' oppression persists, so long will the need for black feminist activism. Moreover, dialectical analyses of power poitn out that when it comes to social injustice, groups have competing interests that often generate conflict."
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Black feminism - one of the key intellectual roots/pillras/theories within Critical Race Theory and Critical Social Justice theory. Its engine is dialectical. Hegel - Feurbach - Marx - NeoMarxists - Marcuse - Black Feminism.
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Black feminism - one of the key intellectual roots/pillras/theories within Critical Race Theory and Critical Social Justice theory. Its engine is dialectical. Hegel - Feurbach - Marx - NeoMarxists - Marcuse - Black Feminism.
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@@ -318,9 +320,9 @@ The operating system of leftism - old and new.
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The same reliance on dialecticism can be seen in Belle Hooks.
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The same reliance on dialecticism can be seen in Belle Hooks.
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Feminist Theory: From Margins to Center:
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Feminist Theory: From Margins to Center:
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-"Women need to know that ideas and theories are important. Absolutely essential for envisioning and making a successful feminist movement. One which will mobilize groups of people to trasnform this society. Ironically, lack of knowledge baout revolutionary politics leads women to see ideas and theories as unimportant."
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+"Women need to know that ideas and theories are important. Absolutely essential for envisioning and making a successful feminist movement. One which will mobilize groups of people to transform this society. Ironically, lack of knowledge about revolutionary politics leads women to see ideas and theories as unimportant."
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-"Revolutionists seek to change reality to make it better. Therefore revolutionists need not only the revolutionary philosophy of dialectics, but they need a revolutionary ideology, body of ideas, based on analuyzin g the main contradictions of the particular society they are trying to change, envisioning a higher form of reality in which this contradiction would be resolved, and relating this resolution to a social force or forces responsible for and capagble of achieving it." (A Critical Theory)"
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+"Revolutionists seek to change reality to make it better. Therefore revolutionists need not only the revolutionary philosophy of dialectics, but they need a revolutionary ideology, body of ideas, based on analyzing the main contradictions of the particular society they are trying to change, envisioning a higher form of reality in which this contradiction would be resolved, and relating this resolution to a social force or forces responsible for and capagble of achieving it." (A Critical Theory)"
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"It is only after oyu've arrived at the correct ideology that it makes sense to develop your revolutionary politics."
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"It is only after oyu've arrived at the correct ideology that it makes sense to develop your revolutionary politics."
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That is, the programs necessary to mobilizing and organizing the necessary revolutionary social forces.
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That is, the programs necessary to mobilizing and organizing the necessary revolutionary social forces.
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@@ -338,7 +340,128 @@ Obvious in Unmasking Colourblindness in the Law: lessons from the formation of c
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## The line
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## The line
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Hegel - young hegelians - marxists - neo-marxists - black feminism.
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Hegel - young hegelians - marxists - neo-marxists - black feminism.
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-Their goal is to get children to think dialectically. Heart of the critical pedagogy project, which is Critical Theory applied to the Theory of Education and the Contents of Education. Hegelian dialectical mode. Totally dominated the institution of education, following gramsci
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+Their goal is to get children to think dialectically. Heart of the critical pedagogy project, which is Critical Theory applied to the Theory of Education and the Contents of Education. Hegelian dialectical mode. Totally dominated the institution of education, following gramsci's indication that education is one of the 5 pillars of culture that must be infiltrated and overturned from within.
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+
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+
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+## Critical Education
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+"Students argued Giroux "need to learn to be able to move outside of their own frame of reference, so they can question the legitimacy of a given fact, concept or issue". Furthermore, he contended marshalling the support of MArxist literary theorist Frederic Jameson students "have to learn how to perceive the very essence of what they are examining by placing it critically within a sysstem of relationships that give it meaning". For Giroux it was important that contextualization of information be embedded in a pedagogy that takes seriously the social relationships of the classroom."
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+
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+### John Dewey
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+"The state is then the completed objective spirit. The externalized reason of man, it reconciles the principles of laws and liberty, not by bringing some truce or external harmony between them, but by making the law the whole of the prevailing interest in controlling motive of the individual"
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+
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+We haven't touched on Hegel's statism yet, but it's relevant and tied to Critical Education. This stuff was written before 1900 where an idea of the Hegelian view of the state - the completed objective spirit - was something that you get to it is via the externalized reason of man through the dialectic. The whole dialectical project is here.
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+
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+Also, before Giroux, was Michael Apple. Repeatedly talked about the need for dialectic in education.
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+
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+More recently: Neo-Marxism and Allison Bailey.
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+
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+### Allison Bailey
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+Hypatia 2017
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+*Tracking Privilege: Preserving Epistemic Pushback*
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+Brings to the front that Critical Pedagogy is based not just in Giroux's belief of the dialectic, but the belief that Neo-Marxism should be brought into the classroom.
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+
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+"The Critical Thinking tradition is concerned primarily with epistemic adequacy. To be critical is to show good judgment and recognizing when arguments are faulty. Assertions like evidence, truth claims, appeal to unreliable sources, or concepts are sloppily crafted and applied. For critical thinkers, the problem is that people fail to examine the assumptions, commitments and logic of daily life. The basi c problem is irrational, illogical and unexamined living."
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+
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+Marcuse says you're not living that unless you're a Critical Theorist. Unless you're approaching the world from Critical Theory, you're stuck in irrational, illogical, unexamined living that fails to examine the assumptions, com/mitments and logic of daily life."
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+
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+You're caught up in his heteronomous interests. Critical thinking isn't really critical thinking.
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+
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+"In this tradition, sloppy claims can be identified and fixed by learning to apply the tools of formal and informal logic correctly. Critical pedagogy begins from a different set of assumptions, rooted in the Neo-Marxian literature on Critical Theory commonly associated with the Frankfurt School. Here, the Critical Learner is someone who is empowered and motivated to seek justice and emancipation. Critical pedagogy regards the claims that students make in regards to social justice issues not as propositions to be assessed for their truth value, but expressions of power that function to reinscribe and perpetuate social inequalities. Its mission is to teach students ways of identifying and mapping how power shapes our understandings of the world. This is the first step towards resisting and transforming social injustices."
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+
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+The dialectic, where the theory has to be wedded to practice to generate praxis.
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+
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+"By interrogating the politics of knowledge production, this traditional also calls into question the uses of the accepted critical thinking toolkit
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+to determine epistemic adequacy."
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+
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+Audrey Lords classic metaphor: *The tools of the critical thinking tradition, for example, validity, soundness, conceptual clarity, cannot dismantle the master's house, they can temporarily beat the master at his own game, but they can never bring about any enduring structural change. They fail because the critical thinker's toolkit is commmonly invoked in particular setttings at particular times to reassert power. Those adept with the tools often use them to restore an order that assures their comfort. They can be habitually invoked to defend our epistemic home terrains.*
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+
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+#### Implications for Pedagogy
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+Critical Pedagogy for her is based in Neo-Marxism. Echoes Marcuse virtually perfectly, and talks about teaching people to think in ways that are emancipatory and empowering, in perfect line with the dialectic process as outlined by Marcuse.
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+
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+In education we see this again under Critical Pedagogy. The woke doesn't find it enough to use the dialectical method as its operating system, it must install that OS in children. They don't use education to indoctrinate, they use education to program and reprogram. They're not teaching you to accept a particular doctrine uncritically (though it happens), they are teaching you to think in a particular way (Dialectically). Explicitly stated by Henri Giroux - father of Critical Pedagogy: "In other words, students must be taught to think Dialectically".
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+
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+This is the heart of the interrelated worldviews seeking to "liberate" the world. It comes from Hegel. The first to consciously apply it (in the words of the Maxists on Marxists.org).
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+
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+
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+### Quick recap
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+Critical Race Theory - An Introduction: "And so the dialectic progresses"
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+This piece was framed out in essentialism vs anti-essentialism (philosophical program).
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+The section in which this phrase appears is in a section in the book analyzing how Critical Race theory interacts with the ideas of essentialism and anti-essentialisms. Obvious thesis / Antithesis. Its thesis antithetical in its construction. Essentialism vs its negation.
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+
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+So what is the woke synthesis, as forwarded by Critical Race Theory? Structural determinism. Structure of society. Hypothesis of structural determinism is the doctrine that the structure of society determines an essential lived experience, that's not essentialist because it nevertheless hides in a social constructed mode of thought.
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+
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+Race, under CRT, is a social construct. It can't be essential to the person, dodging essentialism, but it's articulated by Crenshaw that race is sociopolitically imposed by white supremacist society so that the lived experience of being a particular race in that system becomes essential. Race is not essential, in the sense that we believe in social constructivism, but the experience of being a race in a particular power structure where that race is imposed by that power structure, does define what it means to be a person in that identity category. Patrician Collins said thte same thing about Black Women. Your lived experience becomes essential.
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+
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+Via the dialectic, CRT gets to be race essentialist while claiming it's race antiessentialist. Very hard to pin down if it's race essetnialist or not, because it's taken essentialism/anti-essentialism, collided them in the dialectic, producing a new thing that's hard to fight called Structural Determinism.
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+
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+#### Structural Determinism
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+Structural Determinism is the logic behind how they organize society. When they say things like positionality must be consciously engaged, or intentionally engaged (Robin D'Angelo), that's what they're talking about. Taking structural determinism into account.
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+
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+It allows them to be essentialist while claiming anti-essentialism, and it keeps people from seeing what they're doing and identifying how they're actually racist. By claimining an imposed lived experience that people aren't allowed to buck. So they hit a dialectical synthesis of these two ideas. This is what's going on whent he dialectic progresses until another deeper intersectional group is found. The dialectic is constantly progressing through an arc of history.
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+
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+The entire concept of intersectionality is also a huge dialectical machine. Turns critique into itself by taking already so-called marginalized activist groups and dialectically attacks them. Feminists have to confront their racism. Black liberationists have to confront their sexism and misogyny. Everyone has to confront their homophobia or transphobia. Intersectionality becomes the synthesis of the otherwise competing forms of systemic oppression.
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+
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+Solidarity becomes the synthesis of these competing forms, or in this case, it becomes intersectionality.
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+
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+Marcuse said we need to biologically change mankind to want and need liberation, and that this would be done by changing them biologically to get a new type of man, liberated man, who can tolerate and usher-in liberation.
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+
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+His eugenics is another topic, but the point is that the dialectical critique is: Aufheben der kulture. To create solidarity, allegedly, by evoking the guilt of the so-called marginalized identities in that they are ignoring the oppression of other people.
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+
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+Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, etc as means to tear everything down, Intersectionality is the means to synthesize and put it all back together. The dialectical synthesis of the competing forms of systemic oppression. And it gives an analytical framework, allegedly, for working that out and establishing a hierarchy which is an inversion fo what Patricia Collins called the Matrix of Domination.
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+
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+#### Inception outside of Europe
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+The core of the progressive thought for 200 years has been this dialectic. That's the point to drive home with all of this: Hegel unleashed it in an applicable form and this became the main OS of teh "left" since.
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+
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+The dialectic is the OS of leftism, has been since the young Hegelians took it up in the 1820s/30s right up until today.
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+
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+The concept of Manifest Destiny, often charged by the Left as being catastrophe which destroyed native americans - it wasn't exactly a conservative metanarrative. It was championed by the Young Democracts. Parallel to the Young Hegelians, adopted their philosophy etc. They used these ideas, including manifest destiny in the 1830s/40s in the US to what a lot of people see as calamity. As a final capstone to that line, Steven Douglas who lost a debate to Abraham Lincoln, was an avowed hegelian and young hegelian as well. This was happening in the US, not just Europe, in terms of thought and activism.
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+
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+## How it works Aufheben
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+*To keep and to destroy.*
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+
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+Hegel was fascinated by this idea of keeping and destroying. He writes in the "Science of Logic":
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+
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+"Aufheben constitutes one of the most important concepts in philosphy. It has a 2-fold meaning in the language. It means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it means to decease and put an end to. It is a delight to speculative thought, to find in the language words which have in themselves a speculative meaning."
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+
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+This was Hegel talking about his fascination with the term Aufheben. I'm going to make the contention that Aufheben is the negation process. When HEgel lays out abstract, negative, concrete - it is the negative process. The Antithesis process.
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+
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+I derived an example from a friend Emmy on Twitter who pointed out:
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+1. I might say that the Sky is blue
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+2. A straight negation might be to say "no it's not blue", or you could negate by implication by saying "it's green, it's red, it's grey"
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+3. Aufheben would say: "Not at night". "Not when it's raining".
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+
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+It has a feeling of deliberately missing the point. You didn't tear down the blue, you can keep it, but you have torn down the concrete sense that the idea was right in the first place. Instead you reach a synthetic view of the sky that's more complicated. It's only blue during daylight hours, etc.
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+
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+This is an annoying tool that the dialectic proceeds upon. Since he uses this word speculative over and over, it's important to point out that he was a "Speculative idealist" as a philosopher. Speculative means looking into a mirror. Speculum is a mirror in latin (sort of). Hegel meant: the way to understand ideas is to reflect upon them, and the purpose of reflecting upon the ideas is to recollect what is known about them in an abstract sense.
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+
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+It's also to divide the concrete from facing its idea and the negation at the same time. Aufheben is speculative in that it contains a place where you have the thing and its opposite reflecting back on one another at the same time. Aufheben is, in a sense, an autological word that is aufhebening itself. (Germenglish. Aufhebening).
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+
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+This is going to be key to moving into the trajectory of Hegel's metaphysics. He has a metaphysical assumption that the particular can only be understood through the whole, and speculation is how you accomplish that. The recovery of teh whole through a speculative thought process of recollection and remembering is going to be able to be achieved through exAMINING the particular and their antitheses through the dialectic. This is the objective of philosphy, or reason (vernoomft). This makes Hegel hermetic, and hermetic means an alchemist. This is his philosophical orientation, because the alchemy is achieved through the dialectic, which is the fire which heats the contents of ideas in its alembic and gives rise to their refined or synthetic understanding. It's the process in which ideas are to be refined alchemically - kept and destroyed. Marcuse refers to this as peeling off the power of the current era so that the seed within can sprout. Heremtists believe, for example, that seeds of gold exist in all the base metals. So if you just get the base parts to peel away, then the seed of gold will sprout and blossom nad the base metal will turn into gold.
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+
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+This is the underlying idea of Hegelian thought. So when we say it's a hermetic or alchemical faith, this is what we're talking about.
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+
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+Important to realize that what HEgel actually means by speculative is having Mystical Content. It's Mystical, mysticism. It's going to open the door to a lto of things for Hegel that he already was: Heremticism, alchemy, gnosticism.
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+
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+This is why all these ideologies can be thought of as gnosticism. Race gnosticism, for example, in CRT. Structurally-determined lived experiences have special insight under standpoint epistemology that gives them to ability to undesrtand things and have racial knowledge. That's gnosticism, that's racial or ethnic gnostisticism, and this is because the Hegelian faith is itself gnostic. They're open to being gnostic because it's speculative, which means mystical. The people who know the secret are the gnostics, tehy understand the mysticism, they have the special knowledge, and for Hegel he defines this as having reason, or vernoomft.
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+
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+We will see this develop as we go on into metaphysics. Hegel is already thinking metaphysically and he's thinking alchemically about the progression of society. The catechism of his religion is the dialectic through keeping and destroying, aufheben.
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+
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+### Features
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+Words are given more than one meaning (democracy, tolerance). Alchemically developing separate meanings to words so you can talk in two ways at once. The ones who understand the language are the gnostics. In modern parlance, the systemic way of thinking and understanding the world, as opposed to understanding the words or the concepts in a more simple way.
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+
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+Marx did this with the term "science". Science was used to mean scientific socialism (espoused that socialism scientific). Marxism and his communism which he labelled as scientific.
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+
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+Communists did this with Freedom, Democracy and Tolerance. They made Communism a precondition for all of these things.
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+
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+We see this also with speculative meanings - invite gnosticism into the understanding of words. You can do this with Diversity, Racism, Segregation, Decolonialization - sophist's double speak characteristic of Hegelian ideologies.
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+
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+#### Lennon
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+Sublation (vulgar translation of Aufheben). Supercede, put an end to but simultaneously maintain and preserve.
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+
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+#### Marcuse
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+Talks about it in Essy on the Affirmative Character of culture.
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+
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+"It is the real miracle of the affirmative culture: people can feel happy even if they are not. If the culture has entered a western thought only as an affirmative thought the abolition of its affirmative character will act as an
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..........
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..........
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