Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Late Thoughts on "Bittergate"

Unless you are going to just accept the democracy as it wonderfully is, you need a concept of false consciousness.

If we are animals whose cognitive powers arise from natural selection, we must be subject to radical false consciousness.

The Leninist error is not the doctrine of false consciousness, but the belief that the Leninist is free from false consciousness.

The only way anyone could be free from false consciousness is if something that transcends history somehow made itself immanent in history, and set up the conditions for freeing us from false consciousness.

Because we cannot really be sure that there was something that transcends history that made itself immanent in history, we cling to politics.

However, if we are halfway reflective, we must know that our side in any political controversy is as steeped in false consciousness as the other side.

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