Less than one

'This land is ours, all of it is ours.'

Academics and other oddballs cannot talk about (or with) other human beings; instead it is 'the other' or 'the subject'-the need for distance, cold objectivity a way of avoiding the profound and necessary human capacity to imagine specific people, with specific histories; no, not just that: to see them right in front of you and to see them in the right light (which requires seeing oneself in the right light), and not to talk about the wilderness and you the first Man; to not imagine them as 'dots and dreams' in your scheme. To speak for, with, to another person is decidedly not an attempt to assert or posit a fundamental sameness that exists at an abstract level (human reasoning, free will, or children of God) which then forms the basis of human rights. Reasoning, sound thought, is always a conversation with other people. To speak in time, just in time (think of Aung San Kyi's silence).

Is there a false universality and a true one? Well, markets and economic theory certainly rest on a false notion of human beings and an ahistorical approach to reality. 

Human beings, warts and all, and hey, you know what, not too unlike us as well, but different too.

Of course, it's easier to slide into fascism, tribal mentalities, the animal-like comfort of warmth bred from familiarity (a great line in Becket). 

And Levinas, always harping on about 'the other', radical alterity, infinite responsibility..what does he have to say when it comes to, you know, actual human beings? Shatila? Let's not go there.

Same with Berlin-whose writings you deeply admire. Not quite got the idea of pluralism fully worked out!

Ho hum.

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