We are not defined by what we have in common. There is no definition since Man is supposed to be, by definition, the being that has no definition. And "having" sounds like a throwback to the 19th century, as if we could possess something or there was something to possess. Instead, we must make do with the idea that we have in common is a radical insufficiency: our common needs, of body, soul and spirit, are things we all lack.
Even that view won't do since it veers to the unpalatable notion (unpalatable to the moderns, that is) that there is a determinate human nature-or at least one that persists over history (a sort of internal transcendence, to use Nussbaum's terminology). Instead, we are told that our common root is only our desire (a desire that often entails uprooting). Not any particular object of desire, for sure, but the very act of desiring, choosing, wanting. And, remarkably, desire is blind. We may rationally plan or strategize to work out how best to satisfy the desire but the desire itself is just there, exogenous to the whole system, merely 'given'. But desire is blind in another way: we may simply not know what we want. And what we think we want may turn out in the fullness of time not to be what we either really wanted or needed.
What we have in common, then, is this blind, abstract desire (desire itself). If this is the fundamental picture of human beings then what, possibly, could bind us, what prospect for solidarity, community, politics? Is a politics of desire self-contradictory?
Another feature of desire (or how it's been constructed by the dominant discourses) is that it is meant to be boundless, infinite. It's not that we just lack something but that we will always lack something. Worse, we will often mistake a particular 'object' (thing, person, religion) for the infinite. Insufficiency must be radical, ineradicable (at least in this life..we see though a glass darkly). In our finitude, or so the story goes, we grasp for something that is beyond us. The whole of human history, or so Dudley Young tells us, starts with the human hand reaching out.
Building on that "natural" picture of human beings it could be said that scarcity, as a modern construct of economic theory and actual market economies, is just an extension or prolongation of those inherent tendencies: non-satiation and disappointment are rooted in economics ("constrained optimization" is a technique that embodies that fundamental idea).
And all the problems are supposed to stem from that scarcity (mimetic rivalry, greed and competitiveness leading to violence).
But there's something not quite right about the whole story. Why must we start out with this isolated, self-interested egotistical creature? And even if we do start in that way, why do think that other people only limit our goals instead of sometimes helping us further them? And why are desires unending? Don't we sometimes know, instinctively feel, that enough is enough? Don't we all eventually come to live within our limits, understand that at some point or the other we have to be grateful for what is given?
Auden, you recall from somewhere, once said: Catholicism is the possession of truth; Protestantism is the search for it.
In late capitalism we are forced to believe that the search, the journey-as the fake mysticism would have it-is everything. All we are, in the final analysis, is 'constantly moving happiness machines'. Fine, but I don't buy it for a second.
Even that view won't do since it veers to the unpalatable notion (unpalatable to the moderns, that is) that there is a determinate human nature-or at least one that persists over history (a sort of internal transcendence, to use Nussbaum's terminology). Instead, we are told that our common root is only our desire (a desire that often entails uprooting). Not any particular object of desire, for sure, but the very act of desiring, choosing, wanting. And, remarkably, desire is blind. We may rationally plan or strategize to work out how best to satisfy the desire but the desire itself is just there, exogenous to the whole system, merely 'given'. But desire is blind in another way: we may simply not know what we want. And what we think we want may turn out in the fullness of time not to be what we either really wanted or needed.
What we have in common, then, is this blind, abstract desire (desire itself). If this is the fundamental picture of human beings then what, possibly, could bind us, what prospect for solidarity, community, politics? Is a politics of desire self-contradictory?
Another feature of desire (or how it's been constructed by the dominant discourses) is that it is meant to be boundless, infinite. It's not that we just lack something but that we will always lack something. Worse, we will often mistake a particular 'object' (thing, person, religion) for the infinite. Insufficiency must be radical, ineradicable (at least in this life..we see though a glass darkly). In our finitude, or so the story goes, we grasp for something that is beyond us. The whole of human history, or so Dudley Young tells us, starts with the human hand reaching out.
Building on that "natural" picture of human beings it could be said that scarcity, as a modern construct of economic theory and actual market economies, is just an extension or prolongation of those inherent tendencies: non-satiation and disappointment are rooted in economics ("constrained optimization" is a technique that embodies that fundamental idea).
And all the problems are supposed to stem from that scarcity (mimetic rivalry, greed and competitiveness leading to violence).
But there's something not quite right about the whole story. Why must we start out with this isolated, self-interested egotistical creature? And even if we do start in that way, why do think that other people only limit our goals instead of sometimes helping us further them? And why are desires unending? Don't we sometimes know, instinctively feel, that enough is enough? Don't we all eventually come to live within our limits, understand that at some point or the other we have to be grateful for what is given?
Auden, you recall from somewhere, once said: Catholicism is the possession of truth; Protestantism is the search for it.
In late capitalism we are forced to believe that the search, the journey-as the fake mysticism would have it-is everything. All we are, in the final analysis, is 'constantly moving happiness machines'. Fine, but I don't buy it for a second.
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