Re: To Snob or Not to Snob

[Christopher Gunn <1k1mgm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 08:57 AM 6/2/99 -0700, ken <kenneth.mackendrick@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>On Tue, 01 Jun 1999 22:58:07 -0400  Ralph Dumain wrote:
>
>> > (KM) In this respect, H/A are quite aware that
>epistemological limitation is the positive condition of radical
>contingency.
>
>> This sentence flies right over my head.
>
>Adorno might have put it this way - dialectics is the ontology of
>a wrong state of affairs...  Basically I'm saying that human
>beings can know things, for certain, and what we know, for
>certain, is this: we can't know things completely
>(epistemological limitation).  This partiality, a blind spot, is
>exactly what makes subjectivity possible (a "proper distance"
>toward the object) (ie. "letting the object speak") (making room
>for others).  This partiality is radically contingency, it is not
>determined by historical forces (historicism) nor is it
>completely free (idealism) (although, in ethics, the subject is
>treated as through she or he is free).

OK, let's try for one more round of disentanglement....

"Radically contingency":

Do you mean "radically contingent," at the outer fringe of
contingent possibilities (i.e., unusual; dense in particularity;
highly perspectivial in a kind of Nietzchean sense),

OR do you mean "radical contingency," a configuration of
contingent circumstances that make radicalism possible
(i.e., some almost random kinds of not-knowing give rise to
critical distance).

I guess these options aren't mutually exclusive, but I'm not
sure that "radically contingency" is a good way to express their
synthesis.  Or is it something else instead that you mean?
I'm not belaboring this to be picky;  it strikes me as an important
issue that I'd like a better handle on....


Christopher Gunn
cgunn@xxxxxxxxx                 561-361-7142
University of Kansas Department of Sociology
Fraser Hall, Lawrence, KS  66045