/lit/ - Literature

>>12923370
irony and relativism and suspicion are terms frequently associated with postmodernity, but this isn't i think what it's supposed to be. the deconstruction and plasticity of reality invites the worst and most tyrannical to play cynical and reductive power games with other people's minds when they are confused. that i think will be one of the most damning verdicts on the whole period: that for all of its End of History hyperbole, the fact is that *these things actually have happened before.*

here is one thought i had on this the other day, that what i would like would be a kind of fusion of Hegel and Nietzsche that reflected a post-existential worldview. because in both cases you have a kind of a weird move that solves existential despair in particularly narcissistic ways. with Hegel the great movement comes with the *crowd,* and with Nietzsche from the bottomless depths (and horizons) of the self - and both of these men are absolute geniuses, in their own way. but both of them, in a way, have to deal with the problem of suspicion relating to the other in ways that i think today are more harmful than helpful. there are all kinds of these ways of relating to the other as if he were either *too* unknowable to ever be related to in a kind of sane or charitable way, or *too much like yourself* to be related to as if they in fact *were* an other. it's hard to explain, but i think there's something to this: the idea that you can't resolve social horror either by saying

a) nobody understands me, or
b) the Absolute always-already understands everybody.

both of these things actually prevent you from encountering the other guy on a way that doesn't force them to play by your rules, or that forces both of you to play by rules neither really understands. both lead to kind of wheels of doom in mysterious ways, and both are awesome, awesome feats of psychology and metaphysics. but what if it didn't have to be like this? what if we understood that all of this stuff has a historical and a futuristic dimension, but that we were capable of recognizing when we are about to repeat history once again, and take another course? so that we aren't forced to choose between Idealism and Nihilism in ways that aren't really choices at all?