Plato is a sure and perceptive guide to the panorama of modern society, which is a weave of three main motifs: the absence of world, the democratic emblem as subjectivity enslaved to circulation, and the imperative of universal adolescent pleasure seeking. His thesis is that any society matching that description is on a road to ineluctable disaster, because it is incapable of organizing a discipline of time. Plato puts a famous ironic tribute to the existential anarchy of contented democrats and their beautiful, youthful, mode of government in the mouth of Socrates. Here it is, rendered with a certain liberty: Democratic man lives only for the pure present, transient desire is his only law Today he regales himself with a fourcourse dinner and vintage wine, tomorrow he is all about Buddha, ascetic fasting, streams of crystal-clear water, and sustainable development. Monday he tries to get back in shape by pedalling for hours on a stationary bicycle; Tuesday he sleeps all day, then smokes and gorges again in the evening. Wednesday he declares that he is going to read some philosophy, but prefers doing nothing in the end. At Thursdays dinner party he crackles with zeal for politics, fumes indignantly at the next persons opinion, and heatedly denounces the society of consumption and spectacle. That evening he goes to see a Ridley Scott blockbuster about medieval warriors. Back home, he falls to sleep and dreams of liberating oppressed peoples by force of arms. Next morning he goes to work, feeling distinctly seedy, and tries without success to seduce the secretary from the office next door. Hes been turning things over and has made up his mind to get into real estate and go for the big money But now the weekend has arrived, and this economic crisis isnt going away, so next week will be soon enough for all that. There you have a life, or lifestyle, or lifeworld, or whatever you want to call it: no order, no ideas, but nothing too disagreeable or distressing either. It is as free as it is unsignifying, and insig- nificance isnt too high a price to pay for freedom. Platos thesis is that sooner or later this manner of existence, grounded in the indiscipline of time, and its correlative form of State, representative democracy, will bring about a visible manifestation of their despotic essence. Because that is what it comes down to: the real content of all that youth and beauty is the despotism of the death wish. That is why, for Plato, the trajectory that begins with the delights of democracy ends with the nightmare of tyranny. He is proposing that, from a perspective embracing the world and time, there exists a link between democracy and nihilism. For the democratic nonworld is a leakage of time. Consumption is consuming it. (Alain Badiou: The Democratic Emblem, Democracy in What State?)
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 00:17:25 +0000