The Schizo-Stroller

I once went on a mental health training course, in it I had explained to me a distinction between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy was when you saw other people’s problems as if you were in their shoes, most unhelpful as it is still ‘you’ in their shoes. Empathy was when you saw what it was for that person to be in their own shoes.

That to me reflects a certain level of consciousness similar to Hegel’s idea that we are only truly self-conscious when we are conscious of another consciousness. The former sympathetic attitude remains in the subjective mode where all others are merely objects as projections of one’s own consciousness.

The problem occurs when the sympathetic consciousness is applied to Kant’s categorical imperative.

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

In the sympathetic consciousness this becomes ‘Act only according to the maxim whereby I can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” thus if I cannot understand how someone can act, believe, think, do, be differently to me, then I cannot wish it to be universal law. That is if I don’t think you should do this or that because I would do it differently as I cannot see how you can see/ feel something a certain way because I have a different experience. The other cannot be incorporated into it. Thus the categorical imperative becomes purely subjective and, albeit in a passive way, becomes a dominating one.

Driving past shouting ‘wanker’ out of a car

… is always wilful

The ‘phrase ignorance of the law is no excuse’ is based on the understanding that we have access to the law and therefore can make the effort to find out the law in advance.

This cannot work when laws are secret. However this is not ignorance of the law as lack of access means that lack of knowledge does not therefore stem from wilfully ignoring them.

However, if (and only if) we can argue that access to the law is proportionate to access to capital then the above statement itself becomes ignorant, not of the law but of the effects of poverty on the law as it wilfully ignores them.

I asked a question on another site, what it was is irrelevant, however it was a hypothetical that could have been construed as left wing/ radical but i was looking for practical replies not a political argument therefore I added a disclaimer pointing out Aristotles statement that ‘It takes an educated person to entertain an idea rather than believe it’, i.e. this question is no indicator of my political persuasion.

However, as I expected, the first person to reply circumnavigated this disclaimer and attacked me politically (oh cyberspace!). However as I suggested this post is not about the question it is about this guy’s reply: “The greatest evil is the application of one persons ideals to another person’s life”.

This immediately struck me as paradoxical. Surely the application of that ideal would by its own statement therefore be the greatest evil?

Evidently, given the statement’s content it led me to the idea of Negative Liberty. That, as suggested by Isaiah Berlin, the preferred liberty to pursue, given that positive liberty leads to abuse, is negative liberty: the freedom from interference by other people.

This made me think, is this a paradox too? The nearest paradox I could come up with was the Exclusion Paradox. This is basically “If there is an exception to every rule, then every rule must have at least one exception, the exception to this one being that it has no exception”.

If negative liberty is the premise that one should be free from interference by others, surely it’s application as the only permitted liberty is a positive liberty. Thus the only exception to the non-pursuance of positive liberty is the pursuance of negative liberty as a positive liberty. Thus relating it to the Exception Paradox (that is it is related in it’s application of its exception, not the understanding of the Exception Paradox as a totality, which can only be applied to itself). Then, relating it to the first paradox, if all positive liberties lead to abuse. then this paradox suggests so does negative liberty.

[Edit 06/05/09: Thinking on the paradox of stating "The greatest evil is the application of one persons ideals to another persons life" would only be non-paradoxical if one never spoke of it and didn't expect others to live by it. It becomes paradoxical once one believes one should promote it.

As to Isaiah Berlin's suggestion on negative liberty as exclusion paradox, perhaps it is a form of the form of the exclusion paradox that is the exception that proves the rule, except being the exception by which the rule cannot exist.]

Series of David Harvey’s lectures on Marx’s Capital videoed and posted on his site.

Reading Marx