Re: Genesis and Structure of the Essay on the O …

看板EngTalk (全英文聊天)作者fizeau (Gratias ad Opus)時間18年前 (2008/01/09 14:42)推噓0(0推 0噓 0→)

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The operation of femininity--and that femininity, the feminine principle, may be at work among women just as much as among those whom society calls men and whom, Rousseau says, "women turn to women"--consists therefore in capturing energy to attach it to a single theme, a sole representation. Such is the history of love. In it is reflected nothing but history as denaturalization: that which adds itself to nature, the moral supplement, displaces the force of nature by substitution. In that sense the supplement is nothing, it has no energy of its own, no spontaneous movement. It is a parasitic organism, an imagination or representation which determines and orients the force of desire. One can never explain, in terms of nature and natural force, the fact that something like the difference of a pre- ference might, without any force of its own, force force. Such an inex- plicability gives all its style and all its form to Rousseau's thought. This pattern is already an interpretation of history by Rousseau. But this interpretation lends itself in its turn to a second interpretation where we notice a certain hesitation. Rousseau seems to oscillate between two readings of this history. And the sense of that oscillation should be recognized here. It will illuminate our analysis yet further. Sometimes the perverse substitution is described as the origin of history, as histori- city itself and the first deviation with respect to natural desire. Some- times it is described as an historical depravity within history, not just a corruption within the form of supplementarity but a supplementary cor- ruption. It is thus that one may read descriptions of an historical so- ciety within which woman takes her place, remains in her place, occupies her natural place, as an object of uncorrupted love: The ancients spent almost their whole lives in the open air, either dis- patching their business or taking care of the state's in the public place, or walking in the country, in gardens, on the seashore, in the rain or under the sun, and almost always bareheaded. In all of this, no women; but they are quite able to find them in case of need, and we do not find from their writings and the samples of their conversation which are left to us that intelligence, taste, or even love, lost anything by this reserve. (Letter to M. d'Alembert, p.204) But is there a difference between corruption in the form of supplementarity and supplementary corruption? Perhaps it is the concept of supplementarity itself that allows us to think these two interpretations of interpretation at the same time. From the first departure from nature, the play of history --as supplementarity--carries within itself the principle of its own degra- dation, of the supplementary degradation, of the degradation of degradation. The acceleration, the precipitation of perversion within history, is implied from the very start by the historical perversion itself. But the concept of the supplement, considered, as we have already done, as an economic concept, should allow us to say the contrary at the same time without contradiction. The logic of the supplement--which is not the logic of identity--allows the acceleration of evil to find at once its historical compensation and its historical guardrail. History precipitates history, society corrupts society, but the evil that links both in an indefinite chain [qui les abime] has its natural supplement as well: history and society produce their own resistance to the abyss [l'abime]. Thus, for example, the "moral part" of love is immoral: captor and destroyer . But just as one may guard presence through defering it, just as one may defer the expense, put off the mortal "cohabitation" with woman by that other power of death which is auto-eroticism, so also, according to this economy of life or death, society may place a moral guardrail over the abyss of " moral love." The morality of society can in fact defer or weaken the capturing of energy by imposing on woman the virtue of modesty. Within modesty, that product of social refinement, it is in fact natural wisdom, the economy of life, that controls culture by culture. (Rousseau's entire discourse, let us note in passing, finds here its proper field of exercise.) As women betray the natural morality of physical desire, society invents--but it is a ruse of nature--the moral imperative of modesty which limits immorality; limits morality in fact, for "moral love" was never immoral except as it menaced man's life. The theme of modesty has a greater importance in The Letter to M' d'Alembert than is generally thought. But it is central in Emile, espe- cially in that Fifth Book which one must follow here line by line. Modesty is clearly defined there as a supplement of natural virtue. It has to do with knowing if men wish to allow themselves to be "dragged to their death", by the number and intemperance of women. Their "boundless desire" does not in fact have that sort of natural restraint that one encounters in female animals. With the latter, when the need is satisfied, the desire ceases; they no longer make a feint of repulsing the male, they do it in earnest. They do exactly the opposite of what Augustus' daughter did; they receive no more passengers when the ship has its cargo....Instinct both drives and stops them. But what would take the place of [supplement] this negative instinct in women if you rob them of their modesty? To wait for them not to concern themselves with men, is to wait for them to be good for nothing. [And this supplement is indeed the economy of men's lives]: Their natural intemperance would lead them to death; because it contains their desires, modesty is the true morality of women. It is clearly confirmed that the concept of nature and the entire system it commands may not be thought except under the irreducible category of the supplement. Although modesty comes to fill the lack of a natural and instinc- tive restraint, it is, nonetheless, as a supplement, and moral as it certainly is, natural. This product of culture has a natural origin and a natural end. God Himself has inscribed it in His creatures: "The Most High has deigned to do honor to mankind; he has endowed man with boundless passions, together with a law to guide them, so that man may be alike free and self-controlled; though swayed by these passions man is endowed with reason by which to control them. Woman is also endowed with boundless passions; God has given her modesty to restrain them". Thus God gives reason to supplement natural inclinations. Reason is thus at once within nature and in a supplementary role to nature; it is a supplementary ration. Which supposes that nature might sometimes lack something within itself or, what is the same thing, might sometimes exceed itself. And God even adds a bonus (praemium), a recompense, a supplement to the supplement: "Moreover," Rousseau continues, "he has given to both a pre- sent reward for the right use of their powers, in the delight which springs from that right use of them, i.e., the taste for right conduct established as the law of our behavior. To my mind this is far higher than the instinct of the beasts". -- ※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 163.25.118.131