Another refreshing talk. Thank you.

Negotiating the poison and cure e.g. building up in muscles in an ultra-marathon as a new model narrative for life, seems fine. Girard measured civilization in terms of its ability to procrastinate the stoning and the scapegoating that always seems to happen in the end. I am not sure whether or not we now seem to have done with that so called old or organic narrative model full of indeterminate or dead fragments of what was initially intended. This might also be (just) another difference in degree but not in form or kind. Function still follows structure, or, as always probably, new generations of (old, like me) students will challenge that status quo and let any structure follow function, which is how all those new applications and TV-series are produced. It must sell after all, so the attention economy, not the old economy, really directs us. I believe it is a question of how institutions counteract that while they still can, leading the way. At the most structural level, that may boil down to dependent rejection instead of independent confirmation, the worst instead of the best. And that structural level is cultural, when aspiring philosophers (Derrida et al) set their own standards as the new ones when the tide is changing. Postmodernism allowed messing with the Truth and I know those who are post traumatically suffering from its consequences. Not leading in the Modern- nor in the Postmodern paradigm, but following now is the de-facto standard at e.g. Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia. It keeps received fragments from dying in a most vital and vibrant way. When authenticity is gone, people feel that and instantly follow others who do not seem to have lost it (literally). Although we can never fully assimilate what is abandoned by death, we can accommodate each other in this manner to assimilate the other’s needs and possibly, if we are lucky (happy!), our own in return.

Thank you again for discussing these subjects so lively.

Honored that you are willing to have this conversation with us.

Open morality in my mind (and this is how I read Bergson) can only be the willingness to discuss the first principles of our thoughts, words and actions with anybody, even at an emotional level. To me, that is our willingness to always seek independent emotional- or (also) rational confirmation to turn emotion into motivation and accountability. It takes emotional creativity to adapt to the other or groups of others, without losing oneself, as much as being independent without getting isolated does. In certain political circles, this kind of criticism towards oneself and to others in debate and discussion, is massively opposed and found unfriendly, excusing accusers to be harsh in return, only this time intentionally. Derrida's compatriot and contemporain René Girard explains this as "mimetic desire" to be friendly and therefore uncritical, so that confirmation is guaranteed, be it dependent upon one another (cronyism). The scapegoat is the one who is (verbally) stoned and kicked out. The only time this happened with global consequences, was in the beginning of Christianity. I will have to read up on Derrida, how deconstruction could possibly be criticism, other than breaking down what another for himself has put together seeking, finding and following independent confirmation, that is Truth, by means of Derridean theory that cannot be proved (only approved), plus an intimidating majority of friends dependently confirming each other and never minding the Truth.

Thank you for this podcast and the opportunity to comment. I sympathize with your new sensitivity, in defense of immanent (animal) otherness in a field of multiplicity and friends of passage, possibly in co-responsibility to experience. However, it seems to me that the need to eliminate the autonomy, unity and hierarchy of the cogito, in an anti-platonistic move, is unnecessary. As Bergson was quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by prof. Lawlor, if we “Re-establish the duality [of forces], the difficulties vanish” (The Two Sources, p. 96). That duality may not be the immanent multiplicity you assume he meant. Bergson compared the mind to the universe as described by Einstein (and discussed it with him on radio - tapes still available), however that is not how intuition deals with reality. I believe he meant to be precise and overthrow what he called "sociobabble". The precision had to be scientifically, judicially and journalistically accounted for, not indeterminate. And that implies a passion for independent confirmation, which is a dualistic value engrained in almost all facets of our lives, including mental health. This dualism is a hierarchical system in our experience, seeking and if found, following Truth (what is independently confirmed) at one level within another. This is a far cry away from the "friends of passage" idea and requires us to be as independent as we can, to honor the truth and our passion for justice, as Bergson called it. So animal rights to be heard even when it is only murmur, and be co-responsible for that experience, is a matter of precise representation and reflection of the environment, the other or reality in intuition, at one level. More reduced, that is sensing what we know (intuition) and knowing what we sense (realization) and at higher levels of functional structure or less reduced, that is trying (realizing what we intuit) and valuing (intuiting what we realize). This is not the "closed morality and static religion" Bergson accused Kant of, but the other source of morality and religion, which never emerged in postmodernism, especially not in Derrida's deconstructionism.