Mr Stephen Pollard the frequent object of Virtual ridicule, whose bizarre form I glimpsed waddling down Charlotte Place the other day, admitted some days ago to wishing Arafat dead. So, his wish is granted. Pollard also made a number of jokes at the expense of this terminally ill old man. He wished the terminally ill old man dead, invited our complicit laughter. Here I anticipate your objection: You note the rhetorical move - by refering to Arafat as a 'terminally ill old man' I am, you say, 'being emotive'. Even though I am using a more abstract category, and what I am saying is true, I am being emotive. Why? Because, you say, I am abstracting away from those particulars of Arafat which make him repugnant. Ok,
My question is, under what conditions does the invocation of a universal statement like
"Making jokes about terminally ill old men/ wishing people dead is wrong" or "Calling for people to be assasinated is wrong"
become a rhetorical ploy and when is it an instance of the stringency of the universal imperative, which demands that we include even what we intuitively hate under its rule.
When someone says, in relation to Bush, 'to call for someone's assasination is wrong' do we really believe that a call for Arafat's assasination would have provoked the same reaction? Is it really some universal principle that is being defended here, or is it GWB?
How many of us are prepared truly to follow a universal imperative all the way? How many only stick with the imperative until it crashes into some particular they do not like? If torture is universally wrong, then it is wrong to torture terrorists; if free speech is a universal right then you must defend it for the vilest racist; if you believe in the univesal imperative to love your neighbor, then this means an Israeli loving a Palestinian and viceversa.
Here is a related extract from Zizek's Organs Without Bodies [it begins with an interview with Emmanuel Levinas:
"Emmanuel Levinas, you are the philosopher of the 'other'. Isn't history, isn't politics, the very site of the encounter with the 'other'? Isn't .. and for the Israeli, the 'other' above all the Palestinian?"
To this Levinas answered: [..] 'If your neighbour attacks another neighbour or treats him unjustly, what can you do? Then alterity takes on another character, in alterity we can find an enemy[..] There are people who are wrong."
[..] What Levinas is basically saying is that, in principle, respect for alterity is unconditional (the highest sort of respect), but when faced with a concrete other, one should nonetheless see if he is a friend or enemy. In short, in terms of practical politics, the respect for alterity strictly means nothing."
And yet, there is nothing in the concept of 'unconditional respect for alterity' that makes it bawk at this particular object; rather Levinas' own philosphical stringency is hijacked by his 'common sense'. Is this hijacking of the universal by the particular prejudice part of what me mean by ideology??
[n.b. A link to Norman Geras in the above seems to have led to some confusion (at least on the part of NG) and obscured the point of the post. So, for the sake of clarity, i've removed it.]