Ricoeur’s unexpected old talk about a “transgression” (which the translator says in a note should be taken in an etymological sense, without the moral connotation it has in English) — or an overflowing, as I would put it — inherent in ordinary language use and ordinary determination of concepts makes another interesting rebuttal to the Badiouian claim endorsed by some of the Žižekians that only a few extraordinary “Events” and utterly arbitrary acts avoid chaining us to the status quo.
Tag: Ordinary Life
In Defense of Ordinariness
As a youth, I abhorred everything that seemed ordinary. I wanted only things I thought were special: love, nature, mystical experience, revolution, great art, philosophy. Abruptly, when I began to work for a living, I had a complete change of heart, and simultaneously became much more grounded and responsible. It’s not that I didn’t still appreciate the special things, but I came to a much more rounded point of view.
Ordinary life is to be treasured in its own right. I like to get up in the morning and see the sun shine. Nowadays, I even like to go to Costco with my wife — not because I like shopping, but because I love her and enjoy her enjoyment. Does this make me conservative? I don’t think so. Having an expanded capacity to appreciate the little things is a plus all around.
Now I want it all, from the extraordinary to the mundane. One of the reasons I especially like Aristotle and Brandom is that they both combine the lofty reaches with an appreciation of the ordinary. I distrust the contempt for the ordinary promulgated by contemporary figures like Badiou and at least some of the Žižekians. It seems like a strange kind of quasi-existentialist elitism. If you can’t relate to ordinary people and ordinary things, how can you be trusted to tell us how things should be for all of us?
The Postmodern Peripatetic 