Saturday, May 19, 2007

Critique

Science deals with the actual. The task of critique is to address the potential in relation to the actual (Engineering's task is to make the potential actual; arts task is to make the actual potential). Critique's role is
a) to claim that the actual is not necessarily the result of action or of agents
b) to question the notion of action, of right action, and of the capability of actions to be complete, that is to be comprehensible uunder the rubric of the act, and
c) to surmise that accident – that is agency other than right or complete action – is also a capacity of the world.

Id est: the world is not all that is the case (an assertion that more or less requires possible worlds theory) but is all that is potential, all that is actual, and all that, as Agamben claims on the authority of the Patristic tradition, oscillates between both modes.

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