Progressive Platonism

The activities of the European parliament, projected on the media, seem to be uneven and nonequilibrium. In one place - empty, and in another - densely. Thus, the Assembly of the European Parliament urgently convened due to the possible energy crisis showed that only a direct threat forces to talk about the pan -European energy program, moreover, the “locomotives of progress” were the neophytes of the united Europe (in particular, the Poles), as well as the British fire, which poured oils ready to bother. Will it not be so that the legislative activity of the European Parliament (and the activities of other European institutes) will find a place for itself only in gaps, in the failures, in the situation of one or another (not always economic) deficit?

This state of affairs, when the “general”, “universal European” fills out what remains after individual failures, is justified by the uncertainty of the status and ideology of the European Union, last year’s referendum in France and the Netherlands, a powerful criticism of the “liberalist” logic of the constitutional agreement conducted by some funds . Actually, the negative result of referendums (albeit that arose in quite different conditions) could not help but throw a shadow on the future constructive activities of the European Parliament, which is forced to look for "alternative Europe", but is unlikely to know how to do it.

However, a quite logical shortage of parliamentary activity itself is more than covered in the European Parliament completely different - the voluntary performance of the function of the guardian of humanism. In this regard, the European Parliament sometimes resembles a certain abuse Team. There are difficulties with the economic model of united Europe and even with the justification of its future unity, but there are no problems with European values. They are an inalienable wealth, against which the European Parliament seems to have nothing to do - its laws almost live in a special ideal world that the whole Western metaphysics spoke of.

In this sense, the "political consensus" of Europe imposes certain restrictions on the very logic of "creation of the law" and at the same time is the most radical abandonment of the ideas of one of the main European political thinkers - Machiavelli. After all, the latter believed that the ideas supported by politicians still do not say anything about the policy that would be pursued by them. However, cynicism itself is not the last word. The point is not in him, but the fact that it is the power of the authorities in conditions when it can assure herself in the extremely ideal nature of her own actions.

The new temporary commission of the European Parliament that opened on Wednesday is aimed at disclosing violations and abuses related to the alleged activities of the CIA in Europe. In general, the European Parliament cannot but be interested in such things with which European values ​​are not able to put up with. Therefore, European Parliamentarians will always find time to study cases of abduction of people, transferring them to the Americans through European airports, rough handling with women and children, torture, etc. In each such study, it is important not only whether the alleged immoral event took place, but also whether Europeans (as citizens or institutions) participated in it and with what degree of consciousness.

We can make an assumption that it is precisely such studies (not very clear status - either scientific, or a policeman) set the nerve of the emerging European power. And here it is important to note that the suggestive comparisons with the Inquisition or the World Gendarme do not reach the present. That is, we are talking about the example of the European Parliament and its actions to outline how "this" works, how power works as power, constantly deceiving its agents with traditional ideas about privileges and material justifications of future profits. Of course, there is all this, but it should be a question that it turns power from the inside. For example, the logic of the “Inquisition” is not possible already because it assumed the traditional figure of the ruler-pastor and, ultimately, the division into people who make history, and those who will always “not make it” (in the role of stovers, bakers, programmers, etc.). In other words, we should talk simultaneously about the “desire of power” (that is, why, for example, subjective and organizational privileges are given to the test of torture, while the acceptance of the budget looks just a routine) and the gradual formation of its new definition, which is comprehended within the traditional ideas about the power as a conductor of “higher values”. What is created on the surface of the universal enlightening function of Europe?

First of all, in order to dispel some illusions, it would be worth paying attention to the fact that the alleged study of American "abuse" in the European territory itself is unfolding inside the "humanitarian" initiative (humanitarian war in Iraq). But it would be a simplification to see a kind of hypocrisy in the actions of the interim commission of the European Parliament - as if Europeans have now reaped the fruits of their own actions. Humanization abroad turns into a strange dehumanization within its own limits. The moment of implementation, introducing the extremely “ineffective” content into the bosom of Europe - as if the Iraqis inadvertently revenge on the hands of unconscious Americans, who placed secret prisons with Iraqi disenfranchised captives in the bosom. Of course, there is a moment of the destruction of the very logic of humanitarian intervention (“You cannot stay with clean hands”), but this does not explain the “interests” of Europeans in this destruction.

It should first be about completely different - not at all about a certain falsification of the humanistic program as such. In the end, politics has always been fulfilled with rather rigid methods, so there is nothing new in the actual political methods. The new one is seen only in the mismatch of the universalist discourse and the self -affirmation of the authorities, always singular, extremely empirical. In other words, the alleged study of "abuse by the CIA" makes it possible to detect the unconscious authorities, outlining the answer to the question: why power power, especially in united Europe?

Actually, the authorities should give some advantage, a privilege that is not embedded in the logic of substantiation of power. For example, there is such an eternal justification - "who has more responsibility, there should be more power." However, in no society, power has never been covered with such an economy, it is not even covered by the economy of “conditions” (when, for example, they say that power is needed not to obtain certain material/social advantages and benefits, but to create the conditions for their long -term receipt - that is, the power acts here as a more abstract equivalent of any benefits than traditional money). Essentially, all this is true, but does not create the nucleus of power, the description of which always caused the troubles of political thought. Formally, power is an excess of advantages that are not substantiated and not economized (which is why the power is always seized , and not “turns out” - and that is why the logic of the throne of the throne requires a more general, its substantiating context). Any substantiation takes power in power, in this sense its subjective core cannot lose the trace of "absolutism", which only imitates the harmonization, coincidence of its own - power - position and external necessity.

However, modern Europe has exposed the most traditional ways to set the authorities as an unreasonable excess of privileges. Actually, an ideologically similar surplus was justified by a cliff of any reasoning at the level of "Goddance" of power. Any power seems to be an unreasonable excess in the same way as grace, although this is grace of various kinds. The representative model of power, power as an idea, is its own economy and the deprivation of the subjective nucleus: the power remains simply “necessary”, necessary, but not “desirable”. However, she continues to illuminate, the desire continues to work.

Although it works more often in the old fashioned way (for example, one cannot be surprised at the life of the Cosheghelian ideas of world history and the expected contrast of ordinary people and the ruling bearers of the world spirit from time to time), innovations are also necessary. In other words, the desire of the authorities is forced to desire differently.

Interest in violations of human rights and the general humanistic schedule has been especially clearly manifested since the famous scandal with records from the Abu-Greb prison (although Europeans, which, are further than the Americans, complicate the logic of the latter). The minimum excess of power is that it can do what others cannot do, touch what is untouchable for others. For example, to view these same records in the framework of a special senatorial commission, create a parliamentary commission to bypass and inspect the alleged European prisoners with Iraqi captives, etc. Even if everyone has long seen the notes from Abu Greb (and not only), if they are not interested in anyone, the authorities create a constantly reproduced effect of secrets, the discovery of the unexpected, the discovery of some unbearable sediment in its own center. Behind the facade of action in the name and for the sake of humanistic values, and not at all contradicting this facade, the core of excess segregation, branch of power from the whole society in those conditions is hidden when such a separation cannot be justified and therefore remains quite ephemeral.

One could show how such initiatives are embedded in the logic of fixing those social differences and differentiations that declaratively, in the conditions of political equality that supports this power, could not have a fundamental nature. The foundation of the authorities is now always accidental , relevant, it receives its undeniable and unproven advantage from a case that cannot be predicted and foreseen in advance. In a certain sense, the desire of the authorities does not begin where the control machine and the distribution of power work, but where the power is requested by a certain emergency, with which it is completely unintentional and which it, however, is more than desirable. The equilibrium system cannot substantiate its own fluctuations, to which it meets the authorities - its instances that appropriate these fluctuations as their material of "responsibility".

The actualization of the topic of "foresight" and "vision" as a whole is not accidental. If Michelle Foucault determined the new European authority through disciplinaryivity, and then “biovela”, now the new one, which looks quite archaic compared to them, is most likely to be built on these definitions. Earlier, the authorities received excess advantages in the fact that she could see everything - which no simple person could claim. The latter is entangled in a system of "registrations" - police, workers, medical, etc., which only allowed the authorities to see everything, even when this vision did not allow some real steps to take. This “disciplinary” scheme combines the very logic of substantiation of power and the logic of the desire of power - that is, management with an excess and not always necessary opportunity to see what you simply will not see. A model of such a desire is a “one -sided” mirror transparent in one direction, even if absolutely useless. However, the spread of mass media and technology, leaving the “managerial” component of disciplinaryivity, has deprived its last “desire”: now everyone sees everything that the power sees, even if the power sees more and better. The all -seeing became ordinary, even if it became a chewing gum. In this situation, there was a demand for a new use of vision as the most political feeling.

The new forms of desire of the authorities postulate that the authorities can look at the fact that others will not want to see . The authorities are not interested in life, but by “abuse”, that is, mud in its metaphysical definition, by the fact that it does not have a “species”, ideas. Power becomes "chosen" through the accidental occurrence of a requireing analysis of dirt, for which there seems to be no reason. The desire of the authorities is the desire to see something else, closing it different from everyone else with your back. However, this is another that it would immediately lose its chosen character, bring it to the overall view.

Such a transformation of desire becomes more understandable if we consider the traditional model of European policy - a model of the Platonic cave from the "state". The latter is not only a model of cinema and forcible coercion (recall at least the treatment of Alex in the "Clothing Orange"), but also a model of representative democracy, also fixing the place of desire for power. Formally "leaving" from the cave, delegates to the truth, ontologically defending the interests of all people as a whole. The "chosen" is elected for the representative office of the human tribe in the world of light and the return to this dark tribe, and the desire is determined by the unreasonableness and impossibility of liberation from the cave. However, now the situation has undergone appeal: Europe is representing itself as living in the world of light, outside the cave. That is, no one is left in the cave. Power is not needed in order to run from light to people, but to sometimes look through the crack into the abandoned cave in which dirt remained. In other words, the desire of the authorities will now be determined by the fact that this is still the desire of the “deprivation”, an unreasonable transition (from the world of the mob to the world of the elect, from the people to its representation, from one social formation to another), but now the transition is observed from the other side, for which the very existence of the “cave” is represented by nonsense.

Formally speaking, some points of activity of modern institutions of the authorities form a complex of "elitism", which cannot remain only "practical", "managerial" and at the same time cannot move away from their own chance. It is possible that the future power will be determined by the excess of an unexpressed (and risky) experience, which it assigns as that that others cannot do. In a certain sense, this power is (in her desire, and not institutional form) the power of the “adventurers”, seekers of adventures, but even such a status is always written off to something external and unforeseen. "Chosenness", "desire of power" and its "other" are presented as a necessary fee for maintaining a homogeneous political environment.