Saturday, May 19th, 2007

Time	Event
8:33a	Power and Personality "Power corrupts". But what is corrupted by power and what are the mechanism of corruptions? When Acton made this famous statement (describing the popes of XVIth c.), there was no conception of feedback (or whether any other term is better?) On the eve of human history lust for power corrupted unique human quality: to live through mutuality, to put questions and receive answers. There is Russian expression "to tear out legs" ("nogi vyrvat'") meaning "to punish," "to make one passive." Thus the the first and the last argument of power--tearing out legs of disobedient. To counterbalance this human must wash legs (foots?) of one's own brother or sister, neighbor or enemy. Some examples of such washing are known to historians. (4 Comments | Comment on this)
6:31p	Nota Bene: John Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics at the University of Nottingham, director of the theologyphilosophycentre.co.uk. Author of "Theology and Social Theory", 1990. Creator of the Radical Orthodoxy. Seems to be some "king's way" between fundamentalism and leftism. Cf. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milbank with links to some online texts. P.e., he criticizes the totalitarianism of self-sacrifice as a ultimate ethical good, stressing, that self-sacrifice is opposite to communication: "So, if attention to the other is central for a sense of the ethical, it would appear that convivial enjoyment of another is more important than suffering on his behalf. Moreover, if a person can only be known as other via communication, then I cannot remove myself as a participant in this situation. The German Roman Catholic philosopher Robert Spaemann has expressed this point very well: giving food to those in need, he observes, can occur as a one-way gift from those who have to those who have not, or it can occur in a feast, where all eat together." (http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3119) (Comment on this)

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