phlogma

Notes on Kant, “Theory and Practice,” part 2
From the concluding section:
It thus follows that all resistance against the supreme legislative power, all incitement of the subjects to violent expressions of discontent, all defiance which breaks out into rebellion, is the greatest and most punishable crime in a commonwealth, for it destroys its very foundations. This […]

…no man that hath sovereign power can justly be put to death, or otherwise in any manner by his subjects punished. For seeing every subject is author of the actions of his sovereign, he punisheth another for the actions committed by himself.
[Leviathan, Chapter XVIII, “Of the Rights of Sovereigns by Institution”]
But may he not commit […]

Notes on:
Sylviane Agacinski, Parity of the Sexes.
111-4
Because of his conscious neglect of sexual difference and the natural patterns of generation, indeed his distaste for them, Plato is sometimes seen as modern. Aristotle’s political world, in contrast, seems structured by and founded on a family consisting of man, woman, and children. Better patriarchal than altogether heterocosmic, […]

Notes on:
Sylviane Agacinski, Parity of the Sexes.
123
Citing Clausewitz’s dictum, “War is mere continuation of politics by other means….” and paraphrasing Foucault’s near reversal of the same, that politics is war in more civil guise, Agacinski rejects both: “Allow me this minor detail: war is a means men use, not women. Thus there is no ‘war […]

Notes on:
Sylviane Agacinski, Parity of the Sexes.
131
Though in many ways “modern” in its sophistication regarding sexual mores and the appreciation of one sex for the character of the other, France still seems to have marked out the sphere of public power for men.
132
Private morality is never brought up to qualify a public one. [The Clinton-Lewinsky […]

Notes on:
Sylviane Agacinski, Parity of the Sexes.
139
The hard pedestal of anatomical and physiological differences suggests, perhaps, types of behavior linked to the search for pleasure or parental drives, but it can program nothing on the institutional, legal, or social orders.
I would like to emphasize, in addition, that equality must not be confused with identity. To […]

Notes on:
Sylviane Agacinski, Parity of the Sexes.
153
Hubertine Auclert wrote in 1880 on not being permitted to vote: “I leave to the men who enjoy the power to govern the privilege of paying the taxes they vote for and distribute as they please…. I have no rights, thus I have no burden. I do not vote, […]