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"Against All Odds" or the Will to Survive: Moral Conclusions from Narrative Closure
The old platonic idea of representation seems to have been cast aside once and for all. As modern skeptics we have learned our lesson: the mirror of nature and a factual world has been shattered; representation now means a way of presenting things, seeing and interpreting things, telling things, naming, arranging and depicting things in order to convince others to share our view of these things, to share our imagination, our memory, our ideas. Or may be we just want to tell how we as individuals see things, believe them to be, to name what they mean to us, and want others merely to respect and acknowledge that. In this sketch of a liberal paradise of smart skeptics the Auschwitz-denier would be the last to believe in absolute truth.
One of the reasons we do not live in this paradise of liberal skeptics is the echoes of history, not to say historical events, which continuously remind us of our experiences and the lived experiences of another generation. History refers to facts, even if in the rather limited sense that for our view of historical events it matters a great deal whether we believe they happened or not.
Let me illustrate this problem with an old story: Ulysses had to sail past the isle of the Sirens, whose seductive singing lured mariners to their destruction on the rocks. These rocks can be seen as the rocks of facticity, which we know to exist but do not have full knowledge of. Only by paying total attention to them, would we be able to react appropriately to the assumed final crash with reality. For this purpose we would have to complete, summarize and perfect the accumulated experiences of the mariners who died before us. If we hear only the mesmerizing voices of oblivion we may become joyful Nietzscheans but not long before crashing against the rocks of facticity. Nietzsche thought one should change the course of history to regain the lost paradise of innocence, drawing at least seven veils of ignorance between history and ourselves. Ulysses, on Circe's advice, adopted the opposite course -- he bound his oarsmen to instrumental reason by pluggng their ears...