Dear all,
as far I was informed during the subscription to Social-Theory mailing base, 
this is a list of the SCIENTIFIC interchange of opinions and a plattform for 
discussion. In the recent time, I have an impression that Mr Koenigsberg is 
usurpating a role of the absolute souveraine, who indeed inflates the 
mailbase with the numerous postings (opinions, thoughts aloud etc.). To my 
concern, not only the lack of the infortaining factor of the Mr 
Koenigsberg's postings, but more, his rather nearly (anti-)scientific 
approach to the issue is the prevailing problem of these platform.
Indeed, one shouldn't forget, that the social science had opened itself to 
the radical and rather unusual interpretations of the phenomena of the 
social reality in the last decades. Inspite of that, I am personally very 
conceerned with Mr Koenigsberg's plain reductionism to the vulgar 
psychoanalytic interpretation with absolute indifference towards the further 
recent developments in the social theory.
Dear Mr Koenigsberg, with great respect to your research and efforts to move 
the science on in its epistemological foundations through interpretation of 
the divers phenomena with Lacan et al., I would prefer to remain uninformed 
about your day-to-day assumptions and aknowledgements of the historical 
confluence of facts and their symbolical (and whichever) determination and 
meaning(-less) in neither Hitlerian Germany, nor G.W.Bush's USA, nor 
elsewhere.
I would be greatful, if you would remain as productive as you are at the 
present point of time, but a more scientific, more interdisciplinary and 
tolerant approach to the theory and praxis would be your major priority, as 
well as interest in the opinion and sentiments of the other.

Remaining as the observer of your "work" in this list,
Timofei Agarin

>
>----- Original Message -----
>   From: Richard A. Koenigsberg
>   To: [log in to unmask]
>   Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 8:20 PM
>   Subject: War as Submission to the "Law of the Father"
>
>
>       What is neglected or denied in the concept of the "Law of the 
>Father" is the entire history of the Twentieth Century. The paternal or 
>symbolic realm is viewed as the path to salvation and civilization. It is 
>this.
>
>       However, it is also the pathway to destruction and death. The 
>prodigious violence of the Twentieth Century stems from attachment to 
>symbol systems put forth and defended by Fathers such as Hitler, Stalin and 
>Mao, not to mention the Generals of the First World War. The creation of 
>sacrificial victims functioned to glorify and defending sacred symbolic 
>systems given names like Germany, Communism, England, France, etc.
>
>       Violence and aggression are surface manifestations stemming from a 
>deeper psychic posture. Ruth Stein writes that love for the primal father 
>contains "masochistic elements of profound submission."
>
>       "Obedience to authority" is how scholars explain the behavior of the 
>Nazis, suggesting passive willingness to "go along." The Nazis understood 
>themselves better than those who write about them do. In 1936, Otto 
>Dietrich stated that Adolph Hitler never said anything but what "the people 
>felt in the depths its soul." According to Dietrich, "No one is ordered, no 
>one is recruited, but each is called, following his own conscience, and has 
>no choice but to follow lest he be convicted by his own heart."
>
>       Dietrich goes on to say that nowhere else in the world does one find 
>such a "fanatic love on the part of millions of people," a love that grows 
>from a "deep and great faith," the kind of lasting confidence that 
>"children may have for a very good father."
>
>       In her explication of terrorism, Stein notes that the most hateful 
>actions were performed in a "spirit of devotion and love." The terrorists 
>"returned to their father in simple-minded ecstasy and self-obliteration, 
>in an act of double-faced love: submissive and murderous at the same time."
>
>       What greater love hath any man than a willingness to die and kill in 
>the name of the beloved object?
>
>       Glynne Dyer says: "You offer yourself to be slain. This is the 
>essence of being a soldier. By becoming soldiers, men agree to die when we 
>tell them to." War is an institution whereby sons give over their bodies to 
>Fathers in the name of validating or valorizing the sacred ideal.
>
>       One of the significant trends of the second half of the Twentieth 
>Century has been the growth of skepticism toward societal ideals. The 
>"death of grand narratives" correlates with the evolution of a 
>counter-sacrificial psychology. The trend began in the Sixties when 
>students chanted, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today."
>
>        The media depiction of "body bags" conveyed the reality of 
>mutilation and death. When reporters interviewed the parents of the 
>soldier, it became evident that a real, human being has died.
>
>      Americans now are not so fond of the idea of sacrificial dying. There 
>is a longing to resurrect the days of 1941-1945-when (according to our wish 
>or fantasy) young men really were willing to give over their lives to the 
>nation and its leaders. Young persons today, however, join the army because 
>they wish to obtain an education rather than out of patriotic fervor.
>
>       General Patton said that the objective of war was not to die for 
>your country, but to get "the other fellow to die for his country." War is 
>hysterical reaction against masochistic passivity--the paranoid struggle 
>against the wish to submit to the sacrificial imperative. According to 
>Patton's theorem, we avert our own death by getting the Other to become a 
>sacrificial victim in place of the Self.
>
>   With regards,
>
>   Richard Koenigsberg
>
>
>   Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D.
>   Director, Library of Social Science


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