Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 136
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Popular Culture Review
Yet behind the veil of ignorance I cannot think of Others; I have no community. Of
course, a winning trip to Vegas is often so only because someone else lost
(it’s not just the corporate casino’s money I am winning; it’s the money some
real person has bet on the wrong number on the wheel). But this is different for
many reasons. First, I didn’t force anyone into a place on the little table of num
bers. Second, this is not everyday distribution of goods we’re talking about — it’s
a vacation to Vegas. And third, our freedom always keeps open the possibility that
we will all win (which is impossible in capitalism at large) — and all win at once.
Tossing to the wind the statistical house advantage that should grind away at us,
we could break the bank collectively and move on down the Strip. It has happened
before.
So let us leave Rawls and Kant to their one-horse races and turn instead
to James, and if we long for a German compatriot for our American friend, invoke
the name o f Husserl in K ant’s place. Husserl, too, understood the risk o f
consciousness, knowledge, intersubjectivity, and life. It is celebrated throughout
his work. Every instance of perception, he tells us (for example), places before our
mind an object, a whole. The fact that we see only the front of a thing does not
mean that the front is the object of our consciousness, for we apperceive the sides
that are not present, directly experiencing their absence. O f course this is the risk
we run every moment we are experiencing: we might be wrong. And being wrong
here does not indicate an error in judgment or a bad inference. Consciousness,
perception itself, reaches out into the world and takes the risk. The shadowy figure
in the distance may not be a person; it c