deception

A philosophical tactic in this study is to insist on multiple kinds of unity. Critics often pit true or authentic unity against false or apparent unity, but what we are dealing with are different kinds of unity. We do need normative distinctions, but we should not make them between unity and its counterfeit, but among different kinds of unity. I have suggested complexity as a criterion for that distinction.

I appreciate your desire not to use unity as an honorific term, and I commend that attempt to move away from Plato's legacy. Yet you must admit that some of today's places are more than just simplified, they are deceptive; their unity is a surface effect, their spectacle hides a lack of substance, their depth is contrived. Terms like falsity and deception have to be used if we are to see what's really going on.

I still shy away from that term -- there is deception, but I'd rather see it not as the basic event of a place, but as one element in a complexity, so that the deception can be defanged by being seen as one part of a larger movement. The deception or falsity in the place no longer dominates the place's reality once we see it in context. The effect is still to undo the deception, as you want, but this is not done by defining deception as the essence of the place. Rather we see the deception in a context that undoes its effect, since its effect will only work when it monopolizes the field of vision. It is better to widen that field of vision than to rail at the deception while still keeping it in the center.

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