Digressions&Impressions

The Early Deaths of Philosophers

In the Deutsches Museum, February, 1787, there is a dissertation by a very subtle and clear-headed man, the late Wizenmann, whose early death is to be lamented, in which he disputes the right to argue from a want to the objective reality of its object, and illustrates the point by the example of a man in love, who having fooled himself into an idea of beauty, which is merely a chimera of his own brain, would fain conclude that such an object really exists somewhere. I quite agree with him in this, in all cases where the want is founded on inclination, which cannot necessarily postulate the existence of its object even for the man that is affected by it, much less can it contain a demand valid for everyone, and therefore it is merely a subjective ground of the wish.--Kant Critique of Practical Reason.

I returned to the line above prompted by my re-reading of Beiser's beautiful treatment of the Pantheismusstreit in The Fate of Reason. It's very difficult not to come away from Beiser's narrative without thinking that Wizenmann's untimely death at age 28 (just under the age at which Hume published the Treatise) in 1787 caused great harm to the development of philosophy: every age needs its profound and intellectually honest skeptical voices, of course, but even those most fond of metaphysical speculation appreciate that the great age of German Idealism could have used Wizenmann as its Spinozistic-Humean Gewissen. Then again, the early death of Novalis (one of the patron saints of philosophical blogging), might have prevented an even more mystical strain from developing.

On Sebald, and Self-Perpetuating Compulsions

Less heroically, but certainly no less correctly, one could also see writing as a continually self-perpetuating compulsive act, evidence that of all individuals afflicted by the disease of thought, the writer is perhaps the most incurable.… How difficult it is in general to bring the machinery of thought to a standstill.…What I found most surprising in the course of these observations is the awful tenacity of those who devote their lives to writing. There seems to be no remedy for the vice of literature; those afflicted persist in the habit despite the fact that there is no longer any pleasure to be derived from it, even at that crucial age when, as Keller remarks, one every day runs the risk of becoming simpleminded and longs for nothing more than to put a halt to the wheels ceaselessly turning in one's head.… Evidently the business of writing is one from whose clutches it is by no means easy to extricate oneself, even when the activity itself has come to seem loathsome or even impossible. From the writer's point of view, there is almost nothing to be said in its defense, so little does it have to offer by way of gratification.--W.G. Sebald, quoted in Troy Jollimore's stimulating review. [HT L.A. Paul]

Alone in my circle of bourgeois scholars, I often find Sebald mildly irritating because he sells an intoxicating mixture of learnedness, nostalgia, and suggestions of depth to be found in imaginative engagement with the details of living --all irresistible to folk like us. I always struggled to express my irritation, but Jollimore helpfully quotes Sebald's preference for "something that is small and self-contained," which is for him "a moral and aesthetic ideal." While I instinctively admire Sebald's aversion against "large-scale things...in architecture or evolutionary leaps," his ideal leaves little room for expansiveness, natural and moral and systematically partakes in the humanistic project of self-domestication (recall). Sebald's moral and aesthetic preferences are a thinly disguised longing for control, even in the face of genuine self-knowledge that such control remains elusive. His is intrinsically a conservative aesthetic that offers a spirited consolation (by withholding ordinary forms of consolation) to those, I fear, that recoil the inevitable excesses in living. Of course, I wouldn't find Sebald irritating if I didn't recognize myself in these longings.

On Teaching Slow Reading of Books and People [Paul de Man, Hobbes and Spinoza]

This [Paul de Man--ES] learned in part from Reuben Brower, as teaching assistant in Hum 6, a course in what Brower called “reading in slow motion.”...Brower, an independent “new critic,” himself a student of I.A. Richards, believed that students should learn to analyze texts using only the information provided by the texts themselves—without the baggage of biography or literary history or premade assumptions about meaning and significance.--Peter Brooks, NYRB, "The Strange Case of Paul de Man.  [HT: Mohan Matthen]

[A] kingdom divided in itself cannot stand: for unless this division precede, division into opposite armies can never happen. If there had not first been an opinion received of the greatest part of England that these powers were divided between the King and the Lords and the House of Commons, the people had never been divided and fallen into this Civil War; first between those that disagreed in politics, and after between the dissenters about the liberty of religion, which have so instructed men in this point of sovereign right that there be few now in England that do not see that these rights are inseparable, and will be so generally acknowledged at the next return of peace; and so continue, till their miseries are forgotten, and no longer, except the vulgar be better taught than they have hitherto been.--Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 18.

Much of Leviathan reads like an abstract text written for eternity. But in the quoted passage from chapter 18, Hobbes lets the present, if I may say so, violently intrude on the argument. He is writing during a "civil war." But it does not follow that he is not also addressing, at least in part, future audiences; he makes it clear that his imagined audience is reading him in the future, after the "return of peace." But it is worth noting that the point of the quoted paragraph transcends context: it is a clear statement of Hobbes's view that some ideas are a matter of life and death. In particular, constitutional ideas matter a great deal both in political and in religious life, especially because people are willing to take up arms over such matters.

A Reflection on Jenkins' Open Letter to Junior Philosophers

But here’s a thing. Philosophers, even senior philosophers, are very far from being a unified bunch with respect to their opinions on current issues in the profession. Whatever you said, there is a decent chance that a number of senior philosophers out there were thinking (or even saying) if not it, then something isomorphic to it. In fact, whatever you said, there is a decent chance that a number of senior philosophers out there who will regard you as more hirable, tenurable, and so on, for having said that. There exist senior philosophers on hiring and tenure committees who are impressed by junior folks who have Things To Say about important issues in the profession, and who regard a willingness to do this as a desirable quality in a potential colleague. So while it’s true what you’ve said could do you professional harm, you never know: the opposite could be true....Even the de facto loci of concentrated professional power and authority are up for discussion and debate, along a plenitude of dimensions. This is a cat that’s not going back in its bag any time soon.--CSI Jenkins, "An open letter to junior philosophers who’ve seen something and said something"

I read Jenkins' piece and shared it on my facebook page yesterday. Jenkins is a big deal in the profession (Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor at UBC), and (with an awe-inspiring publication record) on her way to being a bigger deal.* Her "open letter," which makes quite a few empirical claims, is as much an encouragement to the young and junior (these are not co-extensive, of course), as a status report from within the professional elite, and -- perhaps I am reading between the lines --, a call to senior figures to step up, and a plausible form of self-fulfilling prediction: "as contributions to these critical and exploratory conversations become more varied and greater in number, over time there is correspondingly less focus (and less burden) on any one individual who has something to say."

I was incredibly moved by Jenkins' piece, and some time I'll try to articulate, perhaps, why this is so beyond the vain idea that I felt strangely vindicated by it.

But what I found especially interesting, even startling was Jenkins' suggestion that, in fact, a candidate's participation in the meta-discourse about the profession (its mores, its methods, its norms; its patterns of exclusion, and even local injustices, etc. ) can now play a legitimate role in the evaluation of hiring committees (i.e., "who regard a willingness to do this as a desirable quality in a potential colleague") in possible negative and positive fashion.

On Philosophical Madness in Hume, Smith, and Deleuze

For ‘tis evident, that if a person full-grown, and of the same nature with ourselves, were on a sudden transported into our world, he wou’d be very much embarrass’d with every object, and would not readily find what degree of love or hatred, pride or humility, or any other passion he ought to attribute to it. The passions are often vary’d by very inconsiderable principles; and these do not always play with a perfect regularity, especially on the first trial. But as custom and practice have brought to light all these principles, and have settled the just value of every thing; this must certainly contribute to the easy production of the passions, and guide us, by means of general establish’d maxims, in the proportions we ought to observe in preferring one object to another. (Hume Treatise 2.1.6)

Suppose a person, though endowed with the strongest faculties of reason and reflection, to be brought on a sudden into this world; he would, indeed, immediately observe a continual succession of objects, and one event following another, but he would not be able to discover any thing farther. He would not, at first, by any reasoning, be able to reach the idea of cause and effect; since the particular powers, by which all natural operations are performed, never appear to the senses; nor is it reasonable to conclude, merely because one event, in one instance, precedes another, that therefore the one is the cause, the other the effect. Their conjunction may be arbitrary and casual. There may be no reason to infer the existence of one from the appearance of the other. And in a word, such a person, without more experience, could never employ his conjecture or reasoning concerning any matter of fact, or be assured of any thing beyond what was immediately present to his memory and senses.--David Hume Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 5.3).

Could we conceive a person of the soundest judgment, who had grown up to maturity, and whose imagination had acquired those habits, and that mold, which the constitution of things in this world necessarily impress upon it, to be all at once transported alive to some other planet, where nature was governed by laws quite different from those which take place here; as he would be continually obliged to attend to events, which must to him appear in the highest degree jarring, irregular, and discordant, he would soon feel the same confusion and giddiness begin to come upon him, which would at last end in the same manner, in lunacy and distraction. Neither, to produce this effect, is it necessary that the objects should be either great or interesting, or even uncommon, in themselves.--Adam Smith, "The History of Astronomy."

Jeff Bell has returned to regular blogging! (Hurray!) Recently he wrote a wonderful series of posts on Hume, Spinoza, and Deleuze in which he called attention to the two passages from Hume quoted above. One striking claim in the passage from the Treatise that Bell does not remark upon is Hume's claim that "custom and practice...have settled the just value of every thing." (Hume repeats the claim with the same thought experiment in his dissertation on the passions.) It is tempting to see in this some kind of long run equilibrium claim. Even so, one doesn't need to know Hume's account of taste (combined judgments of true judges set value), his account of economics (value is established in the market), or his mistrust of theodicy, to find this is a bit surprising. For at the very start of the Treatise, Hume had bemoaned that metaphysics was being unfairly undervalued (despite there being "just value for every other part of literature") by the learned! So, Hume knows that custom and practice cannot be expected to produce just values in philosophy.

Heidegger, Frege, Antisemitism, and worse

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.—John Maynard Keynes.

David Hume, who to this day is known as 'le Bon David' and a nice guy within philosophy, was a nasty racist. Don't believe me? Read this awful footnote. I used to think that one could accept much of Hume's moral and political philosophy without the racism. But Hume's account of the rule of law as being constitutive of 'civilization' also encourages the violent exportation of it as is illustrated by his rather favorable account of English conquest of Wales (essentially a tale of cultural genocide) and Ireland (see this article). With law-governed civilization (as opposed to barbarism) as a necessary prerequisite for (and co-development with) philosophy, Hume's approach facilitates, despite the significance of the moral virtue humanity in his project, empire and patterns of systematic cultural exclusion.* Despite vigorous eighteenth-century criticism of Hume (in Smith, Herder, Wollstonecraft, Millar, etc.), it is undeniable that these ideas survived in mitigated form, perhaps, in the works of some of the greatest philosophers, Kant, Hegel, and even Mill. 

So, individual philosophers can have both (a) pernicious philosophical beliefs as well as (b) very dangerous meta-philosophical conceptions of their own enterprise.  This is no surprise ever since Socrates was put on trial, fairly or not, for corrupting the young and for having too many high profile students caught up in collaboration and dictatorship as Aeschines emphasized. (I.F. Stone wrote an important book on it that for all its flaws deserves more respect among philosophers.) This is why I tend to talk about these issues in terms of the enduring Socratic Problem for philosophy, and experts more generally. But it is worth noting that (a-b) are compatible with (c) being a nice (or not) professional colleague, and (d) exhibiting moral courage (or not) under duress. 

Dead white, not entirely useless

Dear dead white man, we thank you for your kind offer to take care of the philosophy on our behalf, but, with all due respect, you are not equipped to take care of the philosophy on your own.--Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, "Philosophy is Dead White -- and Dead Wrong," Times Higher Education.

If you are so moral, how come you're so privileged?--Anonymous.

Philosophy as a discipline is a racialized project. It doesn’t have to be--Drabinski

About fifteen years ago my research on the shared history of philosophy and economics introduced me to Sandra Peart and David Levy, two philosophically sophisticated economists. Among their diverse interests, was a fascination with nineteenth century satirical cartoons (many of which published in Punch). I have to admit that at first I found this interest bordering on the childish. (Cartoons are not for serious folk, I mistakenly thought.) These influential cartoons depicted racialized and sexist satires on leading economists and philosophers with an interest in abolishing slavery, Irish home rule, and promoting woman's suffrage as well as anti-conception.* (Some of their material was first published here.) These cartoons generated many of the stereotypes that threaten to this day. A few years later, I taught Fanon in a class on social thought. I have never looked at philosophy (and economics) the same again.

On the Political Order of Bacon's Bensalem (II)

One day there were two of our company bidden to a feast of the family, as they call it; a most natural, pious, and reverend custom it is, showing that nation to be compounded of all goodness. This is the manner of it; it is granted to any man that shall live to see thirty persons descended of his body, alive together, and all above three years old, to make this feast, which is done at the cost of the State. The father of the family, whom they call the tirsan, two days before the feast, taketh to him three of such friends as he liketh to choose, and is assisted also by the governor of the city or place where the feast is celebrated; and all the persons of the family, of both sexes, are summoned to attend him. These two days the tirsan sitteth in consultation, concerning the good estate of the family. There, if there be any discord or suits between any of the family, they are compounded and appeased. There, if any of the family be distressed or decayed, order is taken for their relief, and competent means to live. There, if any be subject to vice, or take ill-courses, they are reproved and censured. So, likewise, direction is given touching marriages, and the courses of life which any of them should take, with divers other the like orders and advices. The governor sitteth to the end, to put in execution, by his public authority, the decrees and orders of the tirsan, if they should be disobeyed, though that seldom needeth; such reverence and obedience they give to the order of nature. The tirsan doth also then ever choose one man from among his sons, to live in house with him,--Bacon, New Atlantis (23).

This is the second post on the political economy of Bacon’s utopian island, Bensalem, which dazzled and inspired the founders of the Royal Society. It’s a society with an advanced division of intellectual labor performed in a central research institute, Saloman’s House, which occupies a privileged position in Bensalem’s society. But what exactly grounds this privilege?

The ‘feast of the family,’ as it is called, is a state-sponsored, fertility celebration. A detailed description of it occupies about ten percent of the (rather brief) text of New Atlantis. Oddly enough, while (as we have seen) there are (Christian) priests on Bensalem, and these can perform government functions, there is no hint that the state representative, the “governor of the city,” is a religious representative. Rather, the official presence is entirely secular;* in addition to the governor, there is also a “herald” that represents the king. In fact, near the end of the feast, the herald reads from the “king’s charter,” which contains “gift of revenue, and many privileges, exemptions, and points of honor, granted to the father of the family.” (23-24) The king has quite a bit of discretionary power and also, in practice, access to royal sources of income. So, at the heart of Bensalem’s political economy is a crude trade: if you breed, you will be rewarded with property (“the King is debtor to no man, but for propagation of his subjects”).

Descartes' technocratic political project

[T]o speak of human matters, I believe that if Sparta was once very flourishing, it was not because of the goodness of each of its laws in particular (seeing that many of them were very strange, and even contrary to sound morals), but because, having been invented by a single man, they all tended to the same end.--Descartes, Discourse on Method, Second Part.

I quote the passage above not to emphasize that Descartes has a fondness for despotism. He does have a fondness for a kind of enlightened despotism (as is clear from a statement just before where he praises town-planning in those "regular districts that an engineer lays out on a plain according to his own imagination"). Rather, what is striking about his praise of Sparta is not so much his positive reason (Sparta was a durable state because it's laws have a kind of internal consistency by aiming at the same end (that is, military survival)). Rather he explicitly rejects (a) the idea that Sparta's laws themselves were good and (b) the idea that they promoted good norms or customs. In fact, he comes very close to suggesting that in order to promote political flourishing any consistent aim of the legal order will do.

In context Descartes rejects (i) a republican interpretation of the flourishing of Sparta. He is also rejecting the idea that (ii) a flourishing legal order requires virtuous citizens--the laws of Sparta promote behavior "contrary to sound morals." That is to say, citizens need not be especially Christian. This (that is i-ii), deflates the previous, somewhat enigmatic sentence:"it is certain that the condition of the true religion, whose precepts were made by God alone, must be incomparably better ruled than all others." For, while it seems that indeed (iii) a city ruled by true religion would be best, that is not what obtains in human affairs ("[T]o speak of human matters") nor necessary for human flourishing. In the very same paragraph, Descartes also rejects (iv) a political order based on bottom-up trial and error in which civilization and law "gradually" develop as an instrument in social problem-solving. (He prefers fewer laws, which will produce more uniformity and beauty.)

On Descartes' reasons

And the example of many excellent minds who had a plan before them, and who seemed to me not to have succeeded, made me imagine so much difficulty that perhaps I still would not have dared to undertake it if I had not seen that some people had started a rumor that I had already arrived at my goal. I did not know on what they based this opinion; if I contributed something to it through my conversations, it must have been by confessing to what I did not know more ingenuously than is usual for those who have a bit of learning, and also perhaps by making known the reasons for my doubting many things which others took to be certain, rather than by boasting of any doctrine. But being sufficiently good-natured so as not to want to be taken for anything other than I was [Mais ayant le coeur assez bon pour ne vouloir point qu'on me prit pour autre que je n'étois], I thought it essential to try, by all means, to be worthy of the reputation  that was given me...--Descartes, Discourse on Method, Third Part, translated by Olscamp.

Let's stipulate that as reasons go,  this is an excellent one to justify moving to Holland.

Descartes undertakes the "search for the principles of any philosophy more certain than the common variety" in order to be worthy of the reputation he has mistakenly acquired. This is a form of pride. Descartes does not really like pride, so it would be surprise if he would endorse it on his own behalf. In a different context, Adam Smith helpfully describes the pride that Descartes here exhibits as "the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters," (The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 3.3.5.4, 137). That is to say, this comes close to what Descartes would call 'generosity,' except that it is crucial to Cartesian generosity that it involves at least some orientation toward the good of others.