Digressions&Impressions

On the 'first' Political Philosopher (Ilimilku of Ugarit)

The Baal Cycle stands out in that it does not use the type-scene to reaffirm the legitimacy of the reigning law and the political positions that the law enshrines. Instead, it turns matters on their head by placing the protagonist in the position of the rebel who disrupts order, thereby rendering questionable the principles according to which that order is defined...

Ugarit's experience as a vassal state subservient to Hatti informed this representation. According to Bronze Age conventions, vassal status was grounded in an international order that reflected the organization of a kin-based household -- with its fathers, sons, brothers, slaves, and masters. The extension of these relations to the international sphere rested upon a legal fiction that aimed to bolster the idea that politics confirmed to a natural hierarchy. Instead of reinforcing this fiction, the Baal Cycle throws it into doubt. As a witness to (and participant in) a world of incessant power struggles and competing assertions of authority, Ugarit produced a poem that encourages its audience to engage with the idea of a universe that lacks the comforts of order. The story of Baal's rise in such a world served as the vehicle for a critical form of political wisdom....

That Ilimilku continues Baal's story beyond the point of enthronement implies an understanding of politics in which struggle is everlasting. There is no telos of peace and joy.  Aaron Tugendhaft Baal and the Politics of Poetry (93, 95-6, 120)+

There are two classical conceptions of myth: first, myth is associated with superstition and something to be overcome by modernity and rationalization. On this view, which takes myth seriously as the necessary stepping stone toward a political or ethical decision that removes us from the state of myth. The only question is if modernity is a permanent achievement or if back-sliding into myth remains a live possibility. As Tugendhaft reminds us in his fascinating book, the post-1933 Cassirer, for example, came to see that his early progressive optimism was a mistake and that back-sliding was always a life possibility in times of crisis: "we are always living on volcanic soul." The other, second, classical conception is that myth just is the stuff of everydayness, an ordinary comportment or way of being in the world.  This Tugendhaft, a classical philologist, associates with Heidegger.*

What the classical conceptions disallow is that myth -- an "ancient poem about the gods" (17) -- itself can be a means toward or expression of rational thinking. That is, because what the poetic form portrays is from the point of view of monotheism or science obviously a fable, then it can't be a source of rational insight. In the Phaedrus (recall), Socrates famously and explicitly has no time for the attempts by fellow intellectuals to "play the sophist" (sophizomenos) (229C)  and naturalize the hidden, kernel in myths, that is, reduce them to what is likely. Now, one can have some sympathy for Socrates's stance if the project is to find the natural event that gave rise to the myth. (For example, a common rationalizing reading of the Baal cycle is to see in it a story of nature's fertility cycle.) But in context (albeit not elsewhere) Socrates refuses to engage with an other alternative, namely that myth is an allegorical representation of reality. That is, while literally a myth cannot be true, that's perfectly compatible with its elements symbolically standing in for intelligible bits of reality.

There is nothing mysterious about an allegorical representation of reality (if you possess the interpretive key that unlocks the allegory). But this conception of myth is disallowed by the classical conception, and so the possibility of a mythic instruction in reality is systematically occluded. One can kind of see that the in the progressive classical view, in which modernity is understood as an overcoming of myth, the idea of myth as a means of rational reflection is almost unthinkable. This need not be the case in the second classical conception, but because it is often a response to the progressive view of myth it tends to inherit this blind-spot.

Tugendhaft's scholarly book -- it is not a popularization, and while written very cleanly can be challenging at times -- is one long argument for the conceptual possibility of myth being a representation of political reality at a certain level of abstraction. And that, in fact, that the Baal Cycle, which was written ca 1220bc in a semitic language (and for a long time primarily studied to provide cultural background to the Hebrew Bible), is in fact, such a representation not as a roman a clef about political local agents, but a more abstract representation about what is taken to be (by the poet) the enduring nature of political reality which is not, simultaneously, a form of propaganda or justification for the existing political order. Rather, the audience of the poem is put in the position to question the forms of justification of authority found in existing political society.

Tugendhaft nicely shows that the poem was written in the periphery of an empire that was crumbling. If I understand him correctly Ugarit was a commercial town which itself was, by Bronze age standards, relatively egalitarian and despite being long lasting, itself never a great empire often a vassal of much larger states (Egypt, Hittites etc.). One member of this society, the poem's likely author, Ilimilku seems to have been an experienced diplomat in late bronze age game of thrones. Perhaps because I am Dutch, but I suspect that it is significant that in virtue of being in the imperial margins in a society where natural hierarchy could not be taken for granted, that Ilimilku could discern the reality behind the dueling imperial orders more starkly and live to tell it.

One striking contextual fact that Tugendhaft points out is that as the Hittite empire was collapsing the ruling kings of that empire started to claim that they themselves were divine in order to shore up their authority and legitimacy (127). It's one thing to believe in the divinity of invisible agents, it's quite another (although since familiar enough) to believe in the divinity of fellow mortals.

Hume points out that not "every Alexander meets with a Lucian, ready to expose and detect his impostures." Even if there is somebody who could expose the imposture, it may often not be prudent to do. If your overlord tells you he is divine you may keep your mouth shut, too. Moreover, even if somebody is secure enough to do so, there is not always an audience that can use the information in an actionable way. Ilimilku must have thought it important to represent the nature of political reality to his king or society.

Tugendhaft's argument will have to be evaluated by his scholarly peers.++ I could close here, but I was surprised that Tugendhaft did not spend more time on the reality represented by his poem. (Tugendhaft's focus is on the way political authority and legitimacy is represented, and here I am not doing justice to his argument.) For, it is significant that Baal's first major opponent is the sea-god Yamm. For, while the sea was a source of commercial riches for Ugarit, it was also a permanent source of political danger. A wealthy town like Ugarit is a permanent target for opportunistic raiders and pirates, especially when its citizen-soldiers/sailors are out of town defending the empire in far-away lands. And, in fact, there is considerable evidence that suggests that within a generation or so Ugarit was attacked, perhaps destroyed, by its traditional enemies from the sea. If that's right then Ilimilku was not merely giving a general analysis of the nature of political reality, but also trying to remind his audience that in the context of collapsing protection of the empire, the city needed (and this is fully compatible with Tugendhaft's analysis) to be on guard against its enemies waiting for an opportunity.** I shall return to the Baal Cycle with the aid of Tugendhaft before long.

PS UPDATE: the initial version of this post did not have  quotes around the 'first political philosopher. Obviously I did not really wish to convey that Ilimilku was the firs political philosopher. For on my reading, political philosophy is a permanent possibility. But Chike Jeffers reminded me that he is published on an earlier (Egyptian) political philosopher in a paper I much admire. So, I changed the title of this post accordingly.

 

 

 

The Nothing Noths

 

A few weeks ago, I noted that the Swiftian "the Nothing noths" (Das Nichts nichtet) was not to be found in Pap's official translation of Carnap’s "Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache." In his comments, Gary Ostertag called attention to Peter Geach's (1957) Mental Acts as the origin of "the Nothing noths." I finally had occassion to inspect Geach. Here's what I found:

So an attempt to report that somebody judges nonsense is itself nonsense. A British pupil of Heidegger might say "Nothing noths" in a tone of conviction; assuming that this is nonsense, "he judged that Nothing nothed" would also be nonsense. (We ought rather to say: "he judged that "Nothing noths" was the expression of a truth".)--Mental Acts, p. 10

So rather than Carnap, we find a fictional British pupil of Heidegger. There is, in fact, no mention to Carnap at all here or in context.  (The only explicit mention of Carnap in the book (on p. 91) that I could locate is actually rather critical.)

It is easy to imagine how the phrase struck and became attributed to Carnap in English. I have found quite a few places where this is done without any reservation in recent scholarship. (I am not linking to any in particular because my point here is not to play gotcha.) But I am unsure who was first to do so.

One final thought. The "Nothing noths" is rhetorical genius. But as I note it is Swiftian in character; it's plainly satirical and that's the role it plays in the history of analytic philosophy. Yet, it is not obvious it does full justice to the existentialist, even nihilist overtones of "Das Nichts nichtet.” That may be nonsense, or not, but is not a laughing matter.

 

 

On Taboos & Polarization in Politics & Philosophy

[T]he logical empiricists can be interpreted as engaged in a project of voluntarist racial eliminativism. They did not take themselves to have an in principle argument against racial categorisation of human beings. Their frequent references to biological racial categorisation make it clear that they thought this was something you could coherently do, and it would be inconsistent with their version of conventionalism to argue that one is cognitively mistaken to use an empirically meaningful categorisation scheme. Hence, while the position I am attributing to them is similar to the position that racial taxonomic terms are simply meaningless, it is not quite that – it is not that they thought there was no empirically meaningful way that one could make sense of human racial taxonomy. Rather, it was that they thought one ought not use these terms....As such they adopted a policy of refusing to endorse any instances of racial categories being used as part of empirical explanations, and discouraging racial explanation by rhetorical means.--Liam Kofi Bright (2017) "Logical empiricists on race" Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Liam Kofi Bright reminded me of his paper in response to my post on the method of composite portraiture (which traces back to Galton). [I leave aside here to what degree Bright's paper fits that method.] In his paper he diagnoses a taboo within logical empiricism against (biological) racial explanations of social affairs. The taboo is maintained by an act of self-legislation in the adoption of certain conceptual frameworks (and methods) and a rhetorical-polemical attitude against those that used alternative conceptual frameworks (that included racial explanations). What makes taboos interesting is that, in order to be effective, they require self-command and group discipline/loyalty, that is, esprit des corps. This is possible when a group is reasonably small, shares an important aim, and has a way of controlling entry. Bright does not address the maintenance of the taboo, but in the sentences I skipped, Bright suggests that it is their (i.e., the logical empiricists') shared "political projects" and moral commitments, which are 'external' or 'optative' to the adopted framework that sustains the taboo (a word he does not use), undoubtedly facilitated by informal communication (when they were in the same place) and small numbers. Because Bright reads the logical empiricists in a Kantianizing fashion (with relativized a priori), we may remind ourselves that they are not the first to legislate a taboo within philosophy: in Kant's Die Metaphysik der Sitten, Kant (recall) limits -- as (ahh) Slavoj Žižek point out -- the possible philosophical role of history (as a form of inquiry) into the origin of a legitimate authority on practical grounds.

In his essay, Bright explicitly recognizes that the taboo (racial explanation) is maintained not because using it is meaningless. That is to say, the logical empiricists have not shown that using racial explanation is false. One need not be Freud to recognize one does not need taboos on the evidently false. But it also does not follow that the logical empiricists thought the taboo was hiding the truth. (If anything, using a taboo to hide the truth is self-defeating because one will generate contradictions, internal tensions, etc.) Rather, it's clear that they thought that regardless of the scientific status of racial explanation, there is always a non-trivial risk these get mingled with immoral/inhumane political aims. That is, the members of the Vienna Circle are (recall) engaged in responsible speech because they recognize what we call the inductive risks of legitimizing racial explanations. The polemic with Heidegger centers, in part, on their recognition that his way of philosophizing has noxious consequences (recall Glymour). Taboos can be efficient in preventing the predictable downstream costs and energy of combating the pernicious effects of the damage done by racial explanation (in the service of racial hierarchy, social exclusion, eugenic programs, etc.).

Bright is clear that the logical empiricists engaged in polemical rhetoric against those that violated their taboo. This is significant for two reasons: first, they attempted to impose their internal compact on others (who had not contracted into their program). That is, there is something imperialist to demand from others that they abide by your self-imposed taboo. Second, we can discern here strategies that became all too familiar in their students and heirs in later generations of analytical philosophy; an excessive willingness to use rhetorical means in combating opposing schools.

Given the political moment -- with racial subordination and elimination a live possibility -- it is easy to forgive the logical empiricists willingness to aim to impose their taboo with rhetorical means on others. They were were part of a struggle in which the racialist explanation loving sides were quite willing to support racial hierarchy, and worse. But most of the subsequent academic struggles their students engaged in are not like this; being wrong about when to discusses semantic composition or modal metaphysics does not lead to racial elimination.*

As an extensive aside, Bright recognizes a problematic exception to his argument: Neurath's translation (in 1910 with his first wife Anna Schapire-Neurath) of Galton's work on eugenics, Hereditary genius.** (Speaking of taboos, Neurath's translation goes unmentioned in the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Neurath!) Now, Bright could have said that in 1910 logical empiricism did not exist yet and that circumstances between 1910 and, say, the 1930s were different (the founding of the Vienna Circle can be dated to 1928 or so). This would also explain Neurath's apparent change of heart later. This is not Bright's strategy (perhaps because he also quotes from the relatively early (1921) Anti-Spengler.) With a nod to Thomas Uebel's contextual analysis and, more important, the writings of W.E. Du Bois, Bright remarks that a defense of racial breeding need not be a defense of white supremacy. And, undoubtedly, there is logical space between the can wish to breed for all kinds of characteristic without wishing for a racialized polity. And, in fact, in 1910 eugenics was part of a progressive, scientific gospel that influenced all kinds of policies and scientific projects not all of them pertaining to race (see Tim Leonard's book).

Even so, it is worth noting that by 1910, Galton's Heriditary Genius, was an old book (first published in 1869); it draws on Darwin's ideas, but by 1910 was certainly not cutting edge in its science. It has, in fact, a chapter, "The Comparative Worth of Different Races" which is as bad as it sounds.*** Galton, who was the leading statistician of his age, concludes "that the average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own [Anglo-Saxon]." (In the hierarchy, the negro is still a grade above the "Australian type.") A satirist may note that Galton is, in fact, willing to acknowledge that there were better races than his own, for he remarks that "the average ability of the [long vanished!] Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, very nearly two grades higher than our own." But Galton takes this to be an argument for racial purity because the Athenians allowed too much interbreeding!+ So, Galton's Heriditary Genius clearly embraces the existence of racial hierarchies (and these are not incidentally connected to British empire). But, interestingly enough (and I suspect this may have had some appeal to young Neurath), unlike many German eugenic tracts, Heriditary Genius is not antisemitic. While the Jews are not formerly classified in the racial hierarchy (due to lack of statistical evidence), most of the references to Jews in it are favorable.

Let me return to Bright's article. He establishes the existence of a philosophical taboo in (what I'll call) a highly polarized political context. Bright does not take a stance on the strategy he describes. But I am inclined to think that sometimes such taboos are necessary and useful and that the logical empiricists are in this, and in so many other ways, worth emulating. The opposing camps were part of a larger Kulturkampf where there was a genuine risk that bullets (and worse) would settle the true about racial hierarchy [to be precise: bullets can't settle the truth]. In the context of such high degree of polarization, the voluntary enforcement of taboos can serve a valuable function. They save and harness intellectual resources, they prevent unnecessary mingling of meaningful ideas with awful political and ethical policies, and they prevent the ambitious young from being tempted down unwise and immoral paths.

Of course, the rhetorical and professional enforcement of a taboo comes with a two-fold cost. First, as we have  seen, the very success of the strategy may encourage imitation of certain, imperialist behaviors (involving less dangerous topics) in less existentially polarized contexts. Second, the existence of a taboo is also a temptation for the unscrupulous and ambitious young who find themselves born in later times. They may well think that there are low-hanging fruits which will advance the cause of knowledge (and their career). Sometimes these unwise are lucky and they live in quiet times and their greedy, rashness has no downside.

 

On the Significance of Derrida to Analytical Philosophy

In many ways I see Derrida as following Heidegger. But he was more pessimistic than Heidegger about the prospects for good metaphysics. And he paid a kind of attention to language that Heidegger never did. One of the main things that he did was to distinguish between what he called “speech” and what he called “writing”. He meant these terms in a more or less technical way. By “speech” he meant, very roughly, the use of signs whose meanings were intrinsic to them, so that they couldn’t be misinterpreted. By “writing” he meant, again roughly, the use of signs whose meanings were extrinsic to them—that is to say, whose meanings depended on the signs’ association with other signs—so that they could be misinterpreted. And he rejected the idea there was any such thing as “speech”, so understood: there was only “writing”. This was significant, because he also argued that much traditional philosophy, including most traditional metaphysics, tacitly presupposed that there was such a thing as “speech”. This was part of the reason why he was more pessimistic than Heidegger about the prospects for good metaphysics: he was sceptical about how far metaphysics could thrive once it had unshackled itself from the traditional forms that it had taken. And this is all relevant to analytic metaphysicians too, because his arguments about the unacceptability of traditional metaphysics carry over to what they’re doing.

So yes, there is something to be said for analytic metaphysicians reading Derrida and confronting the challenge that he poses to their various enterprises. But his style and approach to philosophy are so different from theirs that it would be silly to pretend that they are liable to find his work anything other than alien. Of course I hope that my book may help in that respect, by casting some of his principal ideas in ways that analytic philosophers will find more familiar and more accessible.--Adrian Moore interviewed @3AM Magazine.[HT Leiterreports]

lt is extremely rare for analytical philosophers to say anything positive about Derrida. (In fact, I kind of enjoyed the scandal it caused me to be doing so [recall here, here, and here].)* It is even more unusual to claim that Derrida may well be relevant to analytic metaphysicians in particular. So, I have decided to read Moore's book because of the interview (so more about that not before long).

In the passage quoted above, Moore (Oxford) hints at a substantive reason for analytic philosophers to take an interest: that Derrida undermines (shall we say) the ground beneath the projects analytic metaphysicians pursue. Somewhat strikingly, Moore claims that Derrida has arguments. (This is often denied.) As presented, Derrida is a thoroughgoing semantic holist, who, thereby, makes impossible certain (presumably realist/non-idealist) metaphysical projects. Right now such holism is a non-starter. (One can say, not entirely unfairly, that it was only through the rejection of Quine's holism that contemporary metaphysics got off the ground.) But presumably Moore thinks that Derrida's version of holism is especially insightful and challenging. Moore does not say what Derrida's arguments are that can pull the analytical metaphysian back from her project.

In the passage, Moore allows that Derrida's style is "alien" to the contemporary analytical metaphysician. One may think, in fact, that Moore believes that for those trained in analytical idiom, Derrida is simply unintelligible because Derrida's idiom is incommensurable (in the Kuhnian sense, say) with ours. But a moment's reflection reveals that there is something peculiar about Moore's stance here (analogous to Kuhn's ability to discuss incommensurable scientific paradigms); for Moore clearly believes that he can read and understand Derrida. (Let's stipulate he can.) And Moore is, of course, a trained analytic metaphysician (although by no means a kneejerk realist). So, Moore implies, strongly, that despite alien first impression there is no fundamental incommensurability between an analytical philosopher and Derrida's writing. (His comprehension of Derrida is a proof of real possibility.)

As an aside, if there is no fundamental incommensurability between an analytical philosopher and Derrida's writing, then many analytical philosophers (who often claim that Derrida is bullshit) are just intellectually lazy or dishonest in their encounters with Derrida.

Be that as it may, Moore does not claim that Derrida's arguments would successfully undermine the project of the analytic metaphysian. They are said only to "challenge" them. One may wonder what the benefit of such relevance is. Moore could be thinking that such a challenge could lead to more subtle reflections on the (semantic, conceptual) foundations of the metaphysician's enterprise. It would be amusing (in a cunning of history sense) if grappling with Derrida created more stable foundations for analytical metaphysics.

Such a result would be unintended by Derrida because Derrida's skepticism about metaphysics is not just, as it were, epistemological; it has a Socratic and political or ethical element. Moore hints at the Socratic element in a touching passage:

As analytic philosophy has developed, and as it has become more and more assured, it has also become, in certain respects, less and less self-conscious. The concern with sense has never diminished. But there is less and less concern with what it is for us to make sense. For the most part, contemporary metaphysicians are more interested in just getting on with the business of making it than agonizing about what it takes for us to do so! Dummett, in that respect, can appear alien.

It is notable that the description of Dummett's philosophy is uncannily similar to the description of Derrida. They are both treated as alien. (I once wrote a whole blog post about asking when Wittgenstein had become a continental philosopher; it had not crossed my mind to ask the same about Dummett.) I have to admit that I used to find the word (and concept) 'alien' innocent--I thought of Martians who could fly away at will. But in our day and age, I think of unwelcome refugees when I hear 'alien.'

The main point of this passage is a decline and fall theme: the loss of self-consciousness. (I leave aside the rather harsh comment on the contemporary metaphysician's interest.) In fact, one may see Moore as saying that the point of an encounter with Derrida is that it would lead to a recovery of self-consciousness.

In the interview Moore does not explain the nature or point of such self-consciousness. And one may well wonder if it prevents one from getting on with the business of making it then is it really worth the agonizing, opportunity costs?

In the interview (which is admittedly brief, so this is not a complaint), Moore says nothing about Derrida's let's call it ethical or practical reasons for cautioning (recall) agains metaphysics, especially its and philosophy's more general tendency to deploy authoritative speech and, thereby, slide into authoritarian practices.  That is, in our jargon, Derrida worries about inductive risk (or, as we learn from Spivak via Dotson, epistemic violence). So understood Derrida's playful, even comic style is, in fact, an instance of responsible speech a topic that should not be alien to analytical philosophers at all (recall).**  

 

On the Problem of Death in Socratic Philosophy

I will die – of course I will – and I suppose that represents a challenge of sorts. But the problem I have with death is that other people die. Whatever trouble my own death poses is but dull afterthought to more potent longings against loss. Where one wants help with this, one must look elsewhere, to poets, memoirists, or novelists. If one wants a philosopher, though, best look to China. There one finds philosophers who feel the trouble of graves.--Amy Olberding "Philosophical Undertakings" [HT Dailynous]

I was halted in my digressions by the first two, fiery lines of the quoted passage from Olberding's essay. One may wish to paraphrase its polemical intent (and Olberding is polemical) of these as follows: Socratic Philosophy -- in the broad sense of the philosophical practices that can be traced back to the claim that “the true philosophers practice dying, and death is less terrible to them than to any other men" (Phaedo 67e)* -- , fails to confront other people's death. The problem is not, as Nietzsche charges, that philosophy is life-denying, rather the problem is that philosophy is unwilling to face honestly the possibility of the most valuable loss. And the main problem is not loss of one's own life, but loss of relationships and (one may add) practices that make life worth living due to other people's deaths.

But to speak in terms of loss, I fail to do justice to Olberding's treatment, which calls attention to the "helpless, hopeless, and most important desire that" the dead could come back. Olberding treats this "wish" as "one of the more exquisite human facts, the felt power of our longings to go on a little longer with those we love." I think with 'love' she also means to include our friendships and our partners in crime (this becomes clear from the rest of the essay). Olberding understates the problem; for when beloved others die, our lives get diminished and, after a certain age, start circling in on themselves with each passing death. I suspect that one reason why our senior faculty dislike the idea of retirement -- which releases them from the tedium of administration and grading -- is that they are aware that university campuses are a tremendous place to keep meeting new interlocutors.

So, one way (and this is not the focus of her piece) to understand Olberding's charge against Socratic philosophy is that it misunderstands the significance of our deaths--if we have lived well, our deaths are not so much a loss to ourselves but a loss to our friends (and community,) and loved ones. Saying you'll miss me when I am gone, may well undermine the relationship or remind the audience of a popular tune, but it may well be the most truthful thing one can say about one's own death.

Olberding's essay suggests that the tradition of Socratic philosophy is useless on offering therapeutic guidance for grief. Some of my friends will not care about the charge; they may well think that grief is best left for the self-help section or the bio-chemical industry. Philosophy is not about the art of living, it's about truth, explanation, the generic metaphysical facts, logical form [pick your favorite entry], etc.  I am not so sure about Olberding's suggestion (Montaigne, Adam Smith), but about that another time more.

For, even if philosophy is not in the therapy-wisdom-wellbeing practice(s) anymore, I have come to recognize that Plato's choices, including ones on areas of thought we find of little interest now, have created certain enduring constraints on philosophical reflection in the tradition inspired by him. (No need to nod to Heidegger, just see my posts on rustic wisdom here, here, and here; or for more scholarly treatment, Rachel Barney on Gorgias's Encomium.)

Because Plato takes friendship very seriously (Phaedrus, Symposium, etc.) after all, I went back and re-read the Crito. The key passage is early (in the short) dialogue:

No, no, by Zeus, Socrates, I only wish I myself were not so sleepless and sorrowful. But I have been wondering at you for some time, seeing how sweetly you sleep; and I purposely refrained from waking you, that you might pass the time as pleasantly as possible. I have often thought throughout your life hitherto that you were of a happy disposition, and I think so more than ever in this recent misfortune, since you bear it so easily and calmly.  Crito 43b...

Too clear, apparently. But, my dear Socrates, even now listen to me and save yourself. Since, if you die, it will be no mere single misfortune to me, but I shall lose a friend such as I can never find again, and besides, many persons who do not know you and me well will think I could have saved you if I had been willing to spend money, but that I would not take the trouble. And yet what reputation could be more disgraceful than that of considering one's money of more importance than one's friends? For most people will not believe that we were eager to help you to go away from here, but you refused.

Socrates: But, my dear Crito, why do we care so much for what most people think? Crito, 44b-c

Plato clearly recognizes Crito's perspective that the death of Socrates would be a great loss to Crito: he shall be bereaved [ἐστερῆσθαι]. What I had never noticed before is that Socrates never engages with this would be loss. Rather, the conversation turns very rapidly to Crito's other problem: that the many will think that he did not use his wealth to find Socrates an escape from jail/execution. (In re-reading, I also noticed that the dialogue starts with a clear allusion to Crito's ability to bribe Socrates's guards.) This is not to deny either that the impact of Socrates's death on some of his social roles (as a parent, citizen, teacher, etc.) nor that the would-be-effects of Socrates's death on Socrates are treated throughout the dialogue. But Socrates fails to address Crito's loss.

I think Plato intends us to notice Socrates's failure to engage with Crito's loss. (In part, by showing us a Crito that fails to pay attention to all kinds of details.) To recognize limitations in Socrates the man or Socrates's philosophy is not to be avoided (that is, Plato is not writing about a Stoic sage).

Perhaps, it's too much to ask the dying, not to mention the exemplary would-be-dead (Socrates, Cato, etc.), to be busy teaching their interlocutors that when they are gone there will be huge desiring holes in the hearts of their companions. Olberding suggests that "if we are not to be false to this more important fact [that we long to continue or revive the conversation], we need somewhere to go with it, to give it its due, and the rooftop seems as good a place as any." This inspired a closing reflection:

By his own lights, Plato is undoubtedly superior to Crito in lots of ways (assuming that Crito was not a philosopher), but it is not too far-fetched to see that in articulating Crito's wish to continue the conversation, he is also articulating his own--all-too-human-longing-to-go-on-a-little-longer-with-all-to-human-Socrates.  And, one may well say, with considerable justice, that nearly all of Plato's surviving writings testify to his desire to give this longing its proper due.

On Publishing in Times of Turmoil (or worse)

This morning I was reading a draft chapter by one of my talented PhD students, Laura Georgescu. Her (fascinating!) work is on the edge of my own expertise and so the bibliographic notes are (to me!) not standard, that is, they also involve citations to works that I sometimes would not have encountered before. As it happens one of these involved a reference to a paper published in 1943. This caught my attention because one rarely encounters citations to works published in the midst of war when would be researchers are drafted, rationing is in place, and censorship slows things down; not to mention that some of the stuff that gets published is no better than propaganda (or extremely discrete criticism).

Trained up as we are on the opposing trajectories of Heidegger (Nazi) (recall, but also here, and here) and, say, Russell (pacifist sent to jail), we tend to think of war and dictatorship as offering us stark choices. But, I am enough of a historian to know, that in practice many academics find a way to make their peace and muddle on the best they can. While there is little honor, and even some cowardice (sold as prudence or realism) in such a stance, I can't simply reject it because, as I noted yesterday in a different context, one of the great purposes of politics is to make the life of philosophy, the arts, sciences and all the other joyful activities that ennoble our existence possible.

Because the chapter was still in draft (and did not include the dissertation's full bibliography), "Chapman 1943" was all I got in notes 21 & 28. Some googling led me  to Sydney Chapman's "Edmund Halley and Geomagnetism," published in Nature. According to the fine-print it was delivered at Oxford University on 28 may 1943 as the "annual lecture, commemorating Edmond Halley, a great son of Oxford, is devoted to astronomy and terrestrial magnetism." I was pleased to note that Halley (who was a graduate from Oxford) was being honored at Oxford, despite the fact that  he failed to get an appointment there because of his (rather non-Christian Epicurean) religious views. Halley's heretical views are in evidence in the poem he attached to the front of Newton's Principia (see Albury's very fine paper, or my own work on the topic). I was even more pleased to see Chapman start his lecture with his own translation of Halley's poem.*

The lecture itself, which has not received the attention it deserves, is methodologically highly interesting because it is based on original research and mixes contextual, counterfactual, and retrospective analysis (especially, but not only, of Halley's magnetic theories). Some other time I hope  to return to it (but first Laura needs to defend and get her own work on these matters in print.). I was a bit baffled that Chapman had such a subtle interest in the history of magnetism. (I was only familiar with his work on stochastic processes.) But a quick on-line search revealed that by 1940 he was one of the world's leading scholars of geomagnetism and one of the leading scientists of his age.

Much to  my surprise, Chapman allows the war to intrude in his 1943 lecture in his closing lines, which I quote:

For two centuries Halley had no comparable successor in this field, and the magnetic survey of the globe was not renewed with his astounding zeal until in 1905 the young American, Louis Bauer, with the backing of a prince of industry, the one-time poor Scots lad Andrew Carnegie,** resumed the Sisyphean task.

A non-magnetic ship was built for the ocean magnetic survey: unfortunately this was lost by fire in 1929. Later the British Admiralty built another non-magnetic ship,  the Research, which should by now have completed its first voyage had war not intervened. We may hope that when peace returns the great work with which Halley so well began will be taken up again with his own vigour.

These words give evidence of (what we may call) a spirit of scientific progress, (a modestly expressed) faith in victory of the Allies ("when peace returns"),  as well as a subtle reminder of the opportunity costs of war (science is halted, etc.).

I could have stopped here. But I had a nagging feeling that I had seen Chapman's name before in a different context (see here). In WWI, Chapman was, like Russell, a pacifist (although unlike Russell, he was so on religious grounds). He had, in fact, been one of the signatures on the (rather mild) letter of protest sent to Trinity, Cambridge, to protest Russell's dismissal. After the war, Chapman was made to feel unwelcome at Cambridge for his stance and left. Eventually he succeeded Whitehead as the chair in mathematics at Imperial. Interestingly enough, by the time of WWII came around, Chapman gave up on his pacifism in order to combat fascism.***

 

 

Zadie Smith, Auden, and the Nothing Nothings

Remainder recognizes, with Szymborska’s poem, that we know, in the end, “less than little/And finally as little as nothing,” and so tries always to acknowledge the void that is not ours, the messy remainder we can’t understand or control—the ultimate marker of which is Death itself. We need not ever read a word of Heidegger to step in these murky waters. They flow through the “mainstream” of our canon. Through the negations of Beckett. The paradoxical concrete abstractions of Kafka. The scatological thingy-ness of Joyce at his most antic. The most famous line of Auden (“Poetry makes nothing happen”).--Zadie Smith "Two Directions for the Novel," as reprinted Changing My Mind (91).

One surprising aspect of the paragraph just quoted is that it involves a two-fold dispensability-thesis: first, you don't need philosophy to  read views that are "often mistaken for linguistic or philosophical nihilism," but that, simultaneously, "attend to the damaged and the partial, the absent and the unspeakable." (91). As Smith suggests such views are part of the literary canon. The second bit of this dispensability thesis is that the literary canon has priority not just because Kafka precedes Heidegger historically, but because (as becomes clear near the end of the piece) these views are already articulated and presented in "the ancient plays," that is, Greek tragedy --"The Oresteia, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone" --. Again the point is not just historical priority of Aeschylus and Sophocles preceding Plato, but because on Smith's account these poets get the better of "the dream that Plato started," (76) and that expresses itself in (Smith's terms) lyrical realist novels [e.g. Netherland] that hang on "to the rituals and garments of transcendence," while "knowing they are empty" (81).

That is, the dispensability-thesis is a salvo in the ancient battle between poets and philosophers; on Smith's creative reading of this battle is that she locates it within the literary canon: she takes the realist novel (broadly construed) as emanating from Plato's dream (with Austen, George Eliot, F. Scot Fitzgerald and even Saul Bellow), and she sees a "skewed road" (with Perec, Clarice Lispector, Borroughs, etc) that within the literary canon aspires "to the concrete quality of poetry."* That is, parts of the literary canon, one may even say the inauthentic part, is itself infected by philosophy.

What unites the 'poets' (which, to repeat, includes those on the skewed road) in the literary canon is there "acknowledgment of limitations" (91). It follows from this, and this is something Smith does not claim, that one charge on behalf of the poets (in the literary canon) against the philosophers (in the literary canon) is that the latter do not recognize scarcity, which is intrinsic to the craft as practiced by the former; or, 'the philosophers' work with infinite agents and 'the poets' work with finite agents.

I was reminded -- not just because the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy also (!) takes place within professional philosophy -- of Carnap's (famous (1932) analysis of Heidegger's the nothing nothings as a pseudo-statement (see pp. 69-73), when he introduces his discussion with a footnote in which he claims that "We could just as well have selected passages from any other of the numerous metaphysicians of the present or the past." That is, there is nothing at all special about Heidegger's words -- you don't need to read him -- because at any given time one can encounter some such metaphysician. Heideger's work is, in this sense, exchangeable for any other such work without (much) loss. Carnap is being here not just maliciously funny by suggesting Heidegger is dispensable, but he also reactivates and ties Heidegger's words to a famous metaphysical claim -- to be found in Seneca and Spinoza -- that the true philosopher lacks individuality and that when she intuits the truth she participates in the truth and becomes, thereby, infinite. (I return to this below.) Carnap also goes on to suggest that the whole class of Heideggers can be best understood as musicians that lack musical ability--they are infected by the desire to be theoretical and never learn how to make proper music, and that the true philosophical poet is Nietzsche (80; recall this post on Stone's celebrated piece).

Amusing enough, Carnap recognizes, but has little time for, an objection (that one may well trace back to at least Al-Ghazali and can also be found in Ibn Tufayl) in which one may try to save the metaphysical enterprise by stipulating that infinite beings/intelligence could understand the bits of metaphysics that Carnap finds unintelligible and so convey it to finite beings (like us) in ways that overcome our limitations (72). (The discussion has an afterlife in Frank Jackson's famous thought experiment about Mary.) To put it simply: Carnap does not allow any kind of trade or communication between finite and infinite agents.

My comment on Carnap is not just a cute, over-learned aside (it may be that, too). Smith invites reflection on the Heidegger-Carnap debate not just by mentioning Heidegger, but because she quotes  "the most famous line of Auden:" poetry makes nothing happen, which occurs in the second stanza of (the 1940) In Memory of W. B. Yeats. From the present perspective, one aspect of the beauty of Auden's line is that it expresses (in context) (i) the (potential) futility of poetry, while simultaneously, expressing (ii) the capacity of poetry to make that which is (taken to be) not, be. [To be sure, (ii) is not meaningful the way in which the vacuum of quantum field theory is (recall my notice on the review of Krauss by David Albert.)]** There is, in addition, no doubt that (i) is a meaningful statement and that (ii) can be made to be meaningful (although it may require some fancy logical technique or Beckett's negations).

I should stop here. But I add an extended coda:

I am incompetent at score-keeping the fame of particular lines of poetry, but the significance of Auden's point here is, in part, political. This can be seen by two points: first, Auden's poem acknowledges human limitation as Smith suggests. The poem begins with a particular (Yeats) human's finitude (or death) and ends with recognition of the inevitability of failure:

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

Even so, in these lines Auden suggests that the recognition of finitude can be transformed alchemically, but with toil of labor, in something more. The "words of a dead man" are modified in "the guts of the living," and are capable of "surviving us all." I don't want to suggest that the main point of Auden's poem is to claim that posterior fame (among the discerning elite) for the poet's productions is possible (they escape the finitude of life), but it is one of the points that, indeed, "death can be kept away from the poems." For, such immortality must be earned in the field of poetic politics by instructing "free men." There is a fine line between propaganda and moral education.

Second, what this means is spelled out in a quasi-companion piece (from 1948), Auden calls attention that the great issue of Yeats's life is, how could he take "nonsense seriously." In context, Auden means the kind of new age spirituality being generated in "Southern California" (188-9). Auden admits that his way of expressing his judgment involves a certain kind of British class-based snobbishness. Smith's essay "Two Directions for the Novel," and also her novel On Beauty, repeatedly return to the enduring hold of this class  and its snobbishness on the American literary imagination (despite the existence of Pynchon, Wallace Foster, etc.). What interests me here is that Auden's answer to this question is grounded in the thought that historical-political circumstances determine which nonsense is taken seriously, and, more important, that this is always done in a larger social-political polemical context. For some nonsense may be useful to the poet to "make" one's "private experiences public" and one's "vision of public events personal."(191) Auden is explicit that not any nonsense will do--not all falsehoods are created equal.

According to Auden what makes some nonsense useful is their overlap with commonly believed dogma. (191) This dogma may be religious, but need not be so. As my former colleague, José A Benardete, noted (recall), a poet may invoke pseudo-sentences in the antecedent of a contrary-to-fact conditional and thereby reveal, in the consequent, what no mirror of life could reveal.

 

 

On Judith Butler and Anti-Political-Zionism (I)

It is surely not anti-Jewish or counter-Jewish to offer a critique of the forms of state violence instituted and maintained by political Zionism (which would include the massive dispossessions of Palestinians in 1948, the appropriation of land in 1967, and the recurrent confiscations of Palestinian lands that continues now with the building of the wall and the expansion of the settlements). This alone is important, since Israel claims to represent the Jewish people, and popular opinion tends to assume that Jews "support" Israel without taking account Jewish traditions of anti-Zionism and the presence of Jews in coalitions that oppose the Israeli colonial subjugation of Palestinians....If the critique of Zionism is to be effective and substantial, that claim of [Jewish] exceptionalism has to be refused in favor of more fundamental democratic values. However important it may be to establish Jewish opposition to Zionism, this cannot be done without a critical move that questions the sufficiency of a Jewish framework, however alternative and progressive, as the defining horizon of the ethical. The opposition to Zionism and requires the departure from Jewishness as an exclusionary framework for thinking both ethics and politics.-- Judith Butler (2012) Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, (2).

Let me start with a point of agreement: it is indeed vital to avoid a conflation of what Judith Butler calls 'political' Zionism with Jewishness (not to mention Judaism). There are historically and at present secular Jewish and religious Jewish arguments against such political Zionism, and these should not be effaced from one's understanding or perception of Jewishness. It should be noted at once, however, that the orthodox Jewish, anti-political Zionist movements and arguments are entirely absent in Butler's treatment (recall), and this absence reflects a wider absence of the role of (traditional) Judaism. It's hard to understand Judaism, and its liturgy, without some reference to the idea of Zion. By contrast, Butler's analysis focuses almost entirely on some twentieth century "Jewish" philosophers (Benjamin, Arendt, Levinas), who, in so far as they take Jewish sources seriously, do so within a Kantianizing ethical (and secularizing) framework [the story is more complicated, especially for Benjamin, of course].

While "popular opinion" is wrong to treat 'being Jewish' as entailing 'support' of political Zionism (if it does so), it does not follow, of course, that the State of Israel, or its elected government, does not "represent" the Jewish people. It all turns on what we mean by 'represent.' For, while there are lots of Jews that are un-involved in Israeli elections nor enfranchised to vote in them (and so are not represented in the way electees represent an electorate) and take themselves to be disinterested from afar in Israeli policies, the State does take itself to guard, or represent, the interests of (to quote the Israeli Declaration of Independence) "Jewish people" without Israeli passports. And this interest is, in part, expressed in the so-called Law of return: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh." But such non-Israeli Jews are under no obligation toward the State of Israel nor do they have any responsibility -- say by way of tacit agreement -- for its policies.+

In her book, with its commitments to (recall above) "fundamental democratic values," (2) Butler constitutes, and speaks on behalf of, a "Jewish Left"(20) or "we on the Left" (93), which can (explicitly) include non-Jews, too. But throughout the book she fails to note that political Zionism is itself a nineteenth century response to a failure of democracy (recall this post on Herzl). Democracies are not always able to secure the safety and flourishing of minority populations--xenophobia, racism, antisemtism, and closed borders (which both keep people out and trap those inside) are always live possibilities within democracy. This is, in fact, what makes the rise of Zionism of enduring theoretical relevance. Political Zionism diagnoses an enduring possibility of democracies' tendency to fail to live up to Liberal ideals. While Butler writes about those that wrote against political Zionism during the Weimar Republic, Butler misses the significance of this fact because she construes Zionism nearly exclusively as a response to the Holocaust (see, especially 182-205; although she acknowledges that for Arendt the rise of fascism is rooted in the refugee crisis at the end of WWI (144)). The Israeli declaration of Independence is more precise on this score: "The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency," (emphasis added).

Obviously, Butler has every right to consider xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and closed borders as inimical to fundamental democratic values (after all, this animates her criticism of Israeli practices) and itself a consequence of the nation-state (which she opposes). One can grant Butler's point at the level of pure theory, but it is not true of, so to speak, the phenomenology of democracies. That is to say, Butler's assumptions presuppose conditions under which political Zionism would not be needed.  Acknowledging the truth of the previous sentence is compatible with Butler's ethical criticisms of the practices that she describes as "colonial subjugation of Palestinians." (For useful critical comments on this kind language, see Benhabib's review.)*

So, what Butler takes to be the inherent flaws of political Zionism is itself a feature of the state system that gives rise to the need for Zionism. In her analysis of Arendt's critique of the nation-state (24-36), Butler (implicitly) recognizes this, too. Butler's own stance embraces a rejection of the nation-state and state-violence. On the former: non-nation states (i.e., multi-ethnic Empires) have also caused trouble for minorities, too; this is why the epistemic neglect of nineteenth century roots of Zionism is so damaging [Herzl was born in the Austro-Hungarian empire]. On the latter: one can reject state-violence, in principle, but still find unilateral disarmament or power sharing a worse option. And Butler is unwilling to fully confront the prudence, if not fear, that may underwrite such stance. Her position presupposes a fundamental revolution in the very nature of the international state system, but somehow one should start with abolishing political Zionism. (Again, that's not intended to give political Zionism a moral-pass on its crimes.) For, Butler confronts the prudential position only (tangentially) by way of (legitimate and important!) criticism Levinas' racist, ethnocentrism, which she treats as an "Ashkenazi presumption"--it is ironic, indeed, that the elitism and racism of Heidegger's Jewish 'students' is meant to stand in for Ashkenazis in general!

I return to Butler's inability to confront genuinely the roots of the Zionist project (including her analysis of Zionist demographic fears) in future post(s). Here I close with an observation. Within the history of Jewish intellectual thought, Butler recognizes the ways in which Hermann Cohen and Hannah Arendt both respresent a kind of "faith in Europe" in which the "Jewish people" are a European nation that combines "German humanism and Jewish messianism" without territory, that is, a (Kantianized) "cultural Zionism (140-1). She acknowledges that Cohen's faith (that is, his German nationalism) is "painful to read;" and while she is critical of Arendt's occasional ethnocentrism, she tends to embrace Arendt's general program of the "dissolution of sovereignty." (146) As a general program for the state system this is a consistent position; but if, in practice, it seems to mean that the Jews should not be sovereign and (only) political Zionism is illegitimate. For, if (nearly) all existing states are illegitimate according to Butler's ethics, as seems to follow from her position, it is again to confuse a symptom (political Zionism)  for its cause (state violence).

I started by noting that Butler often implies she speaks for "the Left." This label does little justice to the ethics of 'alterity' and 'relationality' she develops. In particular, she insists that prior to politics (as represented by her by the liberal social contract [oddly she cannot forfeit Kantianism herself]) we are all in a sense akin to the diasporic Jew, who confronts "irreversible heterogeneity." (State formation is thereby equated with forceful homogenization.) But we get little information on how to think about states without the violent and powerful trappings of sovereignty. Butler is right to think alternatives to the existing political cul-de-sac in Israeli-Palestinian relations. That these alternatives may seem utopian now, is no argument against her. (After all, political Zionism must have seemed utopian to earlier generations.) But 'Jewish' reflection on politics (as can be found in the Hebrew Bible, Maimonides, Spinoza, etc. (recall)) is largely absent in her analysis; she denies herself resources to think about political power (as distinct from the ethical) from within her Galut ethic, and that's an odd place to be for somebody of the Left, especially when we write from within American empire (and its "public opinion"). If reflection on political Zionism wishes to be of philosophical significance, it must do so not just as a critique of state violence, but also as a means toward a proper understanding of the role of power today.

On Fame in Philosophy

That which Epicurus could promise his friend, this I promise you, Lucilius. I shall find favour among later generations; I can take with me names that will endure as long as mine [habebo apud posteros gratiam, possum mecum duratura nomina educere.] --Seneca, Letter XXI

Seneca reveals that he writes for two (possibly three) audiences: his official addressee and 'student,' Lucilius, and posteriority. (The third audience is composed of his contemporaries who may read the letters addressed to Lucilius.) It follows from this remark that Seneca understands his letters not only as particular advice to a particular person, but also -- for lack of a better word -- as exemplary. This is one reason why in my series on Seneca's Letters, I have been paying attention to the different personalities and character types encountered along the way. Seneca teaches how to teach and reach different souls at once. Let me give an example of this last point.

Regular readers may recall that this is not the first Letter in which Seneca reveals that he is "doing business with later generations" [posterorum negotium ago] [that's from Letter 8, recall]. So this is at least the second explicit reminder of one of the points of the second Letter: he is writing in order to generate an enduring text. By repeating the point he allows that careless readers catch it. That I do so, too, is a reminder that my daily digressions are meant to entertain and instruct multiple audiences.

To more careful readers Seneca also reveals something about his self-understanding: not all fame is enduring, but all fame is a kind of magnet (I almost wrote 'reference magnet' but decided that has become a technical term) that brings other people and material into its orbit. From that vantage point, for example, the enduring Rawls is fairly generous (he names lots of folk in Theory of Justice [such that the omissions almost become more revealing [recall]]).

But enduring fame in philosophy is not just about name recognition, Seneca claims. The philosopher must also live honorably [honeste esse vivendum]. This is no easy matter, as enduring reflection on Seneca's life has revealed. In fact, in the previous letter, Seneca had distinguished between being a true teacher and being a true philosopher, and identified himself (or so I argued) with the former not the latter. He is only a partial exemplar of the philosophical life. As Thoreau puts it to be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Professional philosophers that teach in universities often express the thought that what we do should not be confused with the art of living; we are better at subtle distinctions (which even Thoreau grants is part of philosophy). It is, after all, true that the standards for tenure and for research excellence are only loosely connected with the kind of lived integrity we find in the lives of, say, Wollstonecraft or Spinoza. (To say this is not to ignore their blemishes.)

But it does not follow that the love of wisdom is irrelevant in the stories we hand down about our analytical teachers; I have been, in fact, amazed how often the stories that I was told about older generations did not emphasize intellectual doctrines but rather focused on questions of character: at Chicago I heard multiple stories about Carnap's social conscience; Dummett's generosity toward refugees (which he also defended intellectually) may well endure long after his theory of truth; Russell's courageous pacifism may well be remembered long after analytical philosophy is forgotten; Stebbing's heroic public integrity and private generosity toward refugees will be rediscovered by generations looking for a philosophical exemplar of virtue (cf. Heidegger). These stories suggest that even analytical philosophers -- who always self-identified in opposition to purportedly irresponsible philosophical projects -- believe there is more to the philosophical life than puzzle-solving and clarifying concepts.

So, even those of us that teach in universities can point the way toward the road of true philosophy, as teachers, without either publishing in it or being ourselves true philosophers. How to do this without sounding peevish or moralistic is no easy matter. We teach not just by our writings, our class personae, but also in our moments of exemplary behavior. If our students inside and outside the classroom find their ways onto such a path, then this may generate the conditions for a worthy, enduring fame. 

Seneca, of course, is not allowed to promise something the delivery of which he cannot ensure even if we recognize that by so promising it, he makes it more likely that the desired outcome occurs.  History favors such bravura.

Ahh...am I Straussian?; on the Political Theory and Political Philosophy divide

Maybe it's because Digressions lacks a category for 'political theory' and I am halfway through my first semester as an analytically trained philosopher employed as a political theorist in a political science department, but the other day I read (perhaps re-read) Jacob Levy's entertaining and illuminating essay on the distinction between political theory and political philosophy. Levy's essay is just about to become dated because (i) within analytical political philosophy the strangle-hold of Rawlsianism is being broken by what I have called analytical ideology studies (and here, too) associated with recent work by Haslanger, Saul, Stanley, Maitra, etc.;(ii) within political theory there has been an upsurge of what one may call applied continental philosophy drawing on Foucault and Deleuze and the enduringly relevant Arendt, especially, in work on bio-power, neo-liberalism, terrorism studies, migration studies, post-humanist ecological thinking, etc.

While Levy does a very fine job in calling attention to genuine, different methodological and practical commitments between the two 'fields,' ultimately his essay very much reads as describing two families capturing their own territory in closely related institutions. This may not be the main point of Levy's essay, but this conclusion follows from the way the piece is structured ("What is it that differentiates John Rawls, Christine Korsgaard, Thomas Scanlon, Brian Barry, Thomas Nagel, G.A. Cohen, and Joseph Raz, and their students and admirers, from Michael Walzer, Judith Shklar, George Kateb, Sheldon Wolin, and their students and admirers?") Even the group (or school) that is the exception to the fairly robust generalizations is identified in terms of genealogical attributes (e.g., "Students of Leo Strauss...Those influenced by Strauss").*

 

Even so I was personally startled by Levy's piece. Let me explain. While I have Rawlsian teachers (Norm Daniels, Dan Brudney) and studied with those that engaged closely with Rawls (Larmore, Nussbaum), I didn't come from political philosophy to political theory. I came from history and philosophy of science (HPS) with an emphasis on early modern and philosophy of economics. But in reflecting on Levy's essay, I noticed that by his standards I am a Straussian!** Consider the following eight criteria (these are almost all direct quotes):

1. An emphasis on Francis Bacon and Maimonides that is pretty alien to the rest of political theory. 
2. Straussians place great weight on a practice they identify as "philosophy," but mostly they study others who have engaged in that practice rather than engaging in it themselves.
3. Straussians are strongly pro-philosophy (as they understand it) .
4. Straussians are serious critics of social science.
5. Yet almost without exception Straussians are located in political science rather than philosophy departments.
6. Despite 3, contemporary philosophers do not identify Strausians as philosophy.
7. Straussians tend to reach whole books with attention to close readings and eye for details.
8. Straussians ignore Benjamin Constant.

Of these eight, I fit five or six criteria naturally. (Of course, I am pro-philosophy!)  I have not published much on Bacon, but I teach him nearly every year. (And while I don't teach Maimonides, I am teaching Al-Farabi twice this academic year.) Moreover, while I am not a student of Strauss, at Chicago I took classes with some Straussians, and I have repeatedly written warmly of Cropsey and, my former colleague, Jose Benardete (who was clearly influenced by Strauss, but who does not fit Levy's characterization because Benardete is also a philosopher's philosopher who spent a life-time in a very analytic philosophy department).

What do I make of this? Four observations: first, Straussian themes clearly rubbed off on me at Chicago. I don't think this was primarily work of the faculty there; but rather the cumulative impact of my fellow graduate students (whom I encountered not just in classes but in the famous Chicago workshops [where I also first met Levy!] as well as on the basketball court). It's very hard to take the endless vilification of a whole school of thought seriously when on a daily basis you encounter smart, erudite, and interesting characters doing fascinating research. (Since I have also encountered the kind of Straussian that is easily to caricature.) Second, in the 1990s at Chicago, where Lewis-style metaphysics was not taken seriously, it was by no means obvious that analytical philosophy would endure as a living tradition. It seemed exhausted and focused on narrow (and by no means promising) lines of inquiry. (The most interesting work was in the philosophy of the special sciences.) Third, the eight characteristics are not exclusive to Straussianism. (After all, Putnam is as critical of the fact-value distinction as is Strauss. At Chicago, even philosophy of space-time physics was taugh, in part, by way of close readings of classical texts. [I learned close reading from Ian Mueller and Howard Stein, both far removed from Strauss in lots of ways.]) Finally, I'd like to think that the eight criteria neither exhaust nor track the essential characteristics of my philosophical personality (there is a neo-Heideggerian strain in Straussianism that I am decidedly lukewarm about), but I recognize I am not the right judge.

Luckily, I am about to revisit my interest in Benjamin Constant (recall).