Digressions&Impressions

The Epistemology of Discursive Authority (ah yes, foucault, Quine, and postmodernism)

What, in short, we wish to do is to dispense with 'things'. To 'depresentify' them. To conjure up their rich, heavy, immediate plenitude, which we usually regard as the primitive law of a discourse that has become divorced from it through error, oblivion, illusion, ignorance, or the inertia of beliefs and traditions, or even the perhaps unconscious desire not to see and not to speak. To substitute for the enigmatic treasure of 'things' anterior to discourse, the regular formation of objects that emerge only in discourse. To define these objects without reference to the ground, the foundation of things, but by relating them to the body of rules that enable them to form as objects of a discourse and thus constitute the conditions of their historical appearance. To write a history of discursive objects that does not plunge them into the common depth of a primal soil, but deploys the nexus of regularities that govern their dispersion.--Michel Foucault (1969) "The Formation of Objects" chapter 3 in The Archaeology of Knowledge, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith [1972], pp. 52-3 in the 2002 edition.

More than thirty years ago there was a buzz around Foucault and 'social constructivism' on campus. I don’t think I was especially aware of what this was about, but along the way I took a course in the ‘experimental college’ (a relic from the campus turmoil of an earlier generation) where I was introduced to the idea by way of the classic, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, then twenty five years old. (It was published in 1966.)

I never got around to reading Foucault as an undergraduate, but I was in graduate school studying with Martha Nussbaum when her (1999) polemic against Butler appeared. (I assume the essay was triggered by the second edition of Gender Trouble, but I am not confident about it.) This essay has a passage that nicely sumps up the general attitude toward Foucault that I was exposed to:

“These developments owe much to the recent prominence of French postmodernist thought. Many young feminists, whatever their concrete affiliations with this or that French thinker, have been influenced by the extremely French idea that the intellectual does politics by speaking seditiously, and that this is a significant type of political action. Many have also derived from the writings of Michel Foucault (rightly or wrongly) the fatalistic idea that we are prisoners of an all-enveloping structure of power, and that real-life reform movements usually end up serving power in new and insidious ways.”--Nussbaum "The Professor of Parody"

I was not nudged into reading Butler’s Gender Trouble during my graduate research (eventually when I became an instructor my own broad eduction started). However, I was confronted with the recent prominence of French postmodernist thought in works that now would be classified as foundational to STS, but that I was reading in virtue of my interest in the history of science such as Pickering’s The Mangle of Practice, which could generate heated debate among the PhD students. What made those debates frustrating was that we lacked distinctions so we often would talk passed each other.

A good part of those debates died down and were, subsequently domesticated after the publication of Hacking’s (1999) The Social Construction of What?, which we read immediately after it appeared. Hacking didn’t settle any debates for us, but allowed us to do more sober philosophy with it and while I do not want to credit him solely without mention of Haslanger, his book certainly contributed to the normalization and disciplining of the debate. Hacking and Haslanger also visited shortly thereafter, and so could ask for clarifications. Interestingly enough, in that book Hacking treats Foucault as a constructivist in ethical theory akin to Rawls, although he notes that others (Haslanger) treat Foucault as an ancestor to the idea that reality is constructed 'all the way down.'

As regular readers know my own current interest in Foucault is orthogonal to questions of construction. But I was struck by the fact that in his Foucault: His Thought, His Character, Paul Veyne treats Foucault fundamentally (not wholly without reason) as a Humean nominalist (and a certain kind of Nietzschean skeptic). And, in fact, the nominalism is itself exhibited by a certain kind of positivism about facts. (Deleuze might add quickly: a positivism about statements.) Veyne is not a reliable guide to matters philosophical, but I wondered if Foucault’s purported social constructivism was all based on a game of telephone gone awry in translation and academic celebrity culture.*

Now, if we look at the passage quoted at the top of the post, we can certainly why Foucault was treated as a social constructivist. The first few sentences  in the quoted paragraph do look like a form of linguistic idealism. And this sense remains even if one has a dim awareness that the passage seems primarily directed against a kind phenomenology [“presentify” is clearly an allusion to Husserls [Vergegenwartigung]], even (perhaps) trolling Heidegger (“primal soil”).

However, the point of the passage is not ontology. It’s method. (No surprise because that is sort of the general aim of the Archeology of Knowledge.) And this, is in fact instructive of Foucault’s larger project. In the passage, Foucault is, in fact, explaining that he will try to leave aside questions of ontology in his own project. This is not to deny he is interested in what we might call epistemology. But the epistemology he is exploring is what one might call discursive authority. And the effect of such authority is “the regular formation of objects that emerge only in discourse.” (emphasis added).

In fact, Foucault here is not far removed from Quine (but in a way to be made precise). In one of the most Whitehead-ian passages of Two Dogmas, Quine writes: “The physical conceptual scheme simplifies our account of experience because of the way myriad scattered sense events come to be associated with single so-called objects; still there is no likelihood that each sentence about physical objects can actually be translated, however deviously and complexly, into the phenomenalistic language. Physical objects are postulated entities which round out, and simplify our account of the flux of experience.”

Now, don’t be distracted by Quine’s ‘sense events’ or empiricism. For, what Foucault is interested in is the manner by which (to quote Quine again) ‘myriad scattered sense events come to be associated with single so-called objects.’ In particular, (and now I am back to Foucault) “the body of rules that enable them to form as objects of a discourse.” This body of rules is characteristic of an authoritative discipline. And in particular, Foucault is interested in what the social effects are of simplifications produced by postulated entities in the human sciences on these sciences and larger society. I don’t mean to suggest this is Foucault’s only game. He is also interested in the social structures that stabilize the possibility of semantics across disciplines in a particular age.

To be sure, in Quine the epistemology of discursive authority is only treated cursory (in the context of regimentation). Whereas Foucault is focused on how the sciences acquire and constitute (even replicate) such authority. But that is compatible with all kinds of ontologies in Quine’s sense or, to be heretical for a second, a metaphysically robust realism; notice Foucault’s own hint of a ‘rich, heavy, immediate plenitude.' One will not get more than hints from Foucault on what his answers might be to the kind of epistemological or metaphysical questions we are trained to ask. That, of course, is a feature not a bug of his project.

De Beauvoir and The Origins of Patriarchy

Thus, the triumph of patriarchy was neither an accident nor the result of a violent revolution. From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. “Men make gods and women worship them,” said Frazer; it is men who decide if their supreme divinities will be females or males; the place of woman in society is always the one they assign her; at no time has she imposed her own law.

Perhaps, however, if productive work had remained at the level of her strength, woman would have achieved the conquest of nature with man; the human species armed itself against the gods through male and female individuals; but she could not obtain the benefits of tools for herself. Engels only incompletely explained her decline: it is insufficient to say that the invention of bronze and iron profoundly modified the balance of productive forces and brought about women’s inferiority; this inferiority is not in itself sufficient to account for the oppression she has suffered. What was harmful for her was that, not becoming a labor partner for the worker, she was excluded from the human Mitsein: that woman is weak and has a lower productive capacity does not explain this exclusion; rather, it is because she did not participate in his way of working and thinking and because she remained enslaved to the mysteries of life that the male did not recognize in her an equal; by not accepting her, once she kept in his eyes the dimension of other, man could only become her oppressor. The male will for expansion and domination transformed feminine incapacity into a curse. Man wanted to exhaust the new possibilities opened up by new technology: he called upon a servile workforce, and he reduced his fellow man to slavery. Slave labor being far more efficient than work that woman could supply, she lost the economic role she played within the tribe.---Simone de Beauvoir (1949) The Second Sex translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (2009), pp. 88-89.

A few years ago, while reflecting on work by Liam Kofi Bright and Lionel McPherson (recall), it dawned on me that the very steep prestige, economic, and racial hierarchies (recall) within the academy (and sciences) mirrors those of our oligarchic society. And that if I wanted to understand my own life-world, I needed to study systems of thought that take hierarchy and subordination seriously as objects of enquiry. So, I have been studying golden age Islamic political philosophy and the long history of feminism(s) as much for teaching prep as for self-understanding. Because I recently read Manon Garcia's We Are Not Born Submissive and Nancy Bauer's How to Do Things with Pornography (recall), I was moved to pick up The Second Sex (in translation).

In addition to the functioning of systems of hierarchy, there is also the question of their origins and overcoming. And one might reasonably assume that insight into the origin of a system of hierarchy -- which is not without interest if it is as widespread as patriarchy -- might help in devising strategies for its overcoming. And, in fact, because patriarchy is so prevalent geographically and temporally, and compatible with so many different political systems, it is by no means obvious when to locate its establishment or multiple re-establishments and its persistence. 

De Beauvoir's analysis is primarily focused on patrilineal civilizations of paternal right that "have evolved technically and ideologically," (note on p. 87). As she puts it, "By the time humankind reaches the stage of writing its mythology and laws, patriarchy is definitively established: it is males who write the codes," (91; emphasis added) These civilized societies/stages are contrasted with matrilineal and patrilineal societies that have remained in the "primitive stage". Thus, her stadial analysis presupposes a distinction, familiar from European Enlightenment thought, between savage and civilized (recall this post on Hume).

And because of this conceptual contrast, she also assumes (the idea goes back to Locke) that anthropological insight into contemporary primitive societies provide a window into the very distant past stage of primitive life. This, too, is an Enlightenment idea that more recent anthropologists (since Geertz, I guess) have recognized is a highly dubious working assumption. The effect of these dual ideas of progress (discussed in this and previous paragraph) in De Beauvoir, is that really existing matrilineal or matriarchal societies are irrelevant to her project (because backward) and so can be left aside. (A more polemical author than I might discuss some of the racialized issues lurking here.) It also means that from the perspective of the origin of patriarchy, one does not really have to study history (understood as the history of civilization) because it is (almost by definition) everywhere patriarchal.

As an aside, while De Beauvoir herself is super learned in the long history of feminist thought (Poulain de la Barre offers her one of her epigraphs), one can see how these ideas conjoined with scattered remarks about really existing historical patriarchies, might make a reader of De Beauvoir think that there are few feminist resources in the past and so this has, I suspect, contributed to the idea that feminism is a recent phenomenon.

Okay, let's turn to her explanation of the origin of patriarchy. This follows her very compelling refutations of Freud's and Engel's accounts of the origin of patriarchy (in chapters 2-3 of Part 1 of Volume 1). The first sentence of the quoted passage notwithstanding, I don't think De Beauvoir denies that the institution of patriarchy was violent and maintained by (explicit or the threat of) violence--rather, she denies the claim that there was a single violent revolution.

But, more important, it's not merely violence that sustains patriarchy. There is an underlying idea or view that gets it going and these views are rooted in biological facts and essentialist. And to avoid confusion, De Beauvoir famously herself does not endorse the essentialism or the naturalization of these facts, but she kind of implies that the humans who were on the threshold of patriarchal civilization do (or were capable of using violence to enforce assent to them). And because of that, she sometimes sounds here in offering the explanation of the origin of patriarchy like she herself is rather reductive.  

The underlying idea, "the key to the whole mystery," (76) is, in fact, stated most clearly a few pages before:

On a biological level, a species maintains itself only by re-creating itself; but this creation is nothing but a repetition of the same Life in different forms. By transcending Life through Existence, man guarantees the repetition of Life: by this surpassing, he creates values that deny any value to pure repetition. With an animal, the gratuitousness and variety of male activities are useless because no project is involved; what it does is worthless when it is not serving the species; but in serving the species, the human male shapes the face of the earth, creates new instruments, invents and forges the future. Positing himself as sovereign, he encounters the complicity of woman herself: because she herself is also an existent, because transcendence also inhabits her and her project is not repetition but surpassing herself toward another future; she finds the confirmation of masculine claims in the core of her being. She participates with men in festivals that celebrate the success and victories of males. Her misfortune is to have been biologically destined to repeat Life, while in her own eyes Life in itself does not provide her reason for being, and these reasons are more important than life itself. (76)

A few days ago I jokingly tweeted a picture of this passage out with the caption that she backward projects existentialism onto primitive man and so implies that Sartre peddles a patriarchal and dated philosophy.  The ideology that she is describing here is better known as Homo faber--man the maker--"an inventor since the beginning of time" (75); as she puts it shortly before the passage I quoted at the top of this post: "Homo faber is the reign of time that can be conquered like, space, the reign of necessity, project, action and reason." (87) To be sure my view is that in these passages she is merely describing the ideology not endorsing it, but others have read her as accepting these claims.*

The ideology was undoubtedly familiar to her and her readers from Bergson's Creative Evolution, where he writes, "If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us to be the constant characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should say not Homo sapiens, but Homo faber. In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture." (139) [I was pleased to find the work by Margaret A. Simons.] De Beauvoir connects these ideas surrounding Homo faber to Heidegger's emphasis on companionship (mit-sein), or a world dense with human values and social practices.

Crucially, the ideology that originates and sustains patriarchy is one in which man the maker is also a maker (there are shades of Nietzsche here) of values, and so daringly embraces novelty that always goes beyond the empirically given. This embrace of excess, and of novelty is sexed male in opposition to the repetition of empirical and biological reality (sexed female). 

A key point in De Beauvoir's explanatory schema, is that ur-woman admires (aesthetically?) the prestige of this Nietzschean Homo faber, who also throws irresponsibly large but splendid festivities to promote his own (military and hunting) achievements, in contrast to her own boring (ahh) rootedness. So crucially -- and this a major theme of Garcia's book I mentioned above -- women become partially complicit in their own subordination from the start and help sustain it in various ways.

Since this is a rather long post, I just want to note that on its own terms this does not fully succeed as an explanation. For the idea that Homo faber is admirable and worth submitting to, and that biology is destiny, is precisely what needs explaining. As MacKinnon notes, the whole explanation presupposes that "patriarchy is already institutionalized." (Toward a Feminist Theory of State, p. 55)

However, whatever one thinks of this as an explanation, it is, in fact, action guiding. Shulamith Firestone and her more recent Xenofeminist followers see in technologies that decouple reproduction (and motherhood) from biology a possible way to overcome patriarchy. That is, and more culturally, one can unsex Homo faber. Or, one can reject the very ideology of Homo faber (which is, I  think, De Beauvoir's own position).

I close with two observations about this explanation of the origin of patriarchy. First, there is a curious and somewhat subtle rejection of Hobbesian ideas at the root of this explanatory schema. (Yes, Hobbes is never mentioned; but notice patriarchy is a system of sovereignty.) For, in Hobbes submission to authority is found in treating death as the summum malum, and the preservation of life as the minimal baseline (which is bequeathed to liberalism as can be gleaned off 'life, liberty, etc.'). But from the vantage point of the ideology that gives rise to patriarchy, Hobbes' schema turns out to be sexed. For, (to repeat) "in her own eyes Life in itself does not provide her reason for being." And, even more important, "these reasons are more important than life itself."

As is well known, in Hobbes the rejection of a summum malum is thought a mark of unreason or dangerous ambition. That is to say, from the perspective of Hobbes -- which I make here stand in for canonical rationality -- women's self-understanding of her submission to initial patriarchy makes no sense. (This is why above I emphasized aesthetic issues.) Patriarchy as a system of sovereignty is in some ways unintelligible from the perspective of Hobbesian socials science not just because it is founded on the rejection of the summum malum, but also because its appeal to those that do not initially benefit from it is, in fact, a rejection of social reproduction of the same as a fundamental value itself.+ In addition, the patriarchal men are also odd from a Hobbesian perspective because they value property (and its survival over the generations) more "than life itself" (93).

Second, on De Beauvoir's explanation, patriarchy and the existence of slaves or (very) exploited labor are co-extensive. Not because women are the slave population in patriarchy. (De Beauvoir silently glides over those women who are among the slaves.) But because for his  ambitions, which by definition exceed the given (and its constraints), Homo faber always requires a population who can generate a surplus for his projects. Strikingly enough, in this schema, women are not treated as sources of such surplus. That is, by definition, the system of patriarchy always sustains multiple forms of subordination (that can intersect). She doesn't say this, but the explanatory schema also leaves women the role as (unproductive) ornament within patriarchy. 

 

On Analytic Marxism's Displacement of Dialectics

In each sense of 'analytical', to be analytical is to be opposed to a form of thinking traditionally thought integral to Marxism: analytical thinking, in the broad sense of 'analytical', is opposed to so-called 'dialectical' thinking, and analytical thinking, in the narrow sense of 'analytical', is opposed to what might be called 'holistic' thinking. The fateful operation that created analytical Marxism was the rejection of the claim that Marxism possesses valuable intellectual methods of its own. Rejection of that claim enabled an appropriation of a rich mainstream methodology that Marxism, to!its detriment, had shunned....I said (see section 1 above) that analytical Marxists do not think that Marxism possesses a distinctive and valuable method. Others believe that it has such a method, which they call 'dialectical'. But we believe that, although the word 'dialectical' has not always been used without clear meaning, it has never been used with clear meaning to denote a method rival to the analytical one.[1] There is no such thing as a dialectical form of reasoning that can challenge analytical reasoning. Belief in dialectic as a rival to analysis thrives only in an atmosphere of unclear thought. G.A. Cohen "Introduction to the 2000 edition" (2000 [1978]) Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, xvii-xxiii.

Cohen takes non-trivial pride in having helped  found the method of analytic marxism (see p. xvii & xxiii).  This is explicitly opposed to, and intended to displace, what is known as dialectics. Dialectics is dismissed for being unclear . In the quoted passage, and later in the introduction, he suggests dialectics is only taken seriously in a context pervaded by unclarity such that resistance to analytic marxism (by those wedded to dialectic) exhibits "irrational obscurantism." (xxiv) Presumably, the footnote [1] is supposed to illustrate the lack of clarity. It reads,  "I do not think that the following, to take a recent example, describes such a method: 'This is precisely the first meaning we can give to the idea of dialectic: a logic or form of explanation specifically adapted to the determinant intervention of class struggle in the very fabric of history.' (Etienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx p. 97.) If you read a sentence like that quickly, it can sound pretty good. The remedy is to read it more slowly." (p. xxiii) 

As regular readers know, I am a bit allergic to the habit, cultivated by my analytic peers, to quote exemplary sentences (generally by continental philosophers) out of context, add some snark (here disguised as sincere advice), and say, see. Perhaps, Balibar's work on Marx is as shallow as Cohen suggests.  But the choice for Balibar (an academic best known by me for his work on Spinoza) is revealing because it is neither Marx nor an accomplished revolutionary practitioner of dialectics, say, Rosa Luxemburg, who calls the "dialectical materialist method of historical analysis" one of two "principles" of the "essence" of Marxism ("Foreword to the Anthology The Polish Question and the Socialist Movement.")

Let's stipulate that clarity is an important intellectual virtue even within Marxism. And if you are already socialized in a certain intellectual habitus, it is perfectly legitimate to take it for granted (even for polemical purposes). But, speaking strictly as a bourgeois intellectual, it is an odd choice for a Marxist to rest one's case on. Let me explain.

For Carnap, whose socialist commitments were not disguised, clarity is, in fact, a property or by-product of formal systems.* Carnapian clarity is really a second-order property of an otherwise esoteric, expert practice.  But if one is interested in revolutionary or even emancipatory politics,  it is not obvious that such clarity is the ruling virtue (as opposed to virtues that motivate action, or enable the proletariat to fulfill their revolutionary potential).  I don't mean to deny that for Carnap, presumably, anybody can be trained to become such an expert. And there is an attractive feature of communism -- emphasized, say, by Ernest Mandel in The Economic Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx 1843 to Capital -- that under communism everybody will be intellectually literate. But that's supposed to be the end-point of the revolution not the (prefigurative) means. 

Be that as it may, the introduction I quoted from is a later addition. In Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, Cohen does not (as far as I can tell) engage with the question at all.** I have been unable to find any place where Cohen does the intellectual work to show with some care what's wrong with dialectics. Throughout the book he cites his own (1974) "Marx's Dialectic of Labor;" this paper explicitly sets aside anything that non analytic Marxists might mean by dialectic and only focuses on "the descriptive residue" of the concept.

Earlier yet, in 1969, Cohen did a lovely review essay, worth re-reading for many reasons, "Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Marcuse," of Marcuse in New Left Review . This is a more general critique of (what Perry Anderson has called) Western Marxism to move from to "the aspirations of people" (and being a spokesman for them) to a focus on "culture" (and ideology). In this piece, Cohen suggests there is an authentic Marxist spirit from which Marcuse has deviated. An example of this more authentic Marxism (by Cohen's lights in 1969) is Karl Korsch.+ 

As it happens, Korsch is a lucid writer. And in his (1923) Marxism in Philosophy he offers a useful diagnosis of the motives of those who reject dialectics and a hint of what it might be:

Setting aside any philosophical considerations, it is therefore clear that without this coincidence of consciousness and reality, a critique of political economy could never have become the major component of a theory of social revolution. The converse follows. Those Marxist theoreticians for whom Marxism was no longer essentially a theory of social revolution could see no need for this dialectical conception of the coincidence of reality and consciousness: it was bound to appear to them as theoretically false and unscientific.-- [Emphases in original.] Translated by Fred Halliday.

In context, it is clear that the coincidence of consciousness and reality -- hereafter: the coincidence thesis -- is a constitutive feature of dialectics, but does not exhaust it. That consciousness and reality coincide is a position associated in different ways and with different political sensibilities with Platonism, Spinozism, and Hegel. It is easy to make fun of, but it is not unintelligible or, if you try working through it, nor obscure. (It is a bit tricky to learn to embrace the coincidence between epistemic and ontic perspectives if you have been taught this is a blunder.) Somewhat amusingly in Spinoza the epistemological and metaphysical achievement (recall this post on Tarski) of such coincidence is itself associated with full clarity. Korsch doesn't claim that Marxist dialectic is itself clear, but he thinks it is clear that the coincidence thesis is necessary for the way in which a critique of political economy could become a part of a theory of social revolution. And this, in turn, is a key feature to generate (the right sort of) revolution. 

Let me take stock. I have not here tried to articulate a full theory of dialectics. (That's for another time and perhaps not my role in life.) I have also not discussed the merits of analytic marxism. More narrowly, while Cohen is an early mover in analytic marxism, he is fairly late in the history of analytic philosophy. And so this makes one wonder if anybody in the analytic tradition did the serious work of showing by way of argument what's wrong with dialectics. This question is especially urgent because there are many indications that marxism is receiving renewed consideration within analytic philosophy or at least by our students.

To find such an attempt, we must look, I assume to Vienna (in the 1920s-30s) or New York (in the late 1930s), or perhaps Lodz (in the 1930s). As it happens, Cohen echoes in uncanny fashion -- the lesser,  lazy polemics*** of -- Ernest Nagel's treatment of dialectics; Nagel presents (recall) dialectics like the early moderns treat the terms of scholastic philosophy: as fundamentally unintelligible. And so, we seem to be stuck in an eternal return of name-calling. However, Nagel was intimately familiar with Sidney Hook's (1939) "Dialectic in Social and Historical Inquiry," (published in JPhil) which presents itself as doing such thankless work, and, perhaps, the only such effort in the analytic tradition (now broadly conceived).++ I shall turn to it soon in order to establish whether Nagel's (and so by extension) Cohen's polemics rest on intellectual granite or quicksand.

 

 

Digressions in the Time of Cholera

How are you feeling? If you are like me, you've been in lockdown in your house for several weeks now. 

Likely, your experiences are unlike anything you've felt before. Because of the ubiquity of your experiences--weird as they are--they seem too banal to write down. Yet, it's important to do so. Keep a journal. We know a lot about the Great Plague because people like you and me chose to keep diaries, not letting the narrative be dominated by the few. Look back on what you have learned later. Hopefully there is a later. 

Initially, you might have tried to soldier on as you did before, synchronously teaching your classes through Zoom, and getting utterly exhausted in the process. You might have tried to remain a productive scholar, maybe even crank up your productivity, because that's what Newton did, apparently. Maybe you've started baking, knitting, doing your own home repairs, cutting your own hair. 

But now, as the weeks wax on, all that busyness cannot take away this growing feeling of clarity. This clarity is not merely an intellectual feeling. The ubiquitous sound of cars has all but died away. The air is crisp and clear. The birds have never sung more loudly than before. The streets are all but abandoned. 

There are lots of things presenting themselves to you that you have always known, but that you have never truly known. You always knew that departmental meetings are mostly not needed. Now you really know how many meetings we need (it seems more than a few a year, but fewer than weekly. We met weekly in the months leading up to the closure and all those meetings that seemed so important seem like they can often be handled through a vote by email).--Helen de Cruz, "Clarity"@Cocooners.

Helen's piece deploys the phenomenological method by using an irruption, or bracketing, to make visible the previously suppressed and, thereby, to change our practices. There is no doubt something therapeutic and cathartic about that at a time where one may justifiably feel vulnerable and powerless. I am, of course, partially joking about Helen's embrace of phenomenology. But what we may label as the critique of busyness [or Betriebsamkeit] is a recurring theme of Heidegger's thought.

With Heidegger in mind, it's indeed a bad thing when philosophy becomes any kind of soldiering, including soldiering on. And in so far as Helen is calling for both self-care and a critical attitude toward existing oppressive structures, including structures ordinarily not felt to be oppressive, it is difficult to disagree. In addition, her particular desire to keep track of the injustices and outrages that occur during the pandemic (in order, no doubt, to do better after) is salutary.

And, yet, and yet.

At any given time, the world outside of professional philosophy is full of genuine misery: torture, refugees, famine, abuse, war, discrimination, etc. In addition, professional philosophy itself is characterized by bad structural features and some awful practices many of which not conducive to true philosophy. Against those that wish to say that we live in special times, I am inclined to say back, not from the cosmic perspective Sub specie aeternitatis, but from the all-too-human imperfect limited perspective: the-pandemic-present is not really so special. Not because I buy into a narrative of progress, but rather because suffering, including politically preventable suffering, is part of the human condition. 

By this I do not wish to promote indifference or quietism, or to attack philosophy from a position of service or (since Helen invokes Dewey) a pragmatist conception of philosophy that aims to improve the world. I also do not wish to attack those that wish to bring their expertise or difficult questions (or distinctions) to bear on the present circumstances. 

But insofar as philosophy is necessary, and one's individual philosophising is necessary, this moment is no different than other moments. And while one sometimes can't philosophize on the precipice of disaster -- we have other attachments, needs, and obligations -- , sometimes philosophizing is also the highest and most urgent need.

By this I do not mean that I agree with Godwin's utilitarian argument that we must save Fenelon and not his valet. It is truly doubtful whether from an impersonal perspective of utility or the (philanthropic) policy-maker (or effective altruist) philosophy or the philosopher is more valuable than other activities; or that qua philosopher we must even understand ourselves as always contributing to the "happiness, information, and improvement of others."*

But rather, philosophizing is human need; sometimes as a species escapism; sometimes as a delirious dance above the abyss; sometimes as the reaching for mere clarity, understood as an aesthetic virtue; and now, more than ever, as a crutch to survive cruel indifference. 

 

 

 

 

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.***