we must take the matter pretty deep

Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Section VI, "Of personal identity"

There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a farther proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv'd from any fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this.

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Derrida, love

Just something from an old interview, also bearing on the fantastic discussion following Alain's earlier post:

Is there any way for an author to regulate, in advance, the range of possible interpretations?

J.D.: If you expect an answer in the form of a "yes or no", I would say no. But if you give me more time, I would be more hesitant. I would say that a philosopher or writer should try of course, to be responsible for what he writes as far as possible. For instance, one must be very careful politically, and try, not so much to control, but to foresee all possible consequences some people might draw from what you write. Thats an obligation - to try to analyse and foresee everything. But its absolutely impossible. You cant control everything because once a certain work, or a certain sentence, or a certain set of discourses are published, when the trace is traced, it goes beyond your reach, beyond your control, and in a different context, it can be exploited, displaced, used beyond what you meant. And this is the question I asked about Nietzsche since you mention him. Of course, there was an abusive interpretation of Nietzsche by the Nazis. No doubt, Nietzsche didnt want that, it is sure. But, nevertheless, how can we account for the fact that the only philosopher or thinker that was referred to as a predecessor by the Nazis was Nietzsche? So there must be in Nietzsches discourse, something which was in affinity with the Nazis, and you can say this and try to analyse this possibility without of course, concluding that Nietzsche himself was a Nazi, or that everything in Nietzsche was in affinity with the Nazis. But we have to account for the fact that there was a lineage, there was some genealogy. So, we are all exposed to this - I am sure that some people could draw reactive or reactionary or right-wing conservative positions from what I say. I struggle, I do my best to prevent this, but I know that I cant control it. People could take a sentence and use it...let us take the example of what I was telling you this afternoon: of course, I am in favour of, let us say, the development of idioms, the differences in language so as to resist the hegemony or the monopoly of language. But I immediately added to this statement that I was also opposed to nationalism. That is, to the nationalistic reappropriation of this desire for difference. Now, maybe someone can say, "well, youre in favour of divisions against a universal language, then we would use your discourse in favour of nationalism or reactionary linguistic violence" and so on and so forth. So, I cant control this. I can only do my best, just adding a sentence to my first sentence, and to go on speaking trying to neutralize the misunderstandings. But you cant control everything, and the fact that you cannot control everything doesn't mean simply that youre a finite being and a limited person. It has to do with the structure of language, the structure of the trace. As soon as you trace something, the trace becomes independent of its source - thats the structure of the trace. The trace becomes independent of its origin, and as soon as the trace is traced, it escapes. You cannot control the fate of the book totally. I cant control the future of this interview (laughter)...You record it, but then youll re-write it, re-frame it, build a new context, and perhaps, my sentence will sound different. So, I trust you but I know that it is impossible to control the publication of everything I say.

N.P.: But there is an implicit faith, an implicit relationship...

J.D.: Its a matter of faith, of good faith, but its faith, its faith...

PoMo Marketing

Via Gary Sauer-Thompson's excellent blog, The Economist offers a provocative (if rather simplistic) treatment of how postmodern theory has been appropriated by mass marketing firms to sell crap.  It starts off with the obligatory Lyotard quote describing "eclecticism" as "the degree zero of contemporary general culture; one listens to reggae, watches a Western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.”

Despite the fact that most thinkers associated with postmodernism (Lyotard, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida) were leftists, they unwittingly have produced ideas that are compatible and even useful to capitalism.  Of these thinkers, it seems that only Foucault came to recognize, late in his career, the irony of the relationship between the "postmodern condition" and the emergence of a new, more rigorous form of free markets:

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lessons from the Iraq War

One of the primary lessons of the Iraq war is the correctness of political correctness. A cornerstone of Bush's whole effort was the assumption or belief that a key contention of the 'political correctness' movement -- that we need to understand and accomodate world views that clash, partly or wholly, with our own -- should be rejected. This is one reason the whole chorus of right-wing propagandists was so enthusiastic about the war: it provided room for the reassertion of American cultural, moral, and political superiority -- and not just in foreign affairs, where it's been much less successful anyway. The Bush administration worked itself up into the belief (they could not have reasoned their way to this idea) that American democratic ideals are the only ones that make any sense. The working out of those ideals into specific institutions should occur naturally once any artificial restraints are removed. Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was one such distorting influence on the people who happened to live in Iraq. Remove him, make it possible for a democratic culture to emerge -- which shouldn't be hard because it's so natural to humans -- and America will have lots of new friends in the region. (An article I read recently made an argument along these lines about Bush's adventure in Iraq. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw it so I can't link to it.)

The depth of this belief about human nature and the political institutions natural to it helps explain some of the most puzzling features of this invasion. For instance, the assumption that it really wasn't necessary for anyone involved in the invasion to know Arabic. You don't need to actually talk to people about how to think and act in a democratic way. All of that is already written on their hearts, so don't worry. Nor is it necessary to know much about the country itself. Sunnis, Shias, Kurds -- these are so many commas on the way to 'one nation under God with freedom and justice for all.'

But it turns out that they were wrong and those who promote the need to understand difference, in both its philosophic and cultural versions, were right. The willful and arrogant refusal to learn this lesson from (what is called) political correctness is the source of much of the disaster around us.

Intern-ment

Naked Punch Magazine is looking better every quarter, I must say (they even have a very decent new blog!).  Warm welcomes all around.  From some of the front matter, here is a funny bit by Nadim Samman in the latest issue:

Nietzsche rightly points out that 'what makes people rebel against suffering is not suffering itself, but the senselessness of suffering'.  If suffering is given a 'sense', or justification, then it is easier to bear–and may even be sought out–provided that the justification is powerful enough.  Our mustachioed friend claimed that 'early man' invented gods to perform this function.  The gods acted as 'divine audience' or witnesses to the spectacle of mankind's torments, redeeming them through their regard.  What is the Curriculum Vitae if not a secular god, bearing witness to the misery of the Intern?...
I plead with you, recognize the will to power–the pseudo-employer's 'sense of function'–in the exhortations 'It'll be good for your career', 'It'll be good for your CV', and 'It'll be good experience'.  Remember that an exhortation is not the same as promise, or a contract.  Beware!  Such exhortations are calculated appeals to vanity.

...the Intern should be characterized as someone undergoing internment–detention.  By detention I mean separation from 'good' where you are.  In the realm of pseudo-employment 'good' is elsewhere; deferred.  Such is the ascetic–life-denying, career-denying–principle of work experience...

If you must suffer, let your 'good' elsewhere be something other than a list–mere sheets of paper.  Let your 'divine audience' reflect your deepest sense of function.

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'Another origin of the world'

As other "Theory"-literate and serious denizens of the blogosphere duly note, Specters of Marx is a book that continues to look better with each passing year.  Generous, intricate and faithful expositions of Derrida's later political thought, meanwhile, are so few and far between that a recent article by Ross Benjamin and Heesok Chang (ProjectMuse) is most welcome, and also conveniently works as a rather natural continuation of our Spivak (and Europe, and technology, and democracy) discussions. 

Suffice to say that many familiar themes make an appearance.  I provide some brief excerpts and comment below the fold, as the authors are friends and were kind enough to share a copy.   (Those interested and without Muse access may I suppose ask very nicely via email.)   The excerpts are by no means generous enough, as indeed the article covers quite a lot of ground, including responsible forays into anonymous internationalism (composed of "no one" who is , nevertheless, "not just anyone" – cf. Thomas Keenan; recalling also Blanchot's communism), Spivak's (partly just) criticisms in Ghostwriting, Derrida's distinctly atheist transformation of Benjamin's 'weak messianism' and Roland Barthes' reflections on the photograph among other things.  The bold and truly excellent SUBSTANCE Magazine was once kind enough to grant us a generous "fair use" permission to quote from its "Counter-Obituaries" issue on Derrida from some time ago...so consider this too a first step, if you will, toward a more precise engagement there. 
    
From the key orienting and introductory 'graph (or rather, a bit of graft on my part, as the  framing, justifying work performed by introductions certainly is important to get right):

As admirable as [their] aims may be, Habermas and Derrida’s proclamation inevitably raises the question of their global bias.   Although their article closes by “renounc[ing] Eurocentrism,” it seems nonetheless to reassert a particular European obligation to act on behalf of the world.    American political philosopher Iris Marion Young objects to the publication’s premise in an essay for the web-based journal openDemocracy.  She asserts, “Europe needs not globalism but a provincialism that will enable a dialogue of equals with the rest of the world.”   Young points out that the anti-war rallies of February 15, 2003 were planned at a World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre in January 2003 and, moreover, took place in hundreds of cities throughout the world.   Such a “coordination may signal the emergence of a global public sphere, of which European publics are wings, but whose heart may lie in the southern hemisphere.”   Though [Iris Marion] Young correctly calls into question their geopolitical assumptions, a closer evaluation of Derrida’s key statements makes clear that his position on Europe is distinct from the one Habermas sketches in their jointly signed text* [...]   

Contrary to his press, Derrida never made a secret of his allegiance to the European Enlightenment.    Our title, “the last European,” is meant as a tribute and a provocation, a corrective to the idée fixe that “deconstructionism” seeks to corrode Enlightenment ideals.   The allusion to Blanchot’s Le dernier homme notwithstanding, it is unlikely Derrida himself would have recognized the descriptive pertinence of the phrase or accepted its eschatological pathos.   We certainly do not wish to suggest that he clung to the Continent.   On the contrary, the globe-trotting itineraries of his teaching and lecturing – in particular his numerous visiting professorships in the US – imparted a decisively non-European competence and tonality to his numerous public stances.   The topic of European identity, he admitted, is predictably tired:  “Old Europe seems to have exhausted all the possibilities of discourse and counter-discourse about its own identification” (Other Heading 26).   And yet, paradoxically, European identity has never really been taken up in the promise that it holds for the future.   For Derrida, this at one and the same time old and young identity is a fine example of Hamlet’s famous declaration that “the time is out of joint.”   In the following, we argue that this temporal rift is precisely what compelled him to speak in the name of Europe.

  The authors proceed to engage first with Derrida-Valéry in a manner that deserves to be quoted at some length, though again I will limit myself:

Valéry’s texts figure in The Other Heading, then, as telling, modernist examples of the Eurocentric idealism that continues (in a somewhat threadbare mode) to animate the West’s cultural politics.   To Jameson’s account of Derrida’s strategic use of Valéry we would only add that Valéry does not simply function as the object of an ideology critique.   His outmoded Eurocentrism also serves, paradoxically, to advance Derrida’s deliberation on the future of Europe.  Valéry forcefully elucidates the expansive limits of a high cultural European self-understanding, and thereby, points a way out from within....

* [Sadly and rather inexcusably, the actual Habermas statement co-signed by Derrida appears to be unavailable online...or at least eluding my night's efforts.]

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rewriting the Introduction to Theory's Empire

The "Introduction" to Theory's Empire fails to confront its object. It is a mishmash; an intellectual muddle. It is not the best effort conceivable by a long shot. I could write a much better Introduction than they did, and I think their whole point sucks. And then some of the articles that follow!

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dualism in phlosophy

Everyone is familiar, even if they haven't come across this particular quotation from Rorty, with the comment that Western metaphysics is grounded in 'dualisms.'

'Platonism'...refers to a set of philosophical distinctions (appearance-reality, matter-mind, made-found, sensible-intellectual, etc.): what Dewey called a 'brood and nest of dualisms.'These dualisms dominate the history of Western philosophy, and can be traced back to one or another passage in Plato's writings. Dewey thought, as I do, that the vocabulary which centers around these traditional distinctions has become an obstacle to our social hopes. (Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, xii)

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making fun of theory's empire

First there's the cover of the book, Theory's Empire. The letters that make up the words 'theory's empire' are distributed over a bunch of cards: one letter, one card. The word theory's is stacked on top of the word empire. And so it's very unstable. Not a house of cards, but just as easily knocked over. So this empire is weak and easily disturbed.

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Theory and the Man

Why is it that even the most post of the posties end up caught up in adulation of or resistance to single great thinkers? Why is the hold of a Master so strong even after decades upon decades of critiques of the subject, of agency, of originality, of individuality, of authenticity? Is it precisely because of these critiques? That answer seems too easy.

Perhaps one answer lies more in the structure of the academy, in its patterns of the transmission of knowledge and structures of authentication and validation. If that's the case, should those committed to ideas of structures, systems, contingencies, networks, assemblages, and discourses eschew identifying views with single persons--Agamben, Badiou, Foucault, Lacan, and, why not, Zizek?

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Deleuze and Guatarri on the national state and human rights

In a discussion of Deleuze and Guatarri's notion of the concept in What is philosophy?, one of the commentators points to p. 107 of that book where 'communication' is discussed. Starting with 106, the authors write:

If there is no universal democratic State, despite German philosophy's dream of foundation, it is because the market is the only thing that is universal in capitalism. In contrast with the ancient empires that carried out transcendent overcodings, capitalism functions as an immanent axiomatic of decoded flows (of money, labor, products). National States are no longer paradigms of overcoding but constitute the "models of realization" of this immanent axiomatic . . . .

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In need of heroic readers (more than heroes)

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

Some readers may have already seen Benjamin Kunkel's essay in the Sunday Book Review (bugmenot), in which he writes, among other things:

What Thoreau has to overcome during his time in the woods is not a lapse in mental health.  His great problem is to escape the mental health of his neighbors, their collection-plate opinions, their studious repetition of gossip.  Thoreau isn't against self-esteem (he admires a friend who has learned to "treat himself with ever increasing respect"); but his main task is to lose his esteem for society in which "trade curses everything it handles" and the singular natural resource of time is wasted in barren productivity.  Maybe he had vices out there in the woods, but that's not his concern, or ours.  The overwhelming impression is of his philosophical ardor, which he tries to fuse with his practical ardor.  There's not a note in the book of self-pity, or nostalgia.  And why did he quit his cabin in the end?  "It seemed to me that I had several more lives to live."   This accent of futurity is missing among contemporary memoirists.  They sigh over their past woes; sigh with relief now that they're better; or sigh the long sighs of nostalgia. 
(emphasis added)

Indeed, and not just among contemporary memoirists, but also American Presidents.

Anyway, I would like to concur with Marco Roth (another editor of n+1), that in the current marketplace of literature's ongoing infantilization, the legacy of the "heroic reader" may be one thing we can not afford to let alone. 

The paradox of the heroic reader is that she must actively distance herself from the sick world.  She must submerge herself, one might say, in the very limitless task, in the important and arresting and non-trivial stakes of reading, with all the terror–indeed, potential madness–this implies, but significantly in order to then re-enter society with both sincerity and sympathy, and with an attention–dare we call it philosophical–to living (zoe!) as opposed to mere endurance of the "safe" thrills of organized spectacle or pre-packaged experience.

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favorite moments from derrida

There are two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of sign, of freeplay. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering, a truth or an origin which is free from freeplay and from the order of the sign. The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms freeplay and tries to pass beyond man and humanism, the name man being the name of that being who, throughout the history of metaphysics or of ontotheology -- in other words, through the history of all his history -- has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of the game.

"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," by Jacques Derrida, in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge, pp 278-294. A somewhat flawed version available online.

aristotle's attention to language

I frequently get a lot out of essay introductions that academics write at the beginning of collections or selections of so-and-so's thought. I'm currently reviewing some Aristotle, and that led me to Renford Bambrough, about whom I know nothing about and refuse on principle to google. He is the commentator for the selection pulled together by Signet Classic. (Of course by 'classic,' Signet means 'just like the kind you used to buy when you were younger: really cheap, using bad paper, and guaranteed to fall apart quickly.') He has a general introduction and work-specific intros. In the one on Aristotle's Metaphysics Bambrough argues about the importance of figuring out the relation between thinking, language, and the world. This is the subject of Aristotle's work, and Bambrough is trying to convince his readers that the issue is a central one in Western philosophy, and not only there.

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Bourdieu vs. Post-Structuralism

Those of us who end up being associated with 'postmodernism' or 'theory' often find ourselves confused or infuriated by the attempt of our opponents to lump us into a single category. It is amusing, therefore, to read one of those 'postmodernists' or 'theorists' or -- more plainly -- 'Frenchmen' get upset about this lumping-in with people he views himself to be in competition with. The last chapter, indeed the last section of that chapter, in Bourdieu's Science of Science and Reflexivity sees him attempt to articulate -- for an audience in France at the College de France -- his relationship, that is departure from, philosophy and, consequently, his relationship to the stars of French academic philosophy. This section, "Sketch for a self-analysis", sees him go after, as it were, Althusser and Foucault (and, by consequence, Deleuze), primarily, but also Derrida. His problem with the first group is that they disavow the social sciences while taking the object of the social sciences for themselves and his problem with the second group, exemplified (symbolized?) by Derrida, is its 'aristocratic' tendencies. (Do recall, Bourdieu often revisited the theme of his petit bourgeois origins in relation to his thought, in general, and, more specifically, the context of the elite French academies.)

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Geertz and interpretation

I first read Clifford Geertz's "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," itself published in 1973, in an interpretation seminar in the 90s. I benefitted a lot from this rereading, and here are a few points from it that struck me.

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W(h)ither the Philosophy of Pop?

"Do you realize how ridiculous you must sound when you bring into the classroom, the place where should be taught universal truths, this [spluttering]…this rubbish. This is little more than a propoganda campaign for MTV. Pop caters to the lowest common denominator; the energy of pop is too often the testosterone-fueled energy of male adolescence; the languages of pop are impenetrable, ephemeral jargons; it locks into stereotypical patterns which relate purely to physiological artefacts and thus have no significance whatever to philosophy. Man will always have need of entertainment; this is not, however, philosophy; or even philosophically interesting. There is no philosophy, nor politics, in pop."
               -Grayson Darkling-Furniss 

"All art...is...essentailly poetry [Dichtung]"
                -Martin Heidegger

Having heard the phrases, "pop philosophy" or, "the philosophy of pop" resonate in certain corners of the 'sphere, having read this generous transcription by Robin; (from whence the quote above); or this post in particular by K-Punk (since followed up by many others); or, going even further back, this good interview by Infinite Thought...well here a mammoth post, with generous (but hopefully not ponderous!) excerpting from an article by Mark Greif follows...

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'interpretation'

I would like to bounce off of Matt's heads-up about Bérubé, titled "Serious students need fear not (at least not yet)" below. Bérubé, for those who don't know, has written a critical, though certainly not 'trashing', review of Theory's Empire, the recently published anthology that wears its hostility to Theory, aka postmodernism, etc., on its sleeve. The discussion in the comments section to that post is interesting, and I urge everyone to take a look if inclined.

The question that discussion raises for me reminds me of an intellectual test that can be performed when thinking about the criticisms that 'postmodernism' and 'theory' tends to attract.

To apply this test, I chose a highly favorable review of Theory's Empire by Michael Potemra, National Review, July 4, 2005.

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political correctness is just alright with me

Prof. Alan Wolfe recently commented on Bernard Henri-Levy's new book on America -- which copies Tocqueville's approach to America -- saying that one of the things he liked about it was that the author did not dismiss out of hand "political correctness" as a cultural movement in America.  Go here for more.

I don't think Prof. Wolfe is a big friend of political correctness -- though I don't know that for a fact -- but he (so it seems to me) thinks it is important enough of a cultural phenomenon not to be just simply dismissed with scorn.  But enough trying to characterize Wolfe's view, which should be left to him anyway.  Let's take his implicit challenge seriously.  What is the "balance sheet" of political correctness? How much 'good' has it caused and how much 'evil'?  Here we have this contested term -- political correctness -- and my question is:  What would it look like to do a serious intellectual, cultural, and social inventory, as opposed to a merely partisan and polemical one?  I'm sure we all hope there's a difference between those two modes!

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Latest Salvos

Lindsay Waters strikes again, four years ago (there's also a nice article on Perec).   I say, if you cannot beat 'em, join 'em.   The shame-faced and guilty decades-long Theory-pusher makes amends at last.   And why not?

(Update:  It's been brought to my attention that these two posts may be riding a little hard on Lindsay Waters, so for something a bit less snarky-popular and more philosophical perhaps, why not read this review by Steven Shaviro, from May of 2004.)

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poshlost'

"Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo–these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost' in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, mothmythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know..."

Or:

"A well-rounded, untranslatable whole made up of banality, vulgarity, and sham. It applies not only to obvious trash (verbal and animate), but also to spurious beauty, spurious importance, spurious cleverness"

–Vladimir Nabokov

King Kong.  Baudrillard.  Shopping Malls.  Disney Land.  MTV.  Dave Eggers. 

On some level one cannot help but recognize the sheer dominance of these forces.   Speaking generally, they are the air we breath.  This does not mean that they are natural.  Liberals (the politicians, not the ideals of any philosophy - which for many reasons, such as Capitalism, do not exist) would have more nuanced cooking shows, a slightly better quality of life for slightly more people for a slightly longer time.  A stronger, more gentle war on various emotional states.  Their prospects, of course, hinge on a fundamental delusion of sorts – namely a world where conservatives (at their current stage on the several-decades-developing road to fascism) simply do not exist.  Indeed, much of the liberal delusion consists of an elaborate maintainence of this snobbery.*  (And, to be fair, much of the conservative machine depends on exploiting the resentment springing from this impression.)  Those are all familiar enough complaints, to be sure.  And like everywhere, such generalizations are perhaps only useful up to a certain point.

If it is even worth mentioning (and I'm not convinced it is), this realm is nevertheless where a stupid film like Team America hits hardest.   
It "hits" in the sense that it literally performs a kind of violence on its audience (a violence for which we have very few words, yet – apart from the usual phrases, "beating over the head," "insulting the intelligence," "forced to consume," etc.)  Lenny Bruce's form of satire comes to mind (and yet, is it funny?  Really?).  That it panders equally to liberals and conservatives is perhaps worthy of a chuckle.  It's also of somewhat Zizekian topicality, in fact.  I wonder if he's seen it.  But to mistake this film for a "critique" of anything would surely be going too far (again recalling a certain Zizek). 

Having so warned against generalizations, I will now proceed to generalize.  I do think there is some wisdom in making an effort not to speak of the banal, or at least to do so carefully, and not in a manner that treats it with any more dignity than that with which it may handle us.

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thought experiments 02

I recently proposed the following thought experiment:

Imagine the following: Someone is driving through Pennsylvania and all the lights are out. This person pulls into a gas station to buy some gas and some gum, but here, too, the kind of darkness that points to a power failure. The gas pumps don't work. Hoping to get some gum, the driver walks into the appropriately small mini-mart. It is dark but the door is open. The customer sees that all electricity has been cut. By chance, the guy running the cash register -- the only person working there this late at night -- has fallen dead of a heart attack. He died before he could close the cash register. Many hundreds of dollars do now spill out the cash register. The customer is reasonably convinced that no surveillance cameras are operating. In addition to the gum, it would be riskless to stuff one's pockets with many hundreds of dollars.

What would individuals unrealistically (yet 'heuristically') exclusively motivated by philosophic principles do if confronted with this situation? A Hobbesian atavar walks in and sees all the money. Hobbes tells us that humans are ruled by desire for what pleases and aversion towards what harms (Leviathan, Pt 1, Chapter 6). It seems clear to me that a Hobbesian entity would take the money, whatever else was desired, and leave. The creation of a just individual in the Hobbesian scheme is dependent on the existence of a playing field that always produces more 'harm' than pleasure for actions that are contrary to public order and justice. There always has to be a Leviathan around somewhere with a big stick ready and able to strike if the individual's cost-benefit analysis is going to add up in the right way.

The same point is made in Plato's Republic via the Gyges ring story, recounted by Glaucon. His point is that people who act justly "do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust." We can confirm this truth, Glaucon argues, "if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law." The myth of Gyges fits the bill nicely.

According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow bronze horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result--when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. (359c-360d)

No one wants to be just. It's a drag. We do it because we can't get away with being unjust, which is much more profitable. Both the Hobbesian and the shepherd from the Gyges story would take the money from the convenience store. The artificial conditions created by a system of surveillance and guaranteed punishment have been suspended, both at the convenience store and in the ring story. (In Lord of the Rings, the ring that Frodo or what's-his-name carries around with him makes him invisible, and this is one of the things that's supposed to be so evil about it: someone who is invisible escapes social control. Even the 'just' individual, as Frodo is made out to be, would end up being corrupted by the invisibility of the ring just as much as Gollum.) But who would refuse to take the money, and why?

thought experiments

The "thought experiment" is among the most used and best loved tools in the philosophic shed.

Thought experiments have "heuristic value." That means they help to explain or test ideas, situations, problems. Max Weber's "ideal types" are thought experiments; Marx's description of the process of capital in _Capital_ is an ideal type / thought experiment.

But the thought experiment has a very broad and ancient usage. If I mention a few, it's not because I don't think people reading this already know about them. I'm just trying to make a point.

Of course Socrates' cave analogy in _The Republic_ is a kind of thought experiment. But in general, whenever Socrates takes a specific question that troubles common sense -- like, what is friendship or what is fealty, or justice, or some other 'value' -- he quite frequently employs a 'thought experiment' that is designed to 'raise' the discussion away from specifics and in the direction of more abstract considerations of principle.

Then, of course, there's the whole social contract tradition -- such a 'continent' in political theory! One can't navigate around that 'horn'! -- which is nothing but a reflection on the this-sidedness and worldliness of a particular thought experiment; that is, what if there were no laws, no norms, no rules; what would happen? Hows would humans interact? Do you want 'norms' to give you a 'yes' or a 'no' about what to do or not do? Get thee to a state of nature! Go and blush behind this veil of ignorance!

The tradition of thought experiments lives a false and shadowy existence in the netherworld of "big question" debates about morality. Let's say you're on a boat and there's five people, and there's only enough water for two of those people. If the water currently available is shared equally, all five will die over the next three days; whereas if the water is hoarded by two of the five, chances for survival tripple -- to nine days. What's the 'right' thing to do? That's a thought experiment. Note that it is no less an experiment for occurring in 'thought.'

Imagine the following: Someone is driving through Pennsylvania and all the lights are out. This person pulls into a gas station to buy some gas and some gum, but here, too, the kind of darkness that points to a power failure. The gas pumps don't work. Hoping to get some gum, the driver walks into the appropriately small mini-mart. It is dark but the door is open. The customer sees that all electricity has been cut. By chance, the guy running the cash register -- the only person working there this late at night -- has fallen dead of a heart attack. He died before he could close the cash register. Many hundreds of dollars do now spill out the cash register. The customer is reasonably convinced that no surveillance cameras are operating. In addition to the gum, it would be riskless to stuff one's pockets with many hundreds of dollars.

Two questions: First, what should the customer do? Second question: What do we predict the customer will do? It's a thought experiment!

Let us further imagine that the individuals going into the blacked-out convenience store in Pennsylvania are motivated by pure philosophic principles: one a Platonist, the other a Humean, another a Sadist, someone else a Hobbist, another a Rawlsian, and so on. What would different individuals motivated by competing philosophic approaches do? What would they think? How would they reason?

my little finger

'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. 'Tis not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an *Indian* or person wholly unknown to me.

--Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Of the passions, Sect. III, 'Of the influencing motives of the will'

It's easy to read the bit above and conclude: Hume thinks there's no good reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. But that's not what he thinks at all. No, he's saying, instead, that it is not contrary to *reason* to prefer scratching my finger over saving the world, saving the world. But just because it's not contrary to reason to prefer scratching the finger etc., it doesn't mean that it's not contrary to *nothing* to prefer scratching etc. Just that reason is not the thing doing the preferring. Reason can't 'prefer.' Preferences come from desire, and desire this way or that is not rational or irrational.

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adorno on impatience

I'm having a lot of fun reading Adorno's lectures titled _Problems of Moral Philosophy_  published by Stanford in 2001. He makes a valuable point about the impatience some people have for philosophic activity:

[begin Adorno] I have found again and again that when carrying out theoretical analyses -- and theoretical analyses are essentially critical in nature -- that I have been met with the question: 'Yes, but what shall we do?', and this question has been conveyed with a certain undertone of impatience, an undertone that proclaims: 'All right, what is the point of all this theory? It goes on far too long, we do not know how we should behave in the real world, and the fact is that we have to act right away!' I am not blind to the motives behind this protest, particularly in the light of the atrocities perpetrated under the Nazis, and also of the difficulties of direct and effective political action in our own day, difficulties that lead people obsessively to put such questions as: 'Very well, if there are barriers everywhere and every attempt to create a better world is blocked off, what exactly are we supposed to do?' But the reality is that the more uncertain practical action has become, the less we actually know what we should do, and the less we  find the good life guaranteed to us -- if indeed it was ever  guaranteed to anyone -- then the greater our haste in snatching at it. The impatience can very easily become linked with a certain resentment towards thinking in general, with a tendency to denounce theory as such. And from there it is not very long before people start to denounce intellectuals . . . This reproach about the uselessness of theory, this impatient need to hurl oneself into action without delay spells the end of any kind of theoretical work and contains within itself, teleologically, as if it had been assumed from the outset, a relationship to a false, in other words, an oppressive, blind and violent form of practice. [end; pp. 3-4 in _Problems of Moral Philosophy_]

more on Hume

There is no substantive difference between intellectual inquiry in the social, human, or natural sciences.  Even the process of intellectual inquiry is the same. What we all do, regardless of field, is come up with a claim about how something works, and then provide argument and evidence in support. At that level of abstraction, there's no difference. This applies to Derrida or any other thinker one might want to mention.

Hume has a claim! His claim is: reason has nothing to do with morals or ethics. Reason is strictly limited in application. He, too, is doing a critique of pure reason -- critique of reason as a tool, isolated from the uses made of it. His claim is that he can make complete nonsense of anyone claiming that reason has even just a little bit to do with morality.

Reason is a calculator. Reason talks about efficacy and inefficacy. Errors and truth about facts. I see a big fat moon in the sky -- I think it's close -- but that's a mistake, reason assures us. The moon is actually really far away; precise distance could be provided. I want two things: I want to lose weight and I want to eat a king-sized butterfinger. But these two desires cannot be satisfied at the same time. Which 'end' am I going to choose? Mouth full of repressed homosexual rage king-sized butterfinger *now*, or speculatively thin *later*? Reason can't say a word about those two desires. All it can say is, "if the goal is weight loss, here's the caloric price of that candy bar," and "if the goal is perverse sensory overload, here's where the all-night 7-11 is located, you drunk in-denial pig."

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Until the End of the Day

A (very young) old advisor of mine once (way back in 1993) wrote a joint review of Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community and Gianni Vattimo's The Transparent Society.  It holds up pretty well, I think.  (Though in anticipation of certain precise and no doubt singularly convincing comments, I'm happy to be corrected.)  Thanks to the generous funding Long Sunday has just received from the Association of Abstruse Kitsch and Kantians, we are happily able to make the full text available to you here right now, indeed, without your having to click anywhere for at least a full 65 seconds.  As the themes are still as relevant (and what is surely unfortunate, as dogmatically contested) as ever (though just imagine, back in 1993 nobody was yet nostalgic for the good ol' days of postmodernism), and albeit at the risk of somewhat belaboring the topic:  please enjoy.  Personally I think the essay goes a great way toward advancing this conversation, the one John S. Ransom (the "S" being silent) has so wonderfully begun (though in another direction and one with which he may, of course, disagree).

The following then, is penned by Heesok Chang and it first appeared in 1993 in Postmodern Culture:

I. Philosophical Homelessnes

    Readers of the young Georg Lukacs may recall this memorable citation from _The Theory of the Novel_:    "'Philosophy is really homesickness,' says Novalis: 'it is  the urge to be at home everywhere.'"   

    According to Lukacs that is why "integrated civilizations"--where the soul feels at home everywhere,  both in the self and in the world--have no philosophy.  Or  "why (it comes to the same thing) all men in such ages are  philosophers, sharing the utopian aim of every philosophy.  For what is the task of true philosophy if not to draw that  archetypal map?"^1^ 

    Needless to say (especially in the [virtual] pages of  the present journal) this endorsement of philosophy's  "utopian aim" would not find many adherents today.  If anything, the "task" of contemporary philosophy would be to debunk the notion of its universalizing, "archetypal" vocation.  The subsumptive mapping of the world by reason is no longer an unquestioned telos of occidental thought.

Update: Relatedly, please see Adam Kotsko's valuable new review (PDF) of Nancy's as-yet-untranslated work, Déclosion : Déconstruction du christianisme, 1, in which Nancy begins to formulate a response to the essays by Derrida, particularly "Faith and Knowledge," collected in Acts of Religion (not, incidentally, Derrida's title).

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common criticisms

Critics of PM never tire of writing paragraphs like these:

"The worst of it is that this deficiency is not a matter of institutional structure, nor of misplaced priorities, nor of temporary inattention. It arises from the hollowing out of Western culture as a whole. This a sententious, even grandiose, way of putting it, perhaps, but if we avoid thinking about the malaise of our larger society, across decades rather than years, I doubt we'll be able to plumb the morass into which American higher education - and, probably, the community of scholars throughout the world - has fallen.

"We not only lack guidelines and precepts to conduct us through the life of the mind, we lack the sense that such principles are even possible. The needed vocabulary hasn't vanished from our language, but it is sodden with irony, rotten from years of coarse abuse. Consider words like 'justice', 'objectivity', 'beauty', 'integrity', 'nobility', 'progress', 'honour', 'virtue', 'fairness' and 'righteousness': it's not only the postmodernists among us who reflexively snicker at these terms; all of us do so, automatically."
see: http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CADAC.htm

The above does represent a bit of an advance over the usual: at least the author does not exclusively blame postmodernists. But I certainly want to deny that all these terms are just meaningless. In fact, I would bet that postmodern types use words like 'justice' and 'fairness' all the time. Some of the other values mentioned seem like hangovers from the pre-modern period: nobility, honour, and virtue do sound strange in the mouth, and seem vague in the head. Maybe today we use other words for some version of the same thing. If someone comes to a meeting of, let's say, a department on a campus, and right after the meeting goes running to the dean to rat out someone who criticized the dean, we might not go up and accuse that colleague of 'lacking honour.' Instead we would say, "Hey rat -- I hear you went scurrying over to the dean's office to report on confidential conversations. Did you get an extra portion of rat food in exchange?" But in both cases an ethical judgment is being made.

Denying that terms like 'justice' have universal meaning is not the same as claiming that the word 'justice' has no meaning. One almost feels like saying 'duh' here, but I swear to God that's the way anti-postmodernists (APMs) think (namely, that to deny that justice has universal features is the same as to deny that the term 'justice' has any meaning at all). And pointing to the limited and even exclusionary features of a dominant notion of justice is not the same as saying "forget justice."

But also: the APMs display their ignorance of the philosophic tradition when they claim or imply that the challenge to justice is of such recent vintage. What does Hume say, for instance -- someone who I bet the APMs don't have the courage, much less the theoretical chops, to confront. All we need to do is look at the heading from _Treatise_, Book III, Section I.

Book III, Part I, 'Of virtue and vice in general'

Section I: 'Moral distinctions not deriv'd from reason'

I want the APMs to attack Hume! Hume doesn't just say that reason has nothing to do with morality. He's *dismissive* of the idea. Contemptuous. He says:

"Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates. Every rational creature, 'tis said, is oblig'd to regulate his actions by reason; and if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought to oppose it, 'till it be entirely subdu'd, or at least brought to a conformity with that superior principle."
(_Treatise_, Book II 'of the passions,' in section III, itself titled 'of the influencing motives of the will')

And here comes his contempt:

"On this method of thinking," Hume continues, "the greatest part of moral philosophy, antient and modern, seems to be founded . . . "

Let me interrupt Hume to note that he is opposing not just Platonic moral theory but also 'modern' moral philosophy; that is, the kind associated with the Enlightenment. To continue:

" . . . nor is there an ampler field, as well for metaphysical arguments, as popular declamations, than this suppos'd pre-eminence of reason above passion. The eternity, invariableness, and divine origin of the former have been display'd to the best advantage: The blindness, unconstancy, and deceitfulness of the latter have been as strongly insisted on. In order to show the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove *first*, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and *secondly*, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will." (From Book II, Sect. III, 'Of the influencing motives of the will')

The phrase above that quickens my perhaps-too-easily-quickened heart is this: "In order to shew the fallacy of all this philosophy . . . " Hey Hume, don't hold back. Don't be so cautious. Go on ahead and really tell us what you think.

It is, then, a long established claim in the Western tradition that morality is a purely subjective phenomenon -- which doesn't mean it can't be disputed. But the APMs project this onto a much more recent philosophic turn, and confuse their readers by saying or implying that no one in their right mind has ever thought along such lines before.

Fichte!

Thesis: "A lot of the criticism of postmodernism is premised on a profound ignorance of the philosophic tradition out of which it flows."

We all know that everyone loves to criticize postmodernism, or, more precisely, postmodernists. In the draft of the book I'm working on, if I may borrow from that, I say, tongue in cheek, that we should probably allow people to continue making fun of postmodernism, because to convince them to desist  "would deprive so many commentators of too much pleasure to be justified on utilitarian grounds." All one has to do is go to aldaily.com, the online, waterfall-like graveyard of superficial criticisms of theory and postmodernists, to see how much pure, unadulterated, crack-like joy writers get out of criticizing postmodernists. They key is not to pay too much attention to their arguments but instead intuit the lively pleasure the author gets from talking about how silly postmodernism is. They're like Thrasymachus. We all remember the great opening scene in Republic Book I:

"Several times in the course of the discussion Thrasymachus had made
an attempt to get the argument into his own hands, and had been put
down by the rest of the company, who wanted to hear the end. But when
Polemarchus and I had done speaking and there was a pause, he could
no longer hold his peace; and, gathering himself up, he came at us
like a wild beast, seeking to devour us. We were quite panic-stricken
at the sight of him."

Thrasymachus wants to get off on arguing; get high on it. He wants to excite his animal spirits and get the adrenaline flowing, like a "wild beast". So too the anti-postmodernists.

Start with Hume, though he stands on the shoulders of a long history of skeptical thinkers. Really, one is almost convinced that if Hume's name weren't Hume, but instead was 'Derrida' or 'Lyotard' or some other frilly, vowel-filled French name, the anti-posts would be able to sniff him out as their enemy. But instead he's Hume, he's from Scotland, and he's kind of musty-witty instead of frilly-silly, and so he's spared. While at the same time not taken seriously. Though there are, let me be careful, some articles on the 'postmodern Hume, and if anyone knows of anything on the postmod Hume, please let me know. I'll try to find the articles I refer to about Hume and start making the case about Hume as a relativist next post, if that's agreeable.

Theory, Having Just Begun

Actually I've been enjoying the quality of discussion at both the Holbo and Bérubé empires this week very much, even if the premise and primary target (which is to say the target of the Theory's Empire book––something in its conception at least not entirely unmarked by genre, perhaps, and let's just note again here how the words "French Theory" (or indeed just "theory") were always something of a uniquely Anglo invention*)...even if the general target of this book (the "anthology of dissent" currently receiving so much attention) may never have been in much dispute.  Most literature professors (at least at the undergrad level, and perhaps beyond) who "do theory" exclusively in the Anglo world, do so poorly.  Sure, I guess.  (But are they really an "empire" now? How innocent is this irony really?)  While the ones who do it well, well...they do it without you even knowing what they're up to!

Let's face it, anybody blindly championing "theory" at this stage as a panacea be-all and end-all, pat diagnostic device, pathway to tenure, carte blanche license to avoid the text entirely, or name-drop and cite without the slightest concern for context, logic, or verifiability, seemingly overwhelmed by TEOTOB...this anybody really knows very little about theory, truth be told.  Indeed, this anybody might be living in a cave, oblivious to the current trends of the academic job market, for that matter, or the semi(barely)-covert assault on all things "PC" and "liberal" in cultural studies, literature departments, and so on, as the corporatization (and scientification) of our beloved universities progresses daily.

Anyone else have any thoughts?  We're supposed to be the resent-nik Zizekians, remember!

What do you think, is "doing theory" not one of those faux pas right up there with proclaiming oneself to be "postmodern" (as in, it's just not, you know, something one does, if one wishes also to be taken seriously)?  I put it to the world.

Update:  There's an interesting post up at Savage Minds about this whole book "event" thing, by the by. Update: And quite a bit more...

Continue reading “Theory, Having Just Begun”