A REPLY TO MAGPIE

Magpie [sigh.  Doesn't anyone have a real name anymore?] posted a comment asking the following question:

"Prof.

Now that we are speaking of leftwing cant, clichés, unthinking people, intellectual fashions and such, there is a question I'd like to ask you (as a philosopher, you are probably in the best position to answer).

But, I want to be fair and not put you in an uncomfortable situation; so, let me warn you before you give any answer: this topic could easily degenerate into a flames war; so, I honestly understand if you decide to pass.

What's your opinion of the so called Sokal affair of a few years back? What do you think of post-modern thought, relativism, Nietzsche and other things like that?"

Since answering that grab bag of questions is a bit of a tall order, I thought I would do it in a blog post, rather than as a comment on a comment.  Let me preface my response by saying that I am a retired seventy-nine year old professor on a secure pension.  Nothing puts me in an uncomfortable position.  Heaven knows, there are lots of topics on which I have nothing remotely useful to say, but someone who has picked as many  intellectual fights as I have over the years can hardly slide away from a topic simply because someone may get angry at what I say.

So.  First of all, the Sokal affair.  Those of you who are unfamiliar with it should read the nice summary on Wikipedia, as I just did.  Briefly, a physicist named Alan Sokal wrote a send-up of fashionable modern leftwing literary commentary which he called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneuticsof Quantum Gravity" [no kidding] and submitted it to Social Text, described on Wikipedia as "an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies."  They published it, whereupon Sokal revealed that it was a hoax.  Needless to say, Jacques Derrida was not amused.

What is my opinion?  I loved it!  The editors of Social Text should be ashamed of themselves.  If they had any sense of honor, they would have committed ritual academic suicide by forthwith terminating the journal.  I have devoted my life to taking extremely difficult ideas and struggling to make them as simple and clear as I can.  It is not for nothing that I introduced my explication of the famously obscure first chapter of Capitalwith an old Jewish joke.  I have no patience with pseudo-intellectuals who take simple ideas and make them as obscure and difficult as possible by cloaking them in impressive jargon.  Nor do I for a moment imagine that that sort of cant has anything remotely "leftwing" about it.

Let me illustrate with a story that I told in my Autobiography[but, alas, I cannot assume that everyone reading this blog worked through that 800 page monstrosity.]   Many years ago, I was invited to be a member of a panel discussion on "the public responsibilities of intellectuals" hosted by the University of Kentucky.  My co-panelists were two very well known supposedly left-wing intellectuals:  Martin Jay of the University of California, author of an important book on the Frankfort School, and my UMass colleague Sam Weber, a member of the Comparative Literature Department.  Naively imagining that the organizers of the event wanted me to speak on the public responsibilities of intellectuals, that being the announced topic, and mindful of the fact that the panel was aimed at a general audience, not at members of the Kentucky faculty and their students, I wrote a clear, simply expressed, but serious talk on -- the public responsibilities of intellectuals.  Martin Jay chose to speak on images of vision in the writings of nineteenth century French intellectuals [that apparently being his research topic of the moment.]  Weber gave an incomprehensible talk on Heidegger's essay on  technology.  During the discussion period, I made a strenuous effort to get these two post-modern leftwing intellectuals to address a simple question:  What did they think about faculty unions?  It seemed to me that two professed Marxists ought to be able to handle that one without breaking a sweat.  Try as I might, I could not get either of them to take a stand in favor of the unionization of professors.

As I have explained in some of my writings, the failure of Marx's prediction of world socialist revolution -- a failure compounded of the willingness of the French and German working classes to fight one another in the First World War, the fragmentation of working class solidarity by the persistence of a pyramidal hierarchy of working class wages and salaries, and the success of the capitalist class [pace Keynes] in managing economic crises -- sucked the life out of a true revolutionary politics, which then retreated into the Humanities where it took up residence in departments of English and Comparative Literature.  The mocking epithet "tenured radicals" has more than a smidgen of truth to it.

But the Sokal affair forces us to confront a larger and more serious issue:  the utter ignorance on the part of most humanists of science and mathematics.  How else to explain the inability of the editors of Social Text to recognize what any moderately educated person should have been able to spot as a hoax?  This is an old problem, associated in my mind with the English chemist and novelist C. P. Snow and his famous 1959 lecture, "The Two Cultures."  Those of you who are interested can seek it out and read it.  Snow was addressing a problem that was peculiar to the English educational system, which segregated students at the high school level into a classics and literary track and a science math track, but his observations have considerable truth for Americans today.  I find it appalling that pompous, self-important people who feature themselves intellectuals know so little about science and math.  And it is particularly appalling that some of them should wrap themselves in the mantle of Karl Marx!  Just imagine what Marx would have thought of  "radicals" who could not be troubled to inform themselves about physics, chemistry, or biology!

As some of you will know, I have tried in my own explication of Marx's theories to bring together in fruitful conjuncture considerations drawn from literary criticism and formal mathematics, all in the service of a radical critique of capitalist society.

As for the remainder of Magpie's questions:  Nietzsche was a brilliant thinker and writer,  whose works have not inspired me personally.  From that same period, I find more to love in the writings of Kierkegaard.  But Brian Leiter has written about Nietzsche, and champions his thought, and I recommend you to him for enlightenment.

I will offer an opinion about post-modernism if someone will please tell me what on earth it is.  I could tell you what I think the term "post-modern" means, but I doubt anyone would be interested or find what I had to say useful.

As for "relativism," presumably in ethics [I cannot make much sense out of the notion of relativism in science!], I have written a good deal about that subject in the course of trying to understand Kant's ethical theories.  This post is running too long as it is, so I shall bring it to a close.  If anyone is seriously interested in hearing me say again what I have said before about relativism in ethics, I will have a go at it.

A LITERARY LESSON FOR A LAZY SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Most of you know the familiar line, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."  The line has been used by Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, Johnny Mercer, and Bob Dylan, among others.  Some of you, I am sure, know as well that the line comes from Alexander Pope's book-length poem, An Essay on Criticism.  But I wonder how many of you know what it actually means.

Here is the stanza from Pope's poem in which the line appears:

Such shameless Bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
There are as mad, abandon'd Criticks too.
The Bookful Blockhead, ignorantly read,
With Loads of Learned Lumber in his Head,
With his own Tongue still edifies his Ears,
And always List'ning to Himself appears.
All Books he reads, and all he reads assails,
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.
With him, most Authors steal their Works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary.
Name a new Play, and he's the Poet's Friend,
Nay show'd his Faults--but when wou'd Poets mend?
No Place so Sacred from such Fops is barr'd,
Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Church-yard:
Nay, fly to Altars; there they'll talk you dead;
For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.
Distrustful Sense with modest Caution speaks;
It still looks home, and short Excursions makes;
But ratling Nonsense in full Vollies breaks;
And never shock'd, and never turn'd aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering Tyde!

Ah, where is Alexander Pope when we need him!

The line is usually taken to mean, "Fools will do something that wise people refrain from doing," and no doubt that was in Pope's sense when he wrote the line.  But he had something a good deal more specific in mind.  To understand the line aright, you need several bits of knowledge that may have slipped your notice.

First of all, "Paul's Church" refers to the great Cathedral of St. Paul in London -- not the new cathedral, rebuilt on Christopher Wren's design after the Great London Fire of 1666, but the original St. Paul's.  Second, a churchyard is a cemetery attached to a church, so Paul's Church-yard was the cemetery of the old Cathedral of St. Paul.  Third, St. Paul's Church-yard, in the time before the Fire, was where London's booksellers gathered to display their wares.  Finally, and this is the key to the entire line, there was an old folk superstition that angels shunned cemeteries, because of the unresurrected souls buried there.

And there you have it.  Fools -- the critics -- rush in to attack the new books being hawked by the booksellers in a graveyard that angels would shun.  Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

How do I know this?  It all goes back to the Fall of 1962.  I was newly married to Cynthia Griffin.  We were living in Chicago, where I was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and General Education at the University of Chicago.  Cynthia is now a distinguished and accomplished literary scholar and critic, retired from a Chair she held for many years at M. I. T., but she was then a doctoral student in English at Harvard, madly cramming for her doctoral orals.  Although Cynthia's field was the eighteenth century English novel, in those days the orals covered everything, from Beowulf to T. S. Eliot.  At one moment in her frantic study, she turned to Pope, and as her husband, I was the beneficiary of a good deal of pillow talk that taught me everything I know about literary criticism.

Well, now you know, if anyone should ever ask, what the meaning is of the well-known line, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Ben Richardson (cinematographer) is headed to Pittsburgh for TFIOS

Ben Richardson, TFIOS' cinematographer, just tweeted that he is on his way to Pittsburgh right now to prep for TFIOS. He also included a TFIOS quote in his tweet as well as a video of clouds (which you can check out on his instagram) :

"NOTHING HAS EVER LOOKED LIKE THAT EVER IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY." Next stop Pittsburgh #tfios http://t.co/C656rBGsUe http://t.co/rWKRsj9zFc"

We're definitely wishing you loads of fun, Ben, and can't wait to see the end-result.

AN UNANSWERED QUESTION

During the long struggle for LGBT equality, one of the rhetorically most powerful arguments has been the simple assertion, "We are here."  We exist, we have names, we have jobs, we love, we grieve, we raise children, we vote, we die.  We are here.  Refusing us the rights routinely accorded other Americans will disadvantage us, it will inflict injustice upon us, it will deny us the joys of social recognition and the solace of social support at the end of life, but it will not make us cease to exist.  One way or another, you must give up the fantasy that if you refuse to recognize same sex love it will evaporate.

We live in an extraordinary period here in the United States.  On the one hand, rights long denied are being won, affirmed in the highest courts.  On the other hand, rights long thought secure are under attack from a right wing increasingly hysterical in its frenzied effort to reverse the flow of time and take this nation back to a time of back alley abortions, segregated voting, and the imposition of nakedly theological imperatives in the public square.

I believe the revanchistesare losing.  The demography of the nation is against them, and cultural tides are dragging them down in the undertow.  The contemporary efforts to deny at the state level rights secured at the national level is intensely dangerous and must be fought with all the energy and mobilization we can muster but it will fail eventually, I am convinced.

 However, as it fails, as the racists and the homophobes lose ground once again, as their ranks are thinned by the death of their oldest supporters and the failure of the young to take their place, it will nevertheless remain true for as long as we can see into the future that a very sizeable segment of the American people will hold fast to the fears, anxieties, hatreds, and convictions now finding hateful expression in our politics.

We will defeat the racists.  We will vote down the homophobes.  We will secure for women the reproductive rights that now are under such concerted attack.   But our opponents will then be able to say, truthfully:  "We are still here.  We exist, we have names, we have jobs, we love, we grieve, we raise children, we vote, we die."

Those of us on the left who find that time and demography are our friends in these fights need to ask ourselves how we think this country can acknowledge the existence of, find place for, those whose deepest [and most irrational] convictions we abhor.  What do we imagine they can and will do as they suffer defeat after defeat but remain unreconciled to the social and legal changes that, in their eyes, threaten their existence and constitute the victory of evil?

I am certain of two things which together seem to foretell a bleak future:  First, these are issues on which no compromise by us is acceptable;  and Second, violent confrontation and war over them would be an unmitigated disaster.  What then do we imagine the losers in this cultural and demographic struggle will do?  We are talking about a very large number of people -- certainly millions, even tens of millions, probably scores of millions or more.  How can they be integrated into a society that, in their eyes, is becoming the embodiment of evil? 

 

SELF-REFERENTIALITY

Back in the forties and fifties [and maybe even in the thirties] the secretary of the Harvard Philosophy Department was a lovely woman named Ruth Allen who seemed to be the embodiment of the collective memory of the department.  At a department meeting during my brief stint as a lowly Instructor in Philosophy and General Education a question came up about whether something or other could be done in conformity with Harvard's rules.  No one knew the answer, and a question was dispatched to Ruth Allen to see whether she knew.  Back came the answer, Yes, that could be done.  When one sceptical member of the department asked on what precedent she based this judgment, her answer was, Something she had decided to do in an earlier year!  Shades of the U. S. Supreme Court.

Earlier today I was turning over in my mind an idea for a blog post.  I wanted to use as a title the lovely phrase, "shit to airy fineness spun," which I recalled as coming from Alexander Pope's great eighteenth century attack on his fellow poets, The Dunciad.  "I had better check exactly where it appears in The Dunciad," I thought to myself, so I googled the phrase.  Only one site popped up:  My own blog from 2010, where I used the phrase in my rumination on leftwing cant, "Macros and PC's."

A trifle panicked, I found an online edition of The Dunciad and did a search.  Nothing for "shit to airy fineness spun."  Nothing for "airy fineness."  "Nothing even for "spun!"  Now I know that I did not make up the phrase.  I really did not.  But no amount of Googling ever turns up anything but my own blog.

I have turned into Ruth Allen.

AUTUMNAL MUSINGS

Posted on the side of my file cabinet next to my desk are three photographs.  The first is a black and white snapshot of Susie, taken in May 1952 at Connecticut College for Women [as it was then called].  She is seated on a lawn, wearing a short-sleeved v-neck blouse and and a dirndl skirt flared out around her, her hair in the page boy that she had affected since I first fell in love with her in high school in 1948.  The second is our wedding photograph, taken at the Northampton City Hall after our marriage on August 25, 1987.  We are in dress-up street clothes because it was the City Clerk who married us.  The third is the small head shot she just had taken so that we could renew her passport before going back to Paris in October.

Those three photos are a visual expression of the unity of my life.  It is an extraordinary experience to be seventy-nine and have so strong a living connection through Susie with my boyhood.  Many people these days have second or third marriages -- new beginnings, they think of them.  But for Susie and me, marriage was a coming home. 

DREAMS OF A BOOMER WANNABE

Susie and I were born in the depths of the Great Depression, a bit less than a generation before the advent of the post-World War II Baby Boomers, but we have ridden along with the Boomers, senior associates, as it were, through the doldrums of the Eisenhower years, the excitement of the Sixties, the trauma of Watergate, the despair of the Reagan revanchement and Bush fiasco, and all the horribles of these past years.  The one certainty in an uncertain world is that every year we all get one year older.

Advertisers and movie makers, allured by the buying power and sheer size of the Boomer generation, have crafted their commodities to suit.  As the Boomers have aged, Hollywood has trotted along with them, making Beach Blanket Bingo when the Boomers were teenagers and Die Hard as they approached middle age.

Now the Boomers, staring their own personal sixties in the face, crave amusements appropriate to impending Senior Citizen status, and so, yesterday afternoon, Susie and I took in RED 2, the sequel to the 2010 action comedy, RED.  RED stands for "Retired Extremely Dangerous," which is as perfect a three-word encapsulation of an aging Boomer's fantasies as one could possibly devise.

RED 2 stars Bruce Willis [58], John Malkovich [60], Helen Mirren [67], and Anthony Hopkins [75].  The love interest is two young hotties, Mary-Louise Parker [48] and Catherine Zeta-Jones [43.]  Each one is an old friend whom we recall fondly from their [and our] salad days.  The action is flamboyant and suitably implausible -- but then, even when Bruce Willis was young, we knew he was not reallydoing all those impossible things in Die Hard.  Hopkins has never been more delightful, and Mirren is the sexiest sixty-seven year old I have ever seen.

Like the Bourne and OO7 franchises, the RED films feature a good deal of tourist footage of world-class cities -- New York, London, Paris, Moscow.  The Paris segment was an especial treat for Susie and me because much of it was filmed in our quartier.  When Willis and Zeta-Jones sit down at a sidewalk cafe for a drink and chat, we both immediately recognized it as a familiar bistro on rue La Montagne Ste. Geneviève just down the street from the Place du Panthéon, three blocks from our apartment. 

Do you suppose some evening I will actually run into Catherine Zeta-Jones and Bruce Willis and John Malkovich and Helen Mirren and Anthony Parker and Mary-Louise Parker?  One can dream.