How did Henry Kissinger go from being the man the Playboy Bunnies would most like to have for dinner to a man hated by both left and right; a man who How did Henry Kissinger go from being the man the Playboy Bunnies would most like to have for dinner to a man hated by both left and right; a man who became an issue in a presidential campaign forty years after he had left government. Gewen answers that question in this intellectual biography. It's fascinating.
Kissinger was fond of citing the following story: When the nefarious Cardinal Richelieu died in 1642, Pope Urban VIII is said to have declared: “If there is a God, the Cardinal de Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not … well, he had a successful life.” I have never been fond of Kissinger, considering some of his policies and actions to be wrong-headed, if not criminal. That being said, Kissinger was the great realist and perhaps the most influential Secretary of State in the 20th century. How he got there is the intriguing subject of this book.
Kissinger distrusted democracy, suggests the author, after witnessing the rise of Hitler through the democratic process. (The early section of the book details how quite precisely.) The lesson Kissinger learned from that is that democracy fails at thwarting tyranny and totalitarianism. Free speech can co-exist in a non-democratic society. He had the choice of returning to Germany following WW II but having served in the Army and achieved his American citizenship, he had been thoroughly Americanized, even coming to appreciate those from the fly-over states as being a more accurate representative of American culture. He wrote in his memoirs, “Nowhere else is there to be found the same generosity of spirit and absence of malice, as in small-town America.”
Kissinger despised pieties, believing that, like Richelieu, chaos can be a useful instrument of policy and furtherance of goals for the nation-state. He ultimately lost his position in government by losing support of both the left and right. His mantra was simply that the end (order and stability) justified the means. National interest was paramount, and morality in its service was futile and counter-productive.
The author goes into some detail discussing the influence of Leo Strauss, Hans Morganthau and Hannah Arendt on the politics of Kissinger. All were of German Jewish background. Arendt is best known for her seminal works on the origin of totalitarianism, a pertinent topic given that the 20th century gave rise to innumerable tyrannical isms: Communism, Nazism, Fascism, and now Islamism. All of them had seen the failure of democracy during and following the Weimar Republic and the democratic rise of Hitler. This left all of them suspicious of democracy and populism in particular. Each opposed quantification as a way of making decisions (the direct opposite of Robert McNamara.) Foreign policy and history have a subjective quality, and one needs to beware of idealism, marching into some place you don't understand even with the best intentions.
Kissinger’s role under Nixon was surprising, given Nixon’s constant belittling of Jews and overt anti-Semitism. So many in both parties feared Nixon’s irascible temper and general craziness, they saw Kissinger as a temperate restraint on Nixon. He was the ultimate realist, believing power should be used in the service of the nation, and he initially opposed MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) arguing that the Russians would be emboldened by the policy as they could never believe the West would initiate its own destruction. His preference was for tactical nuclear weapons, and it was important the enemy believed the U.S. would use them. That was the only realistic self-defense strategy.
I love books like this: they challenge the mind and lead to great discussions.
Michael Sandel teaches a very popular course at Harvard entitled “JusticI love books like this: they challenge the mind and lead to great discussions.
Michael Sandel teaches a very popular course at Harvard entitled “Justice.” It’s available in video through the iTunes University (a phenomenal resource, I might add.) Sandel uses a series of hypothetical situations to focus the class on the different ways philosophers would have analyzed and puzzled out solutions to the problems raised in the hypotheticals. (This somewhat Socratic method is also used very effectively in several magnificent series created by Fred Friendly: The Constitution: That Delicate Balance and Ethics in America I & II - both available for free and I cannot recommend them too highly.)*
Sandel, reprises some of the major themes of that course in this fascinating book. I listened to this book as an audiobook and it’s read by Sandel who does an excellent narration. He again begins by posing several moral dilemmas and uses those as jumping off points for a discussion of the three philosophical theories and asking how they might help us decide what constitutes justice: that which provides the maximum good to the largest possible number of people; individual freedoms as opposed to collective virtues; or that which promotes the development of harmonious communities.
One example of a moral dilemma is taken from a true story. A platoon sergeant in Afghanistan was behind Taliban lines with three other soldiers on patrol when they came across two goat herders with their flock. Knowing that if they released the goat herders their position might be revealed they had to make a decision: whether to kill the goat herders and possibly save themselves, or whether to let them go and assume they were innocent civilians. They had no way to simply disable the man and boy and leave them. The sergeant polled his men and the vote was to kill them, but, examining his “Christian conscience” the sergeant decided to let them live. They were later ambushed by the Taliban and all of his men were killed and he barely escaped having been severely injured. In fact the rescue chopper sent to rescue them was shot down killing those on board. The sergeant later said he had made the wrong decision and should have killed the goat herders. Thank goodness I have never been faced with such a dilemma.
A really intriguing case was that of how we view our bodies. The Libertarian argues we own our bodies and therefore can do whatever we want with them. Can we then sell our body parts? Let’s envision the poor Indian who desperately wants to send his children to college. He sells one kidney. Problems yet? Now along comes a second child and the man is willing to sell his second kidney for his child even knowing that he cannot survive. How many of us would approve of his decision? Is he despicable? or a hero? So if he is despciable, how about the man who throws himself in front of the train to push his child out of the way who wandered on to the tracks. I suspect most people would consider him a hero, yet he is deliberately sacrificing his life for that of the child? How is that different from the Indian? A real case involved a prisoner in the Califonia prison system (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article...) who wanted to donate his remaining kidney to his daughter (the first donation had failed to take.) How is his willingness to self-sacrifice his life for his child different from the fellow with the fellow who saves his daughter from the train? The UC Ethics board denied his request. So does their decision mean that the state owns his body and can determine what to do with it? And what if a pregnant woman decided to sell (does it make a difference if it’s a donation as opposed to a sale?) her fetus? What are the rights of the state?
Sandel uses the last couple of chapters to state his own preference of what constitutes Justice. I found these the least interesting of the book. The best part if his weaving of the hypotheticals with a deep understanding of the historical and philosophical viewpoints.
Listening to this book, I was reminded of a talk I heard given by Rushworth Kidder whose point was that deciding between good and evil is easy; the hard decisions are those that require choosing between two goods each of which may have a different outcome.
My wife and I listened to this book on a trip and the dilemmas posed some very lively discussions.
Ayn Rand was not afraid of turning conventional wisdom on its head. For millennia, one of the few ethical principles that prevailed across cultures waAyn Rand was not afraid of turning conventional wisdom on its head. For millennia, one of the few ethical principles that prevailed across cultures was the value of altruism, i.e. , giving up your life for the benefit of others. Rubbish, writes Rand.
Rand was as anti-community and pro-individual as anyone I have ever read. Adamantly opposed to coercive state and religious power, she built a philosophy, Objectivism, on rational thinking and reason. She became too dogmatic and rigid for my taste in later years; nevertheless, she has some very interesting things to say.
"Every human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others and therefore, man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself." I find this statement profound in its implications; if it were to be adopted everywhere, wars would cease. It's only because we have bought into the principle of sacrificing oneself for the greater good that armies can survive, yet the reason is so others can accumulate or obtain what you should be able to.
In her philosophy, the happiness of the individual is paramount. Religious types will find her philosophy more than unsettling, because as an atheist, she values the present and current life above everything else. Whether you like her or not, several of the essays are well worth the time to read, particularly "Collectivized Rights" and "Man's Rights." One's gut response is to say that she has rejected charity and helping others. Not at all. It's just that helping others should not be at one's own expense, e.g., spending a fortune to cure one's wife of a disease because the wife is important to oneself would fit nicely into her worldview. Love is entirely selfish.
An important book no matter where you stand....more
Updated 4/12/09. I was handing out this book to all my friends and colleagues at work, especially our president, who seemed to think a small coterie oUpdated 4/12/09. I was handing out this book to all my friends and colleagues at work, especially our president, who seemed to think a small coterie of sycophants was all he needed.
From an earlier review I wrote some time ago: Wisdom of Crowds is a very insightful book about how we make decisions. The author describes the dangers of homogeneity in promoting group think, something we will begin to see more of in the Bush second administration as he builds his Cabinet with "Yes" men and women. Analysis by social scientists shows that decisions made by groups that permit little diversity are often wrong and conformity to adhere to the majority opinion can be very strong. Solomon Asch 's studies on conformity showed that an individual would often agree with the group even if there was overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For example, when presented with a card showing lines of different lengths and asked to pick the shortest one, subjects would almost always pick the one chosen by other members of the group (the experimenter's confederates) even when it was obviously not the shortest.
Many of Surowiceki's arguments seem counter-intuitive, but he cites a fair amount of evidence that the best decisions, on average, are always made by groups rather than individuals regardless of their expertise. In fact, he says: "... the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made."
For the group decision-making process to work the best, several elements must be present.
1. A formal process for encouraging disagreement must be present;
2. The group must consist of stakeholders and non-stakeholders, i.e., people normally not part of the group should be present to make sure diversity of opinion is present. Diversity guarantees that multiple perspectives are brought into the decision-making process and that a broader range of information is included;
3. the group must belief and see that it has the responsibility for making decisions. If the decision is made elsewhere, the result is the opposite, i.e., bad results or at least not the best;
4. individuals be independent and have that independence respected to avoid being swayed by a leader or one powerful individual,
5. and there be a process for aggregating the opinions. It's important that pressure to conform be suppressed.
An intelligent group does not ask of its individual members to conform to the dominant view. Instead it creates a mechanism that resembles a democracy or a market. Individual group members get the opportunity to bring in their own information and opinions and are not forced to change their views. Their independence must be explicitly protected.
Much like army ants in a circular mill who die from exhaustion following a lost leader, humans will often indulge in group think and group action even if it is not in their interest to do so. And the more influence we exert on one another the more likely we are to become collectively dummer. A very good argument for encouraging independent thinkers and nay sayers.
The first half, or so, of the book is theory (sounds dry, but it's really quite fascinating) followed by some case studies....more
updated 4/12. It has always been clear to me that faith-based belief systems eliminate the possibility of conversation and the alternative to conversaupdated 4/12. It has always been clear to me that faith-based belief systems eliminate the possibility of conversation and the alternative to conversation is violence. For example, if you want to discuss a policy issue that relates to a faith-based belief, the dialogue ceases when one says "I don't believe that." There can be no response.
Sam Harris discusses the issue also, but much more articulately. He argues that current world conflicts relate to incompatible religious doctrines; that even thought the Israeli-Palestinian debate is framed in terms of land, the theological claims on the real estate are incompatible. Moderates remain blind to the impact of religious dogma on behavior. Harris argues in his book that we need to take religious dogmatists at their word; if they say that blowing themselves up in the service of their belief will gain them a place in heaven, we should believe them.
Is there an alternative to religious faith? Either God exists or he doesn't. What's the alternative to believing in Santa Claus. No one wants to be the last kid in class to believe in Santa. There doesn't have to be an alternative to faith. We can relinquish our religious beliefs. There are no consequences. Only 10% of Swedes are believers unlike 80% of Americans. Change the word God to Zeus. How many people would insist that we hang on to Zeus. When the tsunami killed thousands, wouldn't it have made more sense to suggest we pray to Poseidon, just to cover all the bases?
Harris argues that whatever is true ultimately transcends cultures. We don't talk about Christian physics or Moslem algebra. An experiment in physics done in Baghdad will be just as legitimate in Los Angeles. The challenge for us is to find ways for us to find terms that don't require belief in anything that has insufficient evidence. "A fundamental willingness to be open to evidence is essential for the conversation."
Lazarus, has, as the basis for the story, a most startling premise: that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave he brought him back from the dead buLazarus, has, as the basis for the story, a most startling premise: that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave he brought him back from the dead but not back to life. Jesus comes to Lazarus's tomb, after failing to heed pleas from Lazarus' family to heal him from the illness which caused his death. Jesus performs the miracle at the tomb, but Lazarus, while he walks and breathes, and becomes a testament to the miracle, can no longer make love to his wife, no longer has the strength to work at his craft, cannot sleep; indeed cannot die! When the Sanhedrin try to have him murdered because they fear the evidence of Jesus' miracles, Lazarus does not bleed from the multiple stab wounds, nor does he feel pain. He realizes he has become a walking zombie, smelling of the dank tomb, reeking of death, a source of curiosity and. disgust, but unable to die.
Lazarus becomes obsessed with finding Jesus to discover why God has done this to him. He traces Jesus to Jerusalem only to discover him being crucified. He then hears of the resurrection and tries to find the resurrected Christ. Along the way he meets the Apostles who are hiding in fear of retribution from the Jewish authorities, and Jair, the blind man to whom Jesus gave back his sight. Each he questions, receiving platitudes or even deceit. Mary. Jesus's mother. tells him "fear not, everything he does is for the glory of God." John tells him it is important that he not look alive or no one would believe he had been brought back from the dead. Lazarus asks. "What kind of God is it who, in order to be recognized, is willing to destroy forever someone who never did any harm?" who in fact had aided his Son when he was hiding from the authorities. People keep asking Lazarus what death was like, expecting tales of heaven and visions of Abraham, yet he insists it was only nothingness, like a "black pit."
Absire’s vision of the world is truly bleak. Murderers and beggars are familiar features of the landscape. In the end Lazarus holes up in an abandoned sewer while Jerusalem is destroyed by the Romans. He has a terrifying thought, "What if Yahweh does not exists, never had existed. And that everything the children of Israel put their faith in, that he had faith in, was a lie." In the end he abandons himself to await eternity in a semi-alive state, his desolate journey having become a nightmare.
The Chicago Tribune describe Lazarus in a mastery of understatement: "It is hard to picture a more effectively sustained achievement: Bleakness here is wrapped in gloom inside a shroud of despair within a veil of dreariness enveloped by a swathe of nothingness." I'm still not quite sure why I finished the book except that the tale is riveting, insidiously beckoning the reader toward a glimmer of hope and light only at the end to dash you upon the rocks of utter gloom. ...more
I read this in college and it just blew me away. One of the more important books of the 20th century. Her idea that "banality" and thoughtlessness, reI read this in college and it just blew me away. One of the more important books of the 20th century. Her idea that "banality" and thoughtlessness, relying on the routines of bureaucracy lie at the root of evil had a profound impact on my thinking. "It was sheer thoughtlessness that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the period," she says of Eichmann. One can still see the basic truths of her book operating very day.
The latest method to avoid accountability seems to be to claim one is "too busy" to be brought to trial. This tactic, used by Bob Bennett, in an effort to keep Clinton from having to answer charges in the Paul Jones case, is now being used by members of the Bush administration to avoid having to face possible charges for ostensible war crimes.
That kind of thinking brings a whole new meaning to "banal"....more
This quote about sums it up: "Tenure was originally invented to protect radical professors, those who challenged the accepted order. But we don't haveThis quote about sums it up: "Tenure was originally invented to protect radical professors, those who challenged the accepted order. But we don't have such people anymore at the universities, and the reason is tenure. When time comes to grant it nowadays, the radicals get screened out. That's its principal function. It's a very good system, really -- keeps academic life at a decent level of tranquillity." ...more
Richard Reeves, one of our preeminent political writers, decided to retrace de Tocqueville's journey 150 years later. He describes what he found in AmRichard Reeves, one of our preeminent political writers, decided to retrace de Tocqueville's journey 150 years later. He describes what he found in American Journey. De Tocqueville's Democracy in America has been called one of the best, and perhaps the first, modern book on political science - it's also one of the most readable. He and a friend, Beaumont, came to America in 1831 ostensibly to examine the American penal system - that in France being considered archaic and medieval.
America was an exciting place in the 1830's, with expansion across three frontiers: geographical, industrial, and Political. Reform was the byword, and de Tocqueville was struck by the conditions of equality he saw around him. The difference between federal governments in Germany and Switzerland and the United States was that in America the federal government had direct access to the people. It did not have to go through an intermediate level of bureaucracy. He could see already how the power of the purse lead to more and more centralization of power, a trend that Reeves notes has continued without abatement since then. But today power rests less on the people, more on "the businesses who threaten to move out-of-state [or country:]... they have a chokehold on us. We have to do what they want or they'll leave... leaving us to clean up the mess."
Americans have always valued and taught the importance of independence, but freedom with a communal self-interest. So we become "leavers" who, in search of independence, leave what we have in search of something elusively better, but we continue to identify ourselves as part of subgroups with political agendas of self-interest.
Americans' enthusiasm for Freud is a reflection of this self-interest. "What Freud did was to legitimize and eventually institutionalize an emphasis on the individual and self American democracy did just about the same thing. 'It is about themselves that the Americans are excited,' "[said de Tocqueville:] the answers did not come from God or anywhere else, they came from within us.
"Therapy represents antireligion," according to Christopher Lasch, "the hope of achieving the modern equivalent of salvation, 'mental health."' The "born again" movement is another example of this emphasis on individuality - albeit in the opposite direction from Freud -- a direct personal link to God without the church as an intermediary. The United States was the first to use penitentiaries, i.e., detention, as a punishment for crime. It was an attempt by the Quakers to humanize a system which heretofore detained persons until trial, then punished them with death, banishment, branding, etc. The new prisons placed prisoners in solitary confinement, the theory being that solitude, reflection and Bible reading would be reformative. While intended to be humane, the result, as Charles Dickens was to complain 12 years later, was in many cases insanity. De Tocqueville surprised his hosts by asking to talk with the prisoners. He learned what Dickens was to report, that solitude was an intense form of punishment (unless, of course, one had many children, in which case it came as a blessing.)
De Tocqueville reported that criminals were always caught and confined because everyone conspired to catch them. Reeves notes that today that's laughable. The general feeling is that most criminals never get caught, that most crimes are rarely investigated, and that, if caught, most criminals get off. Rehabilitation was just beginning to be considered a solution at the time of De Tocqueville. Medicine and psychiatry had turned crime into a sickness rather than evil. The pendulum has swung back and the public now demands vengeance and retribution.
Tyranny is tyranny whether it comes from a regent or a majority, and De Tocqueville worried that ,the majority in the United States has immense actual power and the power of opinion which is almost as great.... 'The people is always right' that is the dogma of the republic just as 'the king can do no wrong' is the religion of the monarchic states... what is surely true is that neither the one nor the other is true.... The consequences of this state of affairs are fate-laden and dangerous to the future." We must all rejoice when the Supreme Court protects the rights of the minority.
For years we have been assaulted by politicians and religious leaders preaching the Christian "work ethic," yet I find little justification, if any, fFor years we have been assaulted by politicians and religious leaders preaching the Christian "work ethic," yet I find little justification, if any, for the concept anywhere in the New Testament. I happened to be discussing this with my dad a while ago, who also happens to be one of the smartest people I know, and he recommended Weber’s book. First published in 1905, it provoked considerable controversy.
Weber's thought was grounded in a belief that history is of critical portance to the social sciences and that material factors had enormous influence upon the course of history — I didn't know any of this, I'm stealing it from the introduction. Weber was very critical of Marxism, but shared with Marx a concern for the evolution of industrialism capitalism. In the first few chapters, Weber defines what he means by capitalism. It's not just the pursuit of wealth that has been common to numerous cultures, but is an activity associated with the rational organization of formally free labor (his italics). Capitalism requires an organized labor force and a ready source of investment capital. Some of these factors were not present in Hindu and Confucian societies. Hinduism, in particular its tradition of caste, prevented the ready organization of the labor force. Also, its emphasis on asceticism focused toward the otherworldly and afterlife, and tended to accentuate the non-material. Trade was highly developed in China as in India, but Confucianism permitted a more material focus. The Calvinist ethic combined Judaism's "ethical prophecy" that encouraged emulation of the prophet with the eastern traditions to form a philosophy of reformation, i.e. achieve salvation through reforming the world by means of economic activity.
The development of the Western city was also important because they provided the foundation for political autonomy and the creation of a bourgeois society. Eastern civilizations were hampered by strong kinship relationships that crossed the agrarian-urban boundaries which tied the cities more firmly to an agrarian tradition. The problem that Weber articulates is that the Puritan wanted to work in a calling, for his salvation. That "work ethic" was harnessed by capitalism because we have to work, the sale of our labor being the only means to material satisfaction.
Jeffrey Burton Russell has, one might say, specialized in the devil. In a series of volumes he has traced the evolution of Satan and evil as perceivedJeffrey Burton Russell has, one might say, specialized in the devil. In a series of volumes he has traced the evolution of Satan and evil as perceived in religion, literature and philosophy since the beginning of recorded time. Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World traces modern man's view of the devil beginning with the 16th century to the present.
We are surrounded by different "truth systems." What may be true for science may have different validity in another truth system, e.g. art or history. Science says little about beauty, for example. A tree is a plant, but it may also be a symbol in art, a totem in religion, or the tree on which John Smith was hanged. All are equally true. So it is with the devil and evil, explains Russell. Moral evil cannot be measured by science which can only investigate the physical world.
The devil as a concept was created to help explain evil. During the 16th century as Protestants and Catholics warred with one another, Satan grew in stature. The Pope symbolized the Antichrist for Protestants while Catholics exorcised demons from Protestants. The Devil became an important symbol for religion which philosophically requires evil in order to define good. The Faust legend metaphorically represented the changing attitudes toward evil that occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries. The struggle in medieval times had been homo centric: God vs. Satan, but God intervenes to save and protect man. In Shakespeare and Faust the struggle became more individualistic (society had become more bourgeois and competitive); the struggle a more protestant and personal one. The fight is now between man and the devil. The struggle has also become more pessimistic. In medieval times the devil was depicted as a clown, funny-looking and stupid. The sinner was invariably saved. Now, Faust turns away from God, hardens his heart and is invariably doomed. The increasing ambivalence toward knowledge is apparent. The Faustian sin is to seek ultimate knowledge and the power which comes from this knowledge. (I'm going to have to quit talking about knowledge being power). The tension between religion and scholarship still apparent today was unique to Protestantism according to Russell. The Devil has also become much more introspective and sympathetic toward his victim (The Screwtape Letters ?). The humanization and internalization of the devil became a major theme in 16th and 17th century literature.
Russell traces the changes in perception of evil from the clowning medieval simpleton to the Reformation's introspective and cunning, spiritual lunatic. The more plausible Satan reflected qualities admired by the romantics: individualism, rebellion, ambition and power; a liberator in rebellion against a society who blocks the way toward beauty and love. The Gothic novel portrayed good as a veneer covering up evil and danger. Ironically during the 17th century, belief in the devil declined as those in power became threatened by the witchcraft craze. It was one thing to let the commoners burn each other at the stake, but when the elite felt threatened suddenly it was discovered there was no scriptural basis for sorcery or witchcraft. Theologians also worried that evil had become so prominent as to make the devil virtually independent of God. Russell traces the rise of skepticism and by the late 1700s the much more common view was that God and Satan exist but rarely intervene in the world.
Russell's final chapter is devoted to a discussion of God and the Devil's role in a modern materialistic world. He points out that while science cannot confirm the existence of God neither can it find any evidence against it. He argues that the concept of evil and the devil may be useful because it allows us to conceptualize the reality of non-good (my term.) If it were better understood that a "perceived spiritual voice may come from a power of evil, dangerous cult figures who argue that they speak with the voice of God might win fewer followers." Russell is at his best when dealing with the historical evidence of belief in Satan. His literary allusions become tendentious. Still, a book worth reading. Rather than start at the end of the series you might wish to begin at the beginning with The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity, followed by Satan: The Early Christian Tradition, then Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages....more
The Founding Fathers obviously placed a high value on happiness or they wouldn't have insisted on pursuit of it as a basic right in a major American dThe Founding Fathers obviously placed a high value on happiness or they wouldn't have insisted on pursuit of it as a basic right in a major American document. Bertrand Russell, who already as an adolescent was trying to reconcile the meaning of life and the role of reason, adopted a Millian (if that's a word) premise to "act in a manner. . . to be most likely to produce the greatest happiness, considering both the intensity of the happiness and the number of people made happy." In The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, volume I, Conscience, he argued, was too dependent upon education, a product a evolution and education, and therefore "it is an absurdity to follow that rather than reason." The inherited part "can only be principles leading to the preservation of the species" and the education part of conscience is derived from the same imparted wisdom that "made Bloody Mary burn the Protestants." Russell was good friends with Alfred Whitehead who was a teacher and mentor to him, although in later years to parted on aspects of their philosophies. He perceived Whitehead as having the qualities of a perfect teacher: "He took a interest in those with whom he had to deal and knew both their strong and weak points. He would elicit from a pupil the best of which a pupil was capable. He was never repressive, or sarcastic or any of those things that inferior teachers like to be. I think that in all the abler young men with whom he came in contact, he inspired, as he did in me, a very real and lasting affection."
Russell's comments about people he met and his friends were amusingly perspicacious. "My impression of the old families of Philadelphia Quakers was that they had all the effeteness of a small aristocracy. Old misers of ninety would sit brooding over their hoard while their children of sixty or seventy waited for their death with what patience they could command. Various forms of mental disorder appeared common. Those who must be accounted sane were apt to be very stupid."
It was while in the midst of writing his great Principia Mathematica that he had a revelation that was to alter his life. Alfred Whitehead's wife was in severe pain from a heart condition and while attending to her he came to the following reflections: "the loneliness of the human soul in unendurable; nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort that religious teachers have preached; whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful, or at best war is wrong, that a public school [the English public school is the equivalent of an American private school:] is abominable, that the use of force is to be deprecated, and that in relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that. . . . cared only for exactness and analysis, I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty, with an intense interest in children, and with some desire almost as profound as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make life endurable."...more
At age forty-eight, Denby, a theatre critic for New York magazine, decided to return to Columbia University and retake two courses, Literature of the At age forty-eight, Denby, a theatre critic for New York magazine, decided to return to Columbia University and retake two courses, Literature of the Humanities and Contemporary Civilization, both required of all Columbia graduates. His motivation was to force himself to read through the "entire shelf," not to rediscover his youth, " most overpraised time of life," but to get a second chance at school. He was " of not really knowing anything." The result is a fascinating intellectual journey through the Western canon. "Obviously, it wasn't just the learning that excited me, but the idea of reading the big books, the promise of enlargement, the adventure of strangeness. Reading has within it a collector's passion, the desire to possess . . . ."
Perhaps Western only in name, for as Denby points out in the first essay on the Iliad, the great Homeric poem hardly represents the culture as we understand it. The Greeks and their enemies had very different sets of values from those we profess to adhere to today. Plato, too, is hardly harmless and contains much that should be offensive and repugnant to our moralistic and self-righteous religious bigots who suppress Harry Potter books while ostensibly celebrating the "" The Republic has been the source of considerable antidemocratic theory, not to mention collectivized agriculture and eugenics, superior strains of individuals being used for the breeding of superior offspring. As an adult, Denby is struck by how harmful many of these ideas could be, Plato' goals requiring a " of self-suppression that we would find intolerable." Of course, when Plato wrote, Greece was falling apart. How could people disagree so violently when they share so much in common, emotions in particular: " pleasure, sorrow, exaltation." What Plato recognized, and was trying to prevent, was that when people have different interests, a difference in property or loyalty, the state disintegrates. The valuable core is Plato' realization that unity is required, and unity comes from everyone working as part of a common " organism," that shares a common art and culture and a political system that is viewed as working for the benefit of the people. All newly appointed faculty in humanities and social sciences are expected to teach one of the sections, but not everyone does so willingly.
Denby interviewed Siobhan Kilfeather, who had arrived with a Ph.D. from Princeton. She had a particularly strong interest in Irish literature and believed that nothing but works originally written in English should be taught; she was incensed that Irish writers had been considered English writers. It was her contention that the whole idea of a "canon" was nonsensical, and that such a contrivance took all of the works out of "context," that no argument was ever made in a vacuum and students would never understand Jane Austen unless they had read Fielding and Richardson first; that students did not have the requisite reading skills and would never appreciate the beauty of the language so what was the point. Denby countered her arguments quite well, I thought, noting that when the books were originally written and read there was no "context" as Kilfeather defined it, and that the whole notion of context "was an academic rather than a literary or reader demand -- an insistence on orderly exposition of influences and roots and so on, all of which had more to do with controlling the presentation of books in courses than with anyone's pleasure in reading them. . . .Readers! That's what undergraduate education should be producing. Kilfeather made the classic error of the academic left: She confused literary study (and her own professional interests) with reading itself." Kilfeather's basic argument seemed to boil down to: "They haven't been educated properly; therefore, let's not educate them properly." Denby decided to take the final exam with the students. It's a moment that provoked extraordinary fear in him, and despite his previous commitment not to, he couldn' help cramming. "Being examined is one of the things you become an adult to avoid. Once you pass twentyfive, you learn how to cover your weaknesses and ignorance and lead with your strengths. Every adult, by definition, is a corner-cutting phony; experience teaches you what to attend to and what to slough off, when to rest and when to go all out. . . .Taking an exam is the grown-up's classic anxiety dream." Afterwards he required a beta blocker, some alcohol, and "two fingers of Nyquil." This is really one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time, a sort of personalized intellectual romp through the Western intellectual tradition. I cannot recommend it enough.
An anecdote: Sidney Morgenbesser, professor of philosophy at Columbia, was smoking in the subway. A transit cop came up to the professor and demanded that he put out his pipe. "What if everyone smoked? the cop said reprovingly. "Who are you -- Kant?" the irritated professor asked, whereupon the policeman, misunderstanding "Kant" as something else, hauled Sidney Morgenbesser off to the precinct house....more
This fascinating book reinforces an observation I have made over the years: that the ideas of individuals once institutionalized, become perverted andThis fascinating book reinforces an observation I have made over the years: that the ideas of individuals once institutionalized, become perverted and reinvented by those who claim to be the authentic followers of the guru who invented them. Certainly this is true of most religious leaders from Christ to Joseph Smith. It is happening to Robert Greenleaf, and it certainly happened to Ayn Rand, although in the case of the latter she may have had a hand in encouraging the transformation and idolatry.
Heresy and orthodoxy become important concepts once ideas have been codified and institutionalized: anyone with the temerity to suggest revisions or alternatives becomes a heretic and traitor. (Interestingly, the word traitor has religious roots. It comes from a Latin word meaning "handers-over," those Christians who obeyed the Diocletian order to hand over the Scriptures so they could be destroyed. Whether these traditores could receive communion again caused a major schism in the church. Of course one has to belong to an organization and to believe its basic tenets in order to be heretical or a traitor. Hence the difference between heretic and infidel.) Walker is no fan, but I think he makes the same error Philip Johnson did in his attack on intellectuals, condemning their philosophies because they were unable personally to live a blameless life. Walker denounces Rand because the did not often live the life she expounded in her books and he blames her for the iconographic adoration of her adolescent followers. Walker insists that only adolescents looking for a philosophical underpinning were susceptible to her beliefs, perhaps a questionable assumption, but one difficult to challenge given a paucity of data. More to the point he criticizes her for being essentially a derivative thinker (haven't most philosophers derived or based their thinking on the work of others?) and he says her books have little literary value. Ayn Rand, according to virtually everyone who knew her, was charismatic and unconflicted in her beliefs and that alone attracted many, often the young, to her. If she had a major flaw, it was her adoption of an orthodox position that considered views other than hers to be "unreasonable" and "unobjective," and to prevent the movement from developing its own orthodoxy.
There is an apparently inherent contradiction between her celebration of individualism and self-reliance and the Objectivist movement itself, but that is in the nature of all movements and perhaps a great reason to avoid them, be they religious or philosophical. Ayn Rand's heroes were the antithesis of followers, but I suspect that humans are biologically programmed to want to adhere to groups and to define themselves by that group, and to identify too closely with the set of beliefs, the orthodoxy of the group, and to want to exclude and brand as heretics those who refuse to adhere to the group's principles. It's true of the religious right and the radical left. The irony is that most movements eventually become so enamored of the trappings of their orthodoxy that they lose sight of the original beliefs of the founder, in fact, they often become irrelevant. But that's why we have libraries, to help everyone challenge their assumptions.
Clearly, the book is a vindictive, personal attack that will be ignored by Objectivists (who should read it, if only for the discussions of orthodoxy and heresy) and lauded by those who can't stand Rand. I found it a lively, if shrill, examination of the history of a movement founded by a passionate, if personally flawed, individual who, rightly or wrongly, has influenced a large number of people through a body of interesting novels; an examination of a movement to came to practice the opposite of the principles its leader espoused.
**I know "their" is incorrect here, but it seems a nice gender-neutral compromise, surely much better than his/her or just "her" or "his", so I think it's time for the English orthodox police (of which I am one when reading my kids' stuff) to admit this use of "their."
I first read about this concept several years ago in a New Yorker article that discussed the theory of epidemics as it relates to crime, particularly I first read about this concept several years ago in a New Yorker article that discussed the theory of epidemics as it relates to crime, particularly the power of context. A book (Fixing Broken Windows Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities by George Kelling) proposed that police should spend more time dealing with the little things, e.g., arresting people for public drunkenness, going after the street hookers small-time dope dealers, rather than putting resources into the high-profile, big crimes. "If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge." This theory was adopted by David Gunn, the new director of the New York Transit System, after Kelling was brought in as a consultant. New York and the subway system were in the throes of a terrible crime wave (remember Bernard Goetz?). Gunn had the transit cops arrest fare-beaters, and they never allowed a graffiticovered car to enter service. The kids would spend three nights painting cars and then the workers would paint over what the kids had done. "It was a message to them. If you want to spend three nights of your time vandalizing a train, fine. But it's never going to see the light of day." The cops, at first angry they were spending time arresting simple fare-beaters — after all, only $1.25 was at stake — discovered that many of those they caught had records and were carrying guns, and many had outstanding warrants, and an important signal was being sent. In less than six years, the subway system became one of the safest. Mayor Giuliani hired the top transit cop to implement the same theory city-wide. The emphasis was now on the socalled "minor" stuff, the "squeegee men" who extorted money from drivers at intersections, public urination, throwing trash on the streets, and other "minor" crimes. The effect was sensational. The crime rate in New York plummeted. The murder rate fell to one of the lowest in the nation. Context was everything. Studies over the years have revealed that we are mistaken when we view character as something innate, and that we overestimate the importance of character traits when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior. It turns out that "character isn't what we think it is, or rather, what we want it to be. . . It's more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context." Broken Windows and the Power of Context theory say "that the criminal — far from being someone who acts for fundamental, intrinsic reasons and who lives in his own world — is actually someone acutely sensitive to his environment, who is alert to all kinds of cues, and who is prompted to commit crimes based on his perception of the world around him."
The book is much more than about crime and its causes. Gladwell is interested in systems and why certain people and linkages can create social epidemics, be they the purchasing of certain items in a store or how children react to concepts on television. Ideas and messages spread just the way viruses do, and if a certain mass is reached the epidemic begins and is caught by millions. Why do we remember Paul Revere's ride, but not the other fellow who set off in a different direction but carried the same message in the same manner? Gladwell has an explanation. He had two things going for him. He was a "connector," i.e., he knew and was known by almost everyone in the Boston area, but he was also a "maven," an individual that collected information about the regulars. Gladwell has filled the book with lively anecdotes that support the data he is presenting, making a fascinating read. ...more
In 1996, Alan Sokal submitted an article to Social Text entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum GravitIn 1996, Alan Sokal submitted an article to Social Text entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." If that title means little to you, that's OK because the article was, in fact, nonsense. It was part of an elaborate hoax and parody that Sokal was perpetrating on those who subscribe to "epistemic relativism," i.e., the belief that modern science is nothing more than myth, a "social construction."
This philosophy is particularly endemic to modern French philosophers who have attempted to appropriate the language of science in order to validate some of their thinking without understanding the science itself. Sokal, a renowned physicist, by filling his article with scientific balderdash and liberally citing the editors of Social Text (David Lodge's Law of Academic Life says "It is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one's peers.") had his article gleefully accepted, revealing the ignorance and vacuity of the pseudo-thinkers.
Fashionable Nonsense expands the revelations behind the parody and thoroughly reveals the emperor's nakedness. The authors, by analysis of several postmodernist French philosophers, show how they misuse, misrepresent, and misunderstand basic science. Sokal and Bricmont disclose how "deliberately obscure language" is used to hide confused thinking, that often if something is difficult to understand in the writings of these philosophers it's because they aren't saying anything.
Postmodernism, a trend fashionable in some social science and humanist circles, adopts the view that rejects the rationalism of the enlightenment and proposes that science is a "social construction" or "narration" and that there is no need to look for empirical evidence. Unfortunately, much of postmodernist "thinking" has become associated with the left, a linkage Sokal abhors. He wants to defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself. As Michael Albert, wrote for Z Magazine, "There is nothing truthful, wise, human, or strategic about confusing hostility with injustice and oppression, which is leftist, with hostility to science and rationality, which is nonsense."
A follow-up article, published as an appendix to the book, was submitted to Social Text but was rejected as not meeting their intellectual standards! It must have been understandable and made sense. In it Sokal wrote, "I confess that I am an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them."
This book is a delightful attack on intellectual confusion and a ringing call to obfuscate obfuscation.
While there is much to agree with in Thornton's admittedly interesting jeremiad, he falls into the trap of false knowledge he accuses others of havingWhile there is much to agree with in Thornton's admittedly interesting jeremiad, he falls into the trap of false knowledge he accuses others of having fallen into. Filled with clever quotes and wonderful slams at the admitted silliness of environmentalists and postmodernists, he nevertheless consistently makes sweeping generalizations based on often little more than reference to nineteenth century novels. For example, he quotes Herbert Marcuse, using him as a representative of silly thinking during the sixties and then proceeds to blame him (and the sixties) for "sexual disease, sexual degradation in the media and popular culture, unwed teen mothers, feral children raised by moral idiots, . . . (p. 25).
He vilifies the "cleverness with language" of the postmodern antirationalist yet on the same page indulges in the use of words like rodomontade and epiphenomena (47). Isolated anecdotes and examples are used to draw sweeping conclusions. Another example, "This is not to say that contemporary poststructuralists are incipient mass murderes. BUT [emphasis mine:] the connection between their ideas and the dehumanization that makes mass murder possible must be acknowledged." (49) Oh really? This is an example of rational thinking? It's unfortunate, Thornton has some very good points to make, but does not make them satisfactorily....more
Heresy, Smith defines in his preface, is the rejection of the orthodox, and heresies are considered a threat to the established social order once the Heresy, Smith defines in his preface, is the rejection of the orthodox, and heresies are considered a threat to the established social order once the dogma of the institution (be it religious or otherwise) has become aligned with the power of the state or political force. The state, holding the reins of power, uses force, instead of persuasion, to enforce the orthodoxy. The Founding Fathers, most practicing Deists, itself a form of heretical thought, understood this and insisted on the separation of church and state, thus preventing the establishment of an official religion, preventing, they hoped, official heresies as well. Orthodoxy itself is not dangerous, only its alliance with political power. The central theme of Smith's book is the "crucial difference between the voluntary orthodoxy of organizations and the politicized orthodoxy of governments. "A free society, complete with orthodoxies and prejudices, is the best of all worlds for the heretic. Liberty permits the heretic to pit his beliefs against those of the orthodox majority." The paradox for the heretic is whether if and when his view becomes the dominant - to politicize the new orthodoxy or to permit liberty, which enabled the heretic to conquer ideologically, to possibly undermine the new orthodoxy?
Smith is unapologetically atheist; belief in God for Smith is simply unreasonable and irrational. Asked to prove the nonexistence of God, Smith's answer is simply that one cannot prove a negative and that the person who asserts the existence of something bears the burden of proof. He asserts that to believe in faith or to rely on faith is to "defy and abandon the judgment of one's mind. Faith conflicts with reason. It cannot give you knowledge; it can only delude you into believing that you know more than you really do. Faith is intellectually dishonest, and it should be rejected by every person of integrity.
The book is a loosely connected series of essays that discuss a variety of Christian and social heresies. He begins with his own philosophic journey to atheism. He is certainly a libertarian, and the essays on public education and the War on Drugs reflect that philosophy. But the reason I began this book was to discover his writing about Ayn Rand. He devotes two substantial chapters to her and the Objectivist philosophy.
Rand evokes fierce passions, both pro and con. "Accounts of Objectivism written by Rand's admirers are frequently eulogistic and uncritical, whereas accounts written by her antagonists are often hostile and what is worse, embarrassingly inaccurate." The situation has been made worse by her appointed heir to the throne, Leonard Peikoff, who has declared Objectivism to be a "closed" philosophy, i.e., no critical analysis will be tolerated; one must accept it as he says it is and that's that. Whether Objectivism will survive such narrow-mindedness remains to be seen. It's a classic case of the true believer "unwilling to criticize the deity. Thinking for oneself is hard work so true believers recite catechisms and denounce heretics instead." Typically, this was contrary to Rand's philosophy of individualism and critical, rational thinking where "truth or falsehood must be one's sole concern and the sole criterion of judgment -- not anyone's approval or disapproval." ...more
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