I am not familiar with the works of Spinoza, but I have come across quite a few people who really like him. One of my college professors identified him as being influenced by medieval Islamic philosophers, at least by way of Maimonides. Of course, given my deep interest in the Sephardim, I have been particularly curious of Spinoza’s background: an Iberian Jewish family exiled in Amsterdam. Oddly enough, in an interview published in last fall’s ISIM Review, Abdolkarim Soroush admitted to an affinity with Spinoza:
I have a personal relationship with Spinoza; I feel a certain similarity in my fate with that of Spinoza: because of some of his unorthodox views, he was excommunicated, and had to leave his place of birth in Amsterdam. Of course, Spinoza’s was not a biblical God; I think it is very unfair, however, to call Spinoza an atheist. Some of his ideas are very relevant to the modern Muslim world: reconciling the religious law with democracy and providing a modern understanding of the state is much like what Spinoza has been doing. What makes Spinoza modern is that he historicizes all prophethood; but his ideas of prophethood are inspired in part by al-Farabi and Moses Maimonides.
The full interview is available online (PDF file).
Filed under: Philosophy
The news of Richard Rorty’s death last Friday took me by surprise. Even more surprising was that I did not find out about it until now! And that too was quite by chance, as I was browsing signandsight.com to procrastinate at work. Clearly, my Google Desktop news alerts did not find it newsy enough. But then again, fewer than 20 newspapers have found this worthy of reporting. There is something strangely ironic about this fact, considering how much Rorty disparaged academic Philosophy for its practical irrevelance. Alas, even as a leading philosopher of his day, Rorty remained largely unnoticed by the world: irrelevant in life, and in death!
There is, however, another (almost uncanny) reason why I was particularly taken aback by this news. So, I hadn’t actually read any of Rorty’s writings. Well, not until last Wednesday evening, when I took up an extremely short book called What’s the Use of Truth?, which is essentially the text of a debate between Richard Rorty and Pascal Engel. And then on Thursday morning, the next day, I was reading an article in The Crimson announcing the recipients of honorary degrees at this year’s Harvard commencement. The article named Rorty as one of the 10 honorands, which included Bill Gates and ex-president Larry Summers. However, at the bottom of the article was appended an amendment, which stated that “Rorty was unable to travel to Cambridge to accept the award and will not receive a degree.” I thought it was funny that all this happened in the course of a few hours: that I happened to read something by Rorty the very day that he was scheduled to be in the neighborhood. But then now, just three days later, I find out that he’s dead. Well, coincidence is the ‘logic’ of life!
On a slightly different note, is it a sign that you’re getting old when the intellectual luminaries of your time pass away one after another? John Rawls, Edward Said, and Jacques Derrida, to name a few, all died while I was in college!
My familiarity with Cornel West is relatively recent. But from my very first meager encounters of writings by and about him, I was convinced that this is a man in whom I’d find much to worship intellectually. And so when I found out last weekend that Dr. West was speaking at Northeastern University on Thursday, I really felt as if a prayer had been answered. After attempts on multiple fronts, I thankfully managed to get hold of a ticket, though this was not confirmed until literally hours before the event, which was fully packed!
The lecture was amazing. If we were to pick one person as the greatest living orator of our time, it would easily have to be Cornel West. I’m surely not the only one to notice something almost prophetic about this man — perpetually well-dressed as he is, in his three-piece suit and gilded cuff links. But I shouldn’t trivialize the depth and urgency of West’s message and call for justice with such superficial observations. I cannot, of course, recount all of the many things that West talked about, certainly not in the manner of eloquence and deep conviction that singularly characterizes him. Much of West’s speech dwelled on a critique of America as a “death-dodging, death-denying society” — one that wants to evade rather than confront the history of 246 years of “social death” manifested in the institution of slavery. West also talked about Henry James’s characterization of America as a “hotel civilization” (an intriguing notion that I must bring up in a later blog post), as well as all the implications of America as empire (“the heart of American darkness,” in reference to Conrad).
The title of this post is a reference to the two attributes that West believes are necessary for responsible human beings. The ‘Socratic’ springs from Plato’s famous quotation of Socrates’s conviction that the unexamined life is not worth living, to which Malcolm X adds: the examined life is painful. To be Socratic is therefore to be critical. But to that must be added the Prophetic impulse, which is to cry and to love — that is, to be human. Socrates, after all, was known to have never once shed tears; no one really knows why. The texts of the Abrahamic traditions, on the other hand, begin with tears: with love and concern for the oppressed.
I am inclined to quote here some words by West on what he calls “prophetic criticism” in Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America — a used copy of which I discovered months ago in the shabby basement of Harvard Bookstore.
Prophetic criticism rests on what I understand to be the best of Euro-American modernity — the existential imperative to institutionalize critiques of illegitimate authority and arbitrary uses of power; a bestowal of dignity, grandeur and tragedy on the ordinary lives of everyday people; and an experimental form of life that highlights curiosity, wonder, contingency, adventure, danger and, most importantly, improvisation. These elements constitute a democratic mode of being in the world inseparable from democratic ways of life and ways of struggle. Prophetic criticism is first and foremost an intellectual inquiry constitutive of existential democracy — a self-critical and self-corrective enterprise of human ’sense-making’ for the preserving and expanding of human empathy and compassion. Chekhov’s drama of the everyday and Kierkegaard’s unique Christian perspective, are exemplary European expressions of the personal aspects of existential democracy. John Dewey’s pragmatism (and democratic socialism) is a leading American example of the political aspects of existential democracy.Yet prophetic criticism is the product of not only Euro-American modernity, but also New World African modernity. New World African modernity consists of degraded and exploited Africans in American circumstances using European langauges and instruments to make sense of tragic predicaments — predicaments disproportionately shaped by white-supremacist bombardments on black beauty, intelligence, moral character and creativity. New World African modernity attempts to institutionalize critiques of white-supermacist authority and racist uses of power, to bestow dignity, grandeur and tragedy upon the denigrated lives of ordinary black people, and to promote improvisational life-strategies to love and joy in black life-worlds of radical and brutish contingency. New World African modernity radically interrogates and creatively appropriates Euro-American modernity by examining how “race” and “Africa” — themselves modern European constructs — yield insights and blindness, springboards and roadblocks for our understanding of multivarious and multileveled modernities. Prophetic criticism rests on the best of New World African modernity by making explicit the personal and political aspects of American African victims of Euro-American modernity. [Cornel West, Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. xi-xii]
Last night, when browsing through my copy of the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, I came across a very interesting passage about al-Ghazali’s take on the question of ethics and his response to the views of Ibn Miskawayh, who died about 3 decades before al-Ghazali was born. I went to bed thinking about some of the issues raised, and planned to write up something here. Unfortunately I don’t have enough time right now to reflect on everything that I would like to, but I decided I’ll copy the relevant quote here and then follow up on it later, hopefully tomorrow. So this is from the entry on “Islamic ethics”, contributed by the well-kown Oliver Leaman:
A particular interesting debate arose in the work of al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and is his response to an argument produced by Ibn Miskawayh. The latter argues that the religious and moral law is based on what is in our interest, and that we can see what the point of the law is by asking what its point is. Al-Ghazali replies that the point of the moral and religious law is that it has no point; it is entirely arbitrary and rests on nothing but the will of God. Some people may follow the principles of morality out of some confused idea that they are the right principles, but unless they follow those principles because they believe they are commanded by God to do so, their action is without value. Here al-Ghazali is using the idea of an earlier theological debate between the Mu’tazila and the Ash’ariyya on the basis of morality. For the former, morality can be derived from reason, and that is why God establishes it, since he acts in accordance with reason. The Ash’arites argued, by contrast, that morality means nothing more than what God demands of us, and it has no basis apart from that.
It was the Ash’arite view that prevailed in Islamic philosophy… (p. 447, Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich. 2005)
Filed under: Philosophy
In response to my previous entry, Leila wrote that she must differ on “fundamentalism as being pre-modern.” She thinks it’s “a very modern thing indeed.” That is a very important point, and I’m adressing this here (instead of in the comments section) because I must clarify the misunderstanding. It was my bad, really. The passage I copied is part of a longer discussion in which Habermas distinctly identifies fundamentalism as a modern phenomenon.
The reason I say this is an important point is because popular discourse characterizes fundamentalism as a medieval, barbaric thing: we hear all too often how al-Qaeda wants to bring about a return to the horrors of the 13th (or whatever) century. There are two problems with such beliefs: first, religious fundamentalism is not a very medieval thing. Second, medieval does not necessarily mean horrible barbarism. Much of the stereotypes about the “Dark Ages” are unfair assumptions based on an attitude we inherit from the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation — medievalists are now challenging/correcting these misapprehensions. Indeed, when it comes to Islamic history, the medieval period was almost a “golden age” of tolerance and pluralism. Of course, that does not mean that everything was just great in the Middle Ages. The structure of premodern society, and the way people thought, had many elements that we hope humanity has “progressed” beyond. (And so Habermas suggests in the quote in my last post that fundamentalism is characterized by the exclusivity of “premodern belief attitudes.” See below.)
The last two semesters in college, when I was auditing a couple of courses on Islamic theology and current Muslim thought, I had fun watching the reaction of many students when they realized the “modernity” of contemporary jihad movements and when they realize how the birth of 20th century Islamism was largely sparked off by the encounter with “the West.”
Now, I’ll first quote once more from Borradori’s summary of Habermas’s ideas:
Habermas’s critique of Weber’s pessimism toward modernity provides a unique key to interpret religious fundamentalism. Weber’s negative description of the effects of instrumental rationality and secularization eerily fits the religious fundamentalist perception that Western culture is uprooting traditional forms of life. Fundamentalism echoes Weber’s contention that such uprooting, in homogenizing cultures and estranging individual members from their communities, tends to destroy the possibility of spiritual and moral identity. Fundamentalism, precisely because of its opposition to modernity and modernization, is for Habermas a distinctively and uniquely modern phenomenon. [Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p.71]
Emphasis added. I will have to read more of Habermas, but so far I think I might have a slightly different take on this. I tend to sympathize with much of Weber’s critique of modernity, and the interesting thing is, many of the things that Weber finds problematic in modernity can actually be found in modern fundamentalist thought/practice! And in that sense, I would say that religious fundamentalism is a “modern phenomenon” not only because it apparently rejects modernity, but also because it actually even appropriates the modern! I’ll admit that there’s more complexity to this than my fairly simple analysis here may seem to suggest.
Anyways. I would also like include another quotation here, this one directly from the words of Habermas.
…I would explain the frozen features of such a mentality [of fundamentalism] in terms of the repression of striking cognitive dissonances. This repression occurs when the innocence of the epistemological situation of an all-encompassing world perspective is lost and when, under the cognitive conditions of scientific knowledge and of religious pluralistic, a return to the exclusivity of premodern belief attitudes is propagated. These attitudes cause such striking cognitive dissonances since the complex life circumstances in modern pluralistic societies are normatively compatible only with a strict universalism in which the same respect is demanded for everybody — be they Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist, believers of nonbelievers. [ibid., p. 32]
I think I find this thesis appealing because I have often seen evidence of this kind of cognitive dissonance among people from (Islamically) conservative backgrounds.
Filed under: Philosophy
“Seeing oneself through the eyes of others is what modernity has asked of religion. The other in this case is a competing plurality of others, including different religious faiths, scientific knowledge, and political institutions. Fundamentalism is the rejection of this cluster of challenges, which Habermas describes as ‘the repression of striking cognitive dissonances’ and the return to ‘the exclusivity of premodern belief attitudes.’ A belief attitude indicates the way in which we believe rather than what we believe in. Fundamentalism has less to do with any specific text or religious dogma and more to do with the modality of belief.” Quoting Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p.72.
For a while now I’ve been meaning to refer back to Giovanni Borradori’s Philosophy in a Time of Terror, because I often find myself thinking about an idea suggested by Derrida in his interview with Borradori: the idea that mechanisms like the ‘war on terror’ themselves inadvertently appropriate ‘terrorism’. I just finally got the book out again and skimmed through parts of it, and I’m going to separately post here on Derrida’s attempt to define (or rather, his attempt to demonstrate the difficulty of defining) “terrorism”. For now, however, below is an excerpt from Borradori’s summary of Derrida’s ideas:
In Derrida’s mind, it is impossible to draw any distinctions regarding terrorism — between war and terrorism, state and nonstate terrorism, terrorism and national liberation movements, national and international terrorism. If it is so hard to meaningfully attach any predicates to it, it simply means that terrorism is irreducibly ineffable and enigmatic. This truth is hard to accept but even more dangerous to reject
Politically speaking, the more slippery a concept the easier it is to appropriate it opportunistically. Derrida did not hesitate to declare that the most powerful and destructive appropriation of terrorism is precisely its use as a self-evident concept by all the parties involved. These include what he calls the “technoeconomic media,” the U.S. State Department, and national governments as well as relevant international institutions. Obviously, nobody means to cause harm — but this does not erase responsibility, which means that all political, economic, and military interlocutors on the post-9/11 global scene are in dire need to use language very carefully.
Derrida was also somber about the difficulty of beating the perverse dynamics of autoimmunity. None of the parties involved in the struggle against terrorism can afford to refrain from talking about it, but the more they do so the more they help the terrorist cause, by giving it status, visibility, and a sense of purpose. This is how both the information and political systems, which are supposed to protect civilians from the threat of global terrorism, progressively weaken in the face of danger. [~p.153, Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Juergen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)]
Now, an “autoimmunitary process is that strange behavior where a living being, in quasi-suicidal fashion, ‘itself’ works to destroy its own protection, to immunize itself against its ‘own’ immunity” (ibid, p.94). Don’t ask me what that actually means!
In a world where atrocities happen on a scale that would have been unimaginable prior to the twentieth century, we must contend with the inadequacy of language, whether visual or textual, to account for the horror of these experiences. What is the use of art, poetry, or, we might add, criticism, in light of these events? Theodor Adorno grappled with these questions when he commented that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. In contrast, Anselm Kiefer suggests the possibility that through art we can begin to be redeemed from these horrors.
I mentioned liking Anselm Kiefer’s Zim Zum at the National Gallery of Art in DC last week: it was the last stop on the 50-minute tour I took, and according to the guide, “one of the most difficult pieces” in the gallery. It apparently depicts the moment of creation, though also with allusions to the Holocaust, and the post-War void in German society. For me, it evoked a strong resonance with existential angst. Unfortunately, because of the type of materials Kiefer used to construct the piece, a picture of it does not approximate the actual experience. Incidentally, while in the library last night I randomly came across an article about Kiefer in the journal Comparative Literature, and felt the urge to copy the introductory passages from it as a possible stepping stone to further reflection. The author continues:
But because Kiefer’s philosophy relies on art’s representation of even the most reprehensible perspectives of history, he places some heady responsibilites on his critics — both to decide if “good” politics is essential to “good” art and to assess whether Kiefer’s art reflects “good” politics, even if it is “good” art.
… Kiefer’s work is now understood as contirbuting to a discourse on post-World War II German nationalism and iconoclasm, and it is partly this subject matter itself, in the wake of what sholars have termed Germany’s “cultural amnesia” about the Holocaust, that lends Kiefer’s work such edge. But Kiefer’s work is made precarious not only because he takes up the same Romantic painters that the Nazis used for their propaganda, but also becuase the epic, heroic, and Romantic qualities he exploits in his works are key elements of narratives that have historically perpetuated the oppression of marginalized peoples: they enable the illusion that there are clear delineations between good and evil, self and other, violent masculinity and subservient femininity, German and Jew.
From pp. 24-5, Bonnie Roos, “Anselm Kiefer and the Art of Allusion: Dialectics of the Early Margarete and Sulamith Paintings,” in Comparative Literature 58 (2006): 24-43
Filed under: Philosophy
So last night I was watching the funniest ever episode of Seinfeld (Episode 153, “The Yada Yada“). I think Seinfeld is the best of television sitcoms, and I’ve been a huge fan ever since I discovered it, which — considering that the program ran from 1989 to ‘98 — was rather recent (4 years ago). But while watching the Yada Yada last night, I realized that my appreciation of Seinfeld has gone to a whole new level since I read this fascinating article the other day at the library. I was in the Franke Periodicals Room, browsing through articles in random academic journals (which, by the way, is one of my favorite activities at the library), when I came across an essay in the cute little journal called Humor (“International Journal of Humor Research”) exploring some aspects of the social and cultural critique offered in Seinfeld. The authors point out that “While humor in situation comedies can function ‘to display human foibles in such a way as to connect an audience to its humanness’ [Kozinski, 1998], Seinfeld, while addressing general human foibles, also specializes in pointing out the nonsensical nature of the institutionalized rules in American society.”
I decided to go back to the library today and copy a few excerpts from the article, for insights and for easy reference.
In the article, the authors make use of “dramaturgical analysis” within a “sociological interpretive framework.” During a lenghty analysis of how Seinfeld uses humor to approach criticism, the authors point out that:
With Seinfeld, audiences laugh at their modern selves through laughing at the characters and through watching them stand-in as performers of behavior that people are loathe to admit they engage in… In constructing familiar situations that unfold thorugh incongruous events, Seinfeld represents modern life dramaturgically in a humorous way, setting the stage for a more gentle approach to social criticism. (p.32)
In terms of audience perception, how do the characters in the show accomplish this criticism?:
In situational humor’s dialectic between strangeness and familiarity, some normality is required by a character’s role performance. A social critique is accomplished more readily if audience members can recognize their own lives in characters to a minimal extent. Still, a comedic character should also be strange enough for the audience to laugh at them. Seinfeld’s characters portray familiar collective representations and at the same time they are somewhat incongruous with typical reality. Like any group of friends, Seinfeld’s characters endure common experiences and ruminate about generally reconized social troped, but often in absurd and questionable ways. (p. 34)
The article also offers a “brief overview” of each of the main characters and “their interrelationship.” There are some great insights there, and I chose to jot down a few of the points about each character. First, Jerry Seinfeld:
Jerry, the lead character and a comedian in real life and in the show, is urban, slightly urbane, and happily single. Like many men, he is agin reluctantly. He is Jewish, though he does not really project what comes to mind under the archetype, “Jewish-comic.” His humor focuses on dramaturgical observations on the minutiae of everyday life… [H]is character, just like a standup comedian, remarks on the bizarreness of ordinary situations, often using a play on words (e.g. “Elaine, he’s a…he’s a male bimbo, he’s a mimbo.”). Such observations guide us to ironies, incongruities, and insights on the absurd rules that guide social life (e.g. arbitrary gender norms and sexual double standards).
George Constanza:
George’s archetype is the persistent failure – cynical, bald, squat, and often living with his parents. “On the surface,” writes George Gattuso, “there is very little to like about George. He’s a pathological liar and a hypochondriac [...] He has no self-respect [...] Yet somehow he represents the everyman in us…” …He represents the response many of us believe life in the modern world should evoke. Sold on the bill of goods that humans are rational and honest and that modern life is a fair game, George experiences a life where everything is a ruse, normal people scheme, hoesty is punished, and kindness is useless. His anger and frustration are our own, and his actions often are those we wish we could undertake if it were not for our socialized morals. George often says and acts out what we cannot, or will not. Unlike many of us, George has conquered muhc of his super-ego: “It’s not a lie – if you believe it.”
Elain Benes:
Elaine’s archetype is the single, childless, college-educated career woman without a specific vocation… Sanest among the mad, Elaine offers some stability and normalcy, functioning to provide some incongruity to the four-some as a whole: “In fact, having bizarre circumstances surroud the show’s most normal character makes Elain — striving for grace in ungraceful surroundings — even funnier” (Gattuso). While George expresses our frustration, Elaine represents our unending desire for things to be better all the while fatalistically accepting that a wise person limits their expectations.
Kramer:
Kramer is the character that is most clearly an archetypical one, i.e., the “hipster dufus.” His presentation of self involves bodily contortions, exaggerated facial reactions, and a haircut seen only on him… His basic persona and personality remains intact as he moves from one job, role, task, and event to another, without appaernt cognitive dissonance, role conflict, or changes to the root character. This makes Kramer function as a social critique becuase he, unlike most of us, is not dominated by his role. He represents our higher aspirations, an authentic self, a Kierkegaardian well-lived life, something relatively rare in our modern institutional setting. He either does no work at all or does anything he pleases. He never lacks the fulfillment of his desires, though where his money comes from is a mystery. He shows us how much our institutional roles shape us and take away our agency.
In conclusion, the authors remark, among many other things, that “by poking through appearences and introducing us to incongruities of official reality that surface layer appearences and can obscure, Seinfeld parodies American culture in a form recognizable to itself but in a way that makes its critique easier to accept — but also easier to miss.”
All quotations above are from Paul Paolucci & Margaret Richardson, “Dramaturgy, humor, and criticism: How Goffman reveals Seinfeld’s critique of American culture,” in Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 2006 (19:1). The journal is published by Mouton de Gruyter in Berlin and New York.
Filed under: Philosophy
A friend of mine had to mail something from Turkey, and when DHL delivered it yesterday, I found 30 seconds of entertainment in a comic sticker they put on the envelope. It’s hilarious!
