Who John Stott Is [Archival Material]
By Thomas Riggins
This people draweth nigh unto me
with their mouth, and honoureth me
with their lips; but their heart is far
from me.-- Matthew 15:8
David Brooks, my favorite ultra-right New York Times op-eder, asked "Who is John Stott" in his 11-30-04 column. John Stott is an Anglican evangelical homophobic bigot of whom Mr. Brooks recommends politicians, "especially Democrats," take note. Brooks is upset with Tim Russert for having Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton on "Meet the Press" ("these two bozos") to talk about religion and politics. Later he includes Pat Robertson (a third bozo?).
These people do not represent the real world of evangelical Christians, according to Brooks. If the blue staters want to open up to "people of faith," to appeal to them, they will have to concern themselves with someone like John Stott who is "actually important."
The Rev. Mr. Stott is an important evangelical voice – with over 40 (nonsense) books to his credit. Brooks finds his voice "humble and self-crtitical, but also confident, joyful and optimistic."
Brooks evidently finds of some of Stott’s teachings, such as his rejection of homo-sexuality "as a legitimate life style", his support for the death penalty, his anti-choice and anti-abortion positions, examples of optimistic humility. With views like these it is no wonder Stott maintains "that the central message of the gospel is not the teachings of Jesus." Not the teachings of Jesus? No indeed! What is important is the Passion, the life and sacrifice of Jesus. We don’t want to be burdened with any inconvenient teachings. The golden rule might get in the way of good Christian homophobia, or make our hands shake when we need to administer a lethal injection.
The most important part of Stott’s teaching may be his rejection of any idea that he could not know just what the Truth is (yes, with a capital T). Down with the notion that different religious traditions or other faiths could have a share of the Truth. "Truth has been revealed."
How lucky for us. Was it revealed in the Koran? Don’t even ask!
Confronted with these views, Brooks has the nerve to exclaim that there has "been a lot of twaddle written recently about the supposed opposition between faith and reason."
But the "thoughtful" Rev. Stott belies this. Twaddle? What is the difference between Stott’s homophobia, anti-woman and pro-death penalty positions and those of Falwell and Robertson. I leave out Al Sharpton because he is definitely not in this company.
In his 1958 book Basic Christianity, Stott writes that God "is altogether beyond our comprehension." This didn’t stop the good reverend from writing forty books about him, but it takes "reason" off the table. You can’t reason about the incomprehensible. Stott still claims that "The Christian doctrine of revelation is essentially reasonable." More reasonable than the Islamic or Jewish? We are not in the house of reason when we make statements about religious fundamentalism.
Stott doesn’t want to submit religion to the scientific approach, but he does want to use the religious approach in science. "The empirical method is largely inappropriate in the sphere of religion," he writes. But what about science. There the empirical method has its rightful place – unless it contradicts revelation. Stott will go along with the "theory of evolution" – some type of evolution, but not Darwin! In Understanding the Bible he writes"any theory of evolution which is presented as a blind and random process must be rejected by Christians as incompatible with the biblical revelation...."
This is twaddle and implies that regardless of where the "empirical method" takes you in scientific investigation an extra-scientific dimension ("revelation") is the ultimate judge of truth.
So, enough of John Stott and and David Brooks’ twaddle. The point is that Christian fundamentalism in its conservative dress is what is being pushed. No one on the left should fall for Brooks’ position that by polishing up the rough edges of the Falwells and Robertsons with a classy substitute (the very British Mr. Stott) the attitudes and political consequences of evangelical fundamentalism are in any way changed.
There are plenty of progressive and mainstream Christians and even evangelicals who can be won over to left political programs. The notion, sanctioned by Brooks and proclaimed by Stott that "the teachings of Jesus" are not what is important should be a wedge issue for the Christian left. Those teachings are much more congruent with the socialist and communist world outlooks than they are with the capitalist world globalization movement that is being pushed by writers such as David Brooks.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
FREE-MARKET RELIGION OR IGNORANCE?
By Thomas Riggins
Eduardo Porter, writing in the Sunday (11/21/04) New York Times "Week In Review" section seeks to explain the theory that religion is so popular in the US due to supply-side economics. Just like any commodity competition the commodity of religion is so wide spread due to the competition between its suppliers. This is a new view, Porter says, replacing, perhaps, the older view that the more educated the more secular a country becomes.
The US, Porter maintains, is an exception to this rule which applies to Europe and Japan rather than to us. Studies show that for 80% of Germans, 88% of Japanese, and 89% of French people religion doesn’t play a very important part in their lives. As for the Dutch – 25% describe themselves as atheists. Porter quotes David Voas (University of Manchester) as saying, "If you take the United Nations’ Human Development Index and look at the top 20 countries 19 of those are very secular. We must be the 20th – with only 40% of Americans not thinking of religion as very important.
The question Porter asks is "Why is the United States, the world’s most prosperous and educated democracy, so religious?" I’m not even going to go into the "free-market" theory because there is, I think, a fundamental problem with the assumptions of the question itself.
The idea that the US is the most "educated" democracy is ludicrous. Compared to other developed countries, the American educational system is a sorry joke.
I want to consider the following facts, all from the Chapter "The Sorry State of Education" in Valdas Anelauskas’ Discovering America As It Is (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2003). Valdas points out that a baby born in the US has a 20% chance of ending as an illiterate adult. This means a fifth of American adults can’t read! The US ranks 49th in adult literacy among the world’s countries
Also note that when American students are compared to students in other countries in the developed world they usually end up at the bottom of the barrel. "Americans are at or near the bottom in most international surveys measuring educational achievement." Even our best students come well behind those of the top ten countries when test scores are compared. We come in around 16th.
What this reflects is the appalling poverty rates for children in this country coupled with a blatant disregard by national, state, and local governments of the needs of schools and students. Valdas refers to studies by Richard Jaeger at the University of North Carolina that revealed "America’s rising childhood poverty rate, breakdown of families and all other social problems account for all of the disparity between American and foreign students’ achievement." So we are not only not the most "educated" we are not the most "prosperous" either.
Here is how "educated" our kids are. Number of forth graders who think the world is FLAT: 40% Number of sixth graders who can’t find the USA on a map: 20% Number of high school seniors lacking the most basic knowledge of American history (forget world history): 57%. Number of seventeen year old students who don’t know when the Civil War took place: 66% – 33% didn’t know who Abraham Lincoln was!
There is one encouraging result here, and that is that 25% of college seniors think that the slogan "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" is from the Constitution. This is no doubt due to effective campus propaganda by the Young Communist League.
Who benefits from the bad education given to American students? And its really bad. The US ranks 28th out of the 29 counties in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (we beat out Mexico) in the number of students who graduate from school (72%, compare Germany at 91%). The beneficiaries of this education system are the forces on the right and the religious fundamentalists who thrive in conditions of educational deficiency.
I therefore conclude that the "old-school" sociology, as Porter calls it, was correct in holding "that as nations become more prosperous, healthy, and educated, demand for the support that religion provides declines." The fact that so many of our citizens are religious is a mark of how backward the US is. So I’ll end with another quote from Anelauskas’ book, from a gentleman even more obscure than Abraham Lincoln, namely Maximilien Robespierre: "The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."
Eduardo Porter, writing in the Sunday (11/21/04) New York Times "Week In Review" section seeks to explain the theory that religion is so popular in the US due to supply-side economics. Just like any commodity competition the commodity of religion is so wide spread due to the competition between its suppliers. This is a new view, Porter says, replacing, perhaps, the older view that the more educated the more secular a country becomes.
The US, Porter maintains, is an exception to this rule which applies to Europe and Japan rather than to us. Studies show that for 80% of Germans, 88% of Japanese, and 89% of French people religion doesn’t play a very important part in their lives. As for the Dutch – 25% describe themselves as atheists. Porter quotes David Voas (University of Manchester) as saying, "If you take the United Nations’ Human Development Index and look at the top 20 countries 19 of those are very secular. We must be the 20th – with only 40% of Americans not thinking of religion as very important.
The question Porter asks is "Why is the United States, the world’s most prosperous and educated democracy, so religious?" I’m not even going to go into the "free-market" theory because there is, I think, a fundamental problem with the assumptions of the question itself.
The idea that the US is the most "educated" democracy is ludicrous. Compared to other developed countries, the American educational system is a sorry joke.
I want to consider the following facts, all from the Chapter "The Sorry State of Education" in Valdas Anelauskas’ Discovering America As It Is (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2003). Valdas points out that a baby born in the US has a 20% chance of ending as an illiterate adult. This means a fifth of American adults can’t read! The US ranks 49th in adult literacy among the world’s countries
Also note that when American students are compared to students in other countries in the developed world they usually end up at the bottom of the barrel. "Americans are at or near the bottom in most international surveys measuring educational achievement." Even our best students come well behind those of the top ten countries when test scores are compared. We come in around 16th.
What this reflects is the appalling poverty rates for children in this country coupled with a blatant disregard by national, state, and local governments of the needs of schools and students. Valdas refers to studies by Richard Jaeger at the University of North Carolina that revealed "America’s rising childhood poverty rate, breakdown of families and all other social problems account for all of the disparity between American and foreign students’ achievement." So we are not only not the most "educated" we are not the most "prosperous" either.
Here is how "educated" our kids are. Number of forth graders who think the world is FLAT: 40% Number of sixth graders who can’t find the USA on a map: 20% Number of high school seniors lacking the most basic knowledge of American history (forget world history): 57%. Number of seventeen year old students who don’t know when the Civil War took place: 66% – 33% didn’t know who Abraham Lincoln was!
There is one encouraging result here, and that is that 25% of college seniors think that the slogan "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" is from the Constitution. This is no doubt due to effective campus propaganda by the Young Communist League.
Who benefits from the bad education given to American students? And its really bad. The US ranks 28th out of the 29 counties in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (we beat out Mexico) in the number of students who graduate from school (72%, compare Germany at 91%). The beneficiaries of this education system are the forces on the right and the religious fundamentalists who thrive in conditions of educational deficiency.
I therefore conclude that the "old-school" sociology, as Porter calls it, was correct in holding "that as nations become more prosperous, healthy, and educated, demand for the support that religion provides declines." The fact that so many of our citizens are religious is a mark of how backward the US is. So I’ll end with another quote from Anelauskas’ book, from a gentleman even more obscure than Abraham Lincoln, namely Maximilien Robespierre: "The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."
Friday, June 20, 2008
The Motorcycle Diaries
Easy Riding to Revolution – Review of The Motorcycle Diaries
By Thomas Riggins
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey has also been made into a major motion picture. I am only dealing with the book. It was written by Ernesto Guevara (he had not yet become "Che") from notes he made when he was 23 years old and traveling from Cordoba in Argentina to Caracas in Venezuela in late 1951 through the summer of 1952 with his friend Alberto Granado on the latter’s motorcycle La Poderosa II – which vehicle broke down and was discarded early in the trip (in the south of Chile) leaving both young men as vagabonds for the remainder of their journey.
The book is an enjoyable and brisk read. The adventures of the two young men, Guevara, a year away from graduating from medical school, and the slightly older Granado, a biochemist specializing in the study of leprosy, as they make their way up the Pacific coast through Chile to Peru and then inland to Cusco, the Amazon and on up to Bogota and finally Caracas by means of hitching rides, buses, steamships, a raft on the Amazon, and various other modes of transport, is an engaging tale.
But what makes it particularly interesting is the hints the book contains of the future "Che." It is this aspect on which I want to comment. The first seventy or so pages are devoted to describing the journey and the problems encountered along the way. But social commentary then begins. It first turns up when Guevara encounters a dying women in Valparaiso in early March of 1952 – three months into the trip. The woman is poor and suffering from diseases she cannot afford to treat, and of course, she can no longer work.
In her plight, Guevara sees "the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over." This leads him to the following reflection, somewhat mild considering what will come later. "How long this present order, based on the absurd idea of caste, will last is not within my means to answer, but it’s time that those who govern spent less time publicizing their own virtues and more money, much more money, funding socially useful works."
The two leave Valparaiso for Antofagasta by sea as stowaways on the freighter San Antonio. A hint of the travels of the future Che may be read into Guevara’s musings during this trip: "There we understood that out vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things: the outer limits would suffice." I wonder if a clue to the tragedy of Quebrada del Yuro is here foreshadowed?
A few days after they arrive in Antofagasta they make it to the great copper mine of Chuquicamata. Here Guevara meets communist workers. At this time the Communist Party was illegal and repressed. Communists were imprisoned, denied the right to vote and many had just disappeared "and said to be somewhere at the bottom of the sea."
"It’s a great pity," Guevara writes with reference to a worker he had met, "that they repress people like this. Apart from whether collectivism, the ‘communist vermin,’ is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, "bread for the poor," was something he understood and, more importantly, that filled him with hope." Needless to say, workers at Chuquicamata were in a living Hell.
It is interesting to note that the 1952 Chilean Presidential elections were about to take place. One of the candidates was Salvadore Allende. The winner was Carlos Ibañez del Campo who was progressive and said he would legalize the Communist Party – which happened in 1958. "The biggest effort Chile should make," Guevara notes, "is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment at least is Herculean, given the quanity of dollars the United States has invested here and the ease with which it flexes its economic muscle whenever its interests seem threatened."
I wonder if there may not be something subconsciously autobiographical in Guevara’s comments about the conquistador Valdivia. "Valdivia’s actions symbolize man’s indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile." Caesar aut nihil.
From Chile the two friends head into Peru where they encounter the problems of the indigenous peoples. They soon make it to Bogota and find Colombia, then as now, the most repressive country of their tour. They finally end up in Caracas where they go their separate ways. Guevara flies to Miami for a few days and then flies back Buenos Aires and returns to his family in Cordoba. He is almost, but not quite yet "Che" – but he does see the future. "I see myself," he notes on the last page of his diary, "immolated in the genuine revolution, the great equalizer of individual will, proclaiming the ultimate mea culpa."
The Motorcycle Diaries
By Ernesto Guevara
New York, Ocean Press, 2004
By Thomas Riggins
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey has also been made into a major motion picture. I am only dealing with the book. It was written by Ernesto Guevara (he had not yet become "Che") from notes he made when he was 23 years old and traveling from Cordoba in Argentina to Caracas in Venezuela in late 1951 through the summer of 1952 with his friend Alberto Granado on the latter’s motorcycle La Poderosa II – which vehicle broke down and was discarded early in the trip (in the south of Chile) leaving both young men as vagabonds for the remainder of their journey.
The book is an enjoyable and brisk read. The adventures of the two young men, Guevara, a year away from graduating from medical school, and the slightly older Granado, a biochemist specializing in the study of leprosy, as they make their way up the Pacific coast through Chile to Peru and then inland to Cusco, the Amazon and on up to Bogota and finally Caracas by means of hitching rides, buses, steamships, a raft on the Amazon, and various other modes of transport, is an engaging tale.
But what makes it particularly interesting is the hints the book contains of the future "Che." It is this aspect on which I want to comment. The first seventy or so pages are devoted to describing the journey and the problems encountered along the way. But social commentary then begins. It first turns up when Guevara encounters a dying women in Valparaiso in early March of 1952 – three months into the trip. The woman is poor and suffering from diseases she cannot afford to treat, and of course, she can no longer work.
In her plight, Guevara sees "the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over." This leads him to the following reflection, somewhat mild considering what will come later. "How long this present order, based on the absurd idea of caste, will last is not within my means to answer, but it’s time that those who govern spent less time publicizing their own virtues and more money, much more money, funding socially useful works."
The two leave Valparaiso for Antofagasta by sea as stowaways on the freighter San Antonio. A hint of the travels of the future Che may be read into Guevara’s musings during this trip: "There we understood that out vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things: the outer limits would suffice." I wonder if a clue to the tragedy of Quebrada del Yuro is here foreshadowed?
A few days after they arrive in Antofagasta they make it to the great copper mine of Chuquicamata. Here Guevara meets communist workers. At this time the Communist Party was illegal and repressed. Communists were imprisoned, denied the right to vote and many had just disappeared "and said to be somewhere at the bottom of the sea."
"It’s a great pity," Guevara writes with reference to a worker he had met, "that they repress people like this. Apart from whether collectivism, the ‘communist vermin,’ is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, "bread for the poor," was something he understood and, more importantly, that filled him with hope." Needless to say, workers at Chuquicamata were in a living Hell.
It is interesting to note that the 1952 Chilean Presidential elections were about to take place. One of the candidates was Salvadore Allende. The winner was Carlos Ibañez del Campo who was progressive and said he would legalize the Communist Party – which happened in 1958. "The biggest effort Chile should make," Guevara notes, "is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment at least is Herculean, given the quanity of dollars the United States has invested here and the ease with which it flexes its economic muscle whenever its interests seem threatened."
I wonder if there may not be something subconsciously autobiographical in Guevara’s comments about the conquistador Valdivia. "Valdivia’s actions symbolize man’s indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile." Caesar aut nihil.
From Chile the two friends head into Peru where they encounter the problems of the indigenous peoples. They soon make it to Bogota and find Colombia, then as now, the most repressive country of their tour. They finally end up in Caracas where they go their separate ways. Guevara flies to Miami for a few days and then flies back Buenos Aires and returns to his family in Cordoba. He is almost, but not quite yet "Che" – but he does see the future. "I see myself," he notes on the last page of his diary, "immolated in the genuine revolution, the great equalizer of individual will, proclaiming the ultimate mea culpa."
The Motorcycle Diaries
By Ernesto Guevara
New York, Ocean Press, 2004
Thursday, June 19, 2008
BERTRAND RUSSELL IN 90 MINUTES: BOOK REVIEW
Bertrand Russell in 90 Minutes
By Thomas Riggins
This short book [Bertrand Russell in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 2001] of 92 pages is one of many (24 at the time it was published) in Strathern’s 90 Minutes series. If you know absolutely nothing about Russell, perhaps the greatest English speaking philosopher (bourgeois) of the 20th century, you could begin with this book – but you will need more than it provides to really understand Russell.
Russell (1872-1970) was both a technical philosopher in the empiricist tradition (Locke, Hume, Mill) and a socially engaged activist – most famously in the “Ban the Bomb Movement”, co-founded with Einstein, of the 1950s and 1960s. He also co-chaired, with Jean Paul Sartre, the war crimes tribunal that exposed the Nazi like criminal behavior of the US in Vietnam, although Strathern doesn’t mention this. Russell got the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. His best known popular works A History of Western Philosophy (1945), “Why I am Not A Christian” (1927), and The Problems of Philosophy (1912).
Strathern’s short introduction made me a little cautious since he refers to Wittgenstein as “the philosopher who succeeded to his mantle.” This is not an apt comment as Wittgenstein was the moving force behind a philosophical school not endorsed by Russell. No one really succeeded to Russell’s mantle.
Strathern does point out the three great passions that Russell always said drove his life, “the longing for love, the quest for knowledge, and heart-rending pity for the suffering of humanity.” He also points out that Russell’s philosophy was rooted in a scientific world outlook. I think, however, he misrepresents Russell when he writes that he “sought to establish a demonstrably certain logical philosophy....”
Russell always maintained that philosophy, like science, was always provisional and dealt with probabilities not “demonstrably certain” knowledge. I think Strathern confused Russell’s empirically based philosophy with his early attempt to deduce arithmetic from logic in Principia Mathematica (co-authored with A. N. Whitehead). Russell was one of the founders of modern mathematical logic.
The heart of this book is the 63 page essay “Russell’s Life and Works.” Strathern describes how Russell, who was educated at Cambridge, revolted against the prevailing neo-Hegelian idealism he found at the university and developed a philosophy based on logical analysis which he later called “logical atomism” because it stressed the discreteness of things rather than seeing them as all interrelated parts of the neo-Hegelian “Absolute.”
The best part of this book is Strathern’s explanation of Russell’s Paradox and his Theory of Types. He presents these technical topics that Russell dealt with in mathematical class theory in an easily understandable way so that lay readers can follow the arguments that took place in early 20th century philosophy of mathematics and logic.
Unfortunately, Strathern does not present Russell’s mature philosophy. After the excellent mathematical exposition he gives an overview of Russell’s thought based on works from which he later diverged. This is especially the case with the 1912 The Problems of Philosophy. Strathern should have consulted Russell’s 1959 My Philosophical Development where he gives his final views on many of the topics discussed in the 90 Minutes book. Russell may need more than ninety minutes!
Strathern barely mentions Russell’s political views just noting The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism, Russell’s diatribe against the Russian Revolution, and he never points out Russell’s misreading of Hegel and Marx which mar his reputation as an historian of philosophy.
He also relies too much on Ray Monk’s biography of Russell – which he calls “superb, possibility definitive” without pointing out that most Russell scholars react negatively to Monk’s work.
By Thomas Riggins
This short book [Bertrand Russell in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 2001] of 92 pages is one of many (24 at the time it was published) in Strathern’s 90 Minutes series. If you know absolutely nothing about Russell, perhaps the greatest English speaking philosopher (bourgeois) of the 20th century, you could begin with this book – but you will need more than it provides to really understand Russell.
Russell (1872-1970) was both a technical philosopher in the empiricist tradition (Locke, Hume, Mill) and a socially engaged activist – most famously in the “Ban the Bomb Movement”, co-founded with Einstein, of the 1950s and 1960s. He also co-chaired, with Jean Paul Sartre, the war crimes tribunal that exposed the Nazi like criminal behavior of the US in Vietnam, although Strathern doesn’t mention this. Russell got the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. His best known popular works A History of Western Philosophy (1945), “Why I am Not A Christian” (1927), and The Problems of Philosophy (1912).
Strathern’s short introduction made me a little cautious since he refers to Wittgenstein as “the philosopher who succeeded to his mantle.” This is not an apt comment as Wittgenstein was the moving force behind a philosophical school not endorsed by Russell. No one really succeeded to Russell’s mantle.
Strathern does point out the three great passions that Russell always said drove his life, “the longing for love, the quest for knowledge, and heart-rending pity for the suffering of humanity.” He also points out that Russell’s philosophy was rooted in a scientific world outlook. I think, however, he misrepresents Russell when he writes that he “sought to establish a demonstrably certain logical philosophy....”
Russell always maintained that philosophy, like science, was always provisional and dealt with probabilities not “demonstrably certain” knowledge. I think Strathern confused Russell’s empirically based philosophy with his early attempt to deduce arithmetic from logic in Principia Mathematica (co-authored with A. N. Whitehead). Russell was one of the founders of modern mathematical logic.
The heart of this book is the 63 page essay “Russell’s Life and Works.” Strathern describes how Russell, who was educated at Cambridge, revolted against the prevailing neo-Hegelian idealism he found at the university and developed a philosophy based on logical analysis which he later called “logical atomism” because it stressed the discreteness of things rather than seeing them as all interrelated parts of the neo-Hegelian “Absolute.”
The best part of this book is Strathern’s explanation of Russell’s Paradox and his Theory of Types. He presents these technical topics that Russell dealt with in mathematical class theory in an easily understandable way so that lay readers can follow the arguments that took place in early 20th century philosophy of mathematics and logic.
Unfortunately, Strathern does not present Russell’s mature philosophy. After the excellent mathematical exposition he gives an overview of Russell’s thought based on works from which he later diverged. This is especially the case with the 1912 The Problems of Philosophy. Strathern should have consulted Russell’s 1959 My Philosophical Development where he gives his final views on many of the topics discussed in the 90 Minutes book. Russell may need more than ninety minutes!
Strathern barely mentions Russell’s political views just noting The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism, Russell’s diatribe against the Russian Revolution, and he never points out Russell’s misreading of Hegel and Marx which mar his reputation as an historian of philosophy.
He also relies too much on Ray Monk’s biography of Russell – which he calls “superb, possibility definitive” without pointing out that most Russell scholars react negatively to Monk’s work.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Jacques Derrida 1930-2004
Remembering Jacques Derrida
By Thomas Riggins
[from 2004 archive]
One of the late 20th Century’s most influential thinkers died last Friday (Oct. 8) in Paris. Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of "deconstruction" has influenced religion, psychotherapy, feminism, law, Marxism, literary criticism, architecture, art and cultural studies.
Derrida’s deconstructionist career began in the 1960s, peaked in the 1980s, and is now, it seems, in decline. Deconstruction may turn out to have been only a fad that was nurtured by bourgeois "radicals" who were looking for solutions to the problems generated by the economic and social contradictions of late capitalism but shied away from traditional Marxist analysis.
What was Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy? He began with a critique of Structuralism which was a wide spread philosophy popular in French intellectual circles in the 1950s and 60s-- displacing Existentialism as the dominant mode of thinking. Hegelians and Marxists can relate easily to the major premiss of Structuralism, namely that, as Franz Hugdahl writes, the "object under consideration is the system that is comprised of the reciprocal relations among a series of facts, as, opposed to the study of particular facts in isolation."
Structuralists believe that after a proper investigation of your subject matter (linguistics, anthropology or whatever) you can attain meaning and understanding by revealing the structural relationships of the concepts and ideas (and their real world counterparts) under consideration. This understanding is expressed in words with definite meanings put forth in speaking or writing.
This was challenged by Derrida who maintained that references associated with words are so numerous and even contradictory that any explanation, view or text can be "deconstructed" to show that whatever you might have thought the text was saying, you could find that it said something else as well and therefore there was no privileged interpretation, no canonical reading, to which you will be forced to adhere.
This way of thinking never caught on in philosophy, but was the rage, for a while, in English (and French) departments and in literary and cultural studies. The beginning of the end for "deconstruction" came in 1987. That year marked the fourth anniversary of the death of Derrida’s most important American proponent, Paul de Man, who had been a professor at Yale. De Man could take any text and argue (usually fallaciously by logic chopping, using puns and word play, taking words and phrases out of context, etc.)that it had more than one, and perhaps several, different (and even contradictory) interpretations none of which could be claimed to be the "correct" one.
De Man, four years after his death in 1983 was exposed in the New York Times as having been a Nazi sympathizer in his native Belgium during World War II. He wrote anti-semitic articles for a Nazi paper supporting the Nazi cause and proposed deportation as a "solution to the Jewish problem."
For Derrida and other deconstructionists this was a major embarrassment as they thought their new movement, poststructuralism, was radically progressive-- empowering marginalized elements of society by allowing them to read their own stories into the texts and traditions of Western civilization. As Jim Powell points out, "those given to deconstruction had always thought of themselves and their approach as revolutionary, iconoclastic and anti-totalitarian."
Derrida rose to the defense of de Man by publishing an article "deconstructing" the anti-semitic and pro-Nazi texts of De Man’s newspaper articles. Derrida claimed that while on the surface these texts looked Nazi, nevertheless, he could detect in them subtle anti-Nazi traces and meanings. This basically dishonest application of deconstruction (in an attempt to rehabiliate de Man not the Nazis) revealed that it was a useless method with which to try and discover "meaning" as it was only the subjective desires of its practitioners that were being projected onto the text and nothing revelatory was necessarily produced at all.
So what is left of "poststructuralism"? Not much I think. But neither should the foolishness of some of Derrida’s late productions ("Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man’s War") obscure the importance of his early work. His 1967 Of Grammatology remains a classic critique, for better or worse, of Structuralism, and, as Christopher Johnson points out, its lesson "is that one cannot simply step outside of a philosophical tradition and reason independently of it." Well, maybe not "simply."
In closing I would be remiss not to point out that Derrida had progressive tendencies as a person and that he was a supporter of the anti-Apartheid movement and of the rights of North Africans living in France. R.I.P.
By Thomas Riggins
[from 2004 archive]
One of the late 20th Century’s most influential thinkers died last Friday (Oct. 8) in Paris. Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of "deconstruction" has influenced religion, psychotherapy, feminism, law, Marxism, literary criticism, architecture, art and cultural studies.
Derrida’s deconstructionist career began in the 1960s, peaked in the 1980s, and is now, it seems, in decline. Deconstruction may turn out to have been only a fad that was nurtured by bourgeois "radicals" who were looking for solutions to the problems generated by the economic and social contradictions of late capitalism but shied away from traditional Marxist analysis.
What was Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy? He began with a critique of Structuralism which was a wide spread philosophy popular in French intellectual circles in the 1950s and 60s-- displacing Existentialism as the dominant mode of thinking. Hegelians and Marxists can relate easily to the major premiss of Structuralism, namely that, as Franz Hugdahl writes, the "object under consideration is the system that is comprised of the reciprocal relations among a series of facts, as, opposed to the study of particular facts in isolation."
Structuralists believe that after a proper investigation of your subject matter (linguistics, anthropology or whatever) you can attain meaning and understanding by revealing the structural relationships of the concepts and ideas (and their real world counterparts) under consideration. This understanding is expressed in words with definite meanings put forth in speaking or writing.
This was challenged by Derrida who maintained that references associated with words are so numerous and even contradictory that any explanation, view or text can be "deconstructed" to show that whatever you might have thought the text was saying, you could find that it said something else as well and therefore there was no privileged interpretation, no canonical reading, to which you will be forced to adhere.
This way of thinking never caught on in philosophy, but was the rage, for a while, in English (and French) departments and in literary and cultural studies. The beginning of the end for "deconstruction" came in 1987. That year marked the fourth anniversary of the death of Derrida’s most important American proponent, Paul de Man, who had been a professor at Yale. De Man could take any text and argue (usually fallaciously by logic chopping, using puns and word play, taking words and phrases out of context, etc.)that it had more than one, and perhaps several, different (and even contradictory) interpretations none of which could be claimed to be the "correct" one.
De Man, four years after his death in 1983 was exposed in the New York Times as having been a Nazi sympathizer in his native Belgium during World War II. He wrote anti-semitic articles for a Nazi paper supporting the Nazi cause and proposed deportation as a "solution to the Jewish problem."
For Derrida and other deconstructionists this was a major embarrassment as they thought their new movement, poststructuralism, was radically progressive-- empowering marginalized elements of society by allowing them to read their own stories into the texts and traditions of Western civilization. As Jim Powell points out, "those given to deconstruction had always thought of themselves and their approach as revolutionary, iconoclastic and anti-totalitarian."
Derrida rose to the defense of de Man by publishing an article "deconstructing" the anti-semitic and pro-Nazi texts of De Man’s newspaper articles. Derrida claimed that while on the surface these texts looked Nazi, nevertheless, he could detect in them subtle anti-Nazi traces and meanings. This basically dishonest application of deconstruction (in an attempt to rehabiliate de Man not the Nazis) revealed that it was a useless method with which to try and discover "meaning" as it was only the subjective desires of its practitioners that were being projected onto the text and nothing revelatory was necessarily produced at all.
So what is left of "poststructuralism"? Not much I think. But neither should the foolishness of some of Derrida’s late productions ("Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man’s War") obscure the importance of his early work. His 1967 Of Grammatology remains a classic critique, for better or worse, of Structuralism, and, as Christopher Johnson points out, its lesson "is that one cannot simply step outside of a philosophical tradition and reason independently of it." Well, maybe not "simply."
In closing I would be remiss not to point out that Derrida had progressive tendencies as a person and that he was a supporter of the anti-Apartheid movement and of the rights of North Africans living in France. R.I.P.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The Relevance of Confucianism
MARXISM AND CONFUCIAN RELEVANCE: BOOK REVIEW
By Thomas Riggins
"I have always heard that a gentleman helps the needy; he does not make the rich richer still."-- Confucius
Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong have edited a book called Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge, 2003). In their introduction the editors discuss the contemporary relevance of the Confucian tradition (the purpose of the book). The question is – is Confucianism a dead tradition or is it meaningful for the contemporary world?
There are five questions which they say must be addressed. I don’t think they are formulated quite rightly so I shall amend them slightly. The first is what Confucian values "should be promoted in contemporary East Asian societies?" This I think is too narrow. The "modern world" encompasses more than just East Asia. I would maintain that Confucianism has useful traditions that societies other than the traditional Asian ones can benefit from studying and applying.
The second question is, "How should this be promoted?" The third is, "What are the political and institutional implications of ‘Confucian humanism’?" Confucian "humanism" can be summed up by saying that for a good Confucian the slogan "People Before Profits," that we on the left are very familiar with, would not sound out of place.
The fourth question is "How do the practical implications of modern Confucianism differ from the values and workings of liberal capitalist societies?" The editors have added "modern" as a modifier for good reason. The values of traditional Confucianism can, I think, be brought into line with those of socialist or communist humanism but they can only be adapted to the values of capitalism, liberal or otherwise, by doing violence to their core ethical commitments. I think this question also reveals one of the purposes of the book is to try and use a warped and mutated "Confucianism" as an apologetic for East Asian capitalism.
The last question deals with the adoption of Confucianism to this project (conformity to liberal capitalism) and if it can "be justified from a moral point of view." I don’t think that it can be, but I think the editors of this book think that it can. Here are two examples.
One of the contributors, Gilbert Rozman, argues that Confucianism can be adapted to support "decentralization," "regionalism" and "localism." But to what purpose? Some of his examples suggest that purpose is to further the interests of corporate globalization and not Confucian "humanism".
For example, his reading of modern "Confucianism" might convince China to respect "Taiwan’s right to autonomy." He also suggests that it is a good counter balance to "Anglo-Saxon liberalism" [Rozman’s term for monopoly capitalism] on the one hand, and "Soviet-launched socialism" on the other. The former represents "individualism," the latter "statism." He maintains East Asia has a third system – some type of "familyism." Actually, with the exception of China, Vietnam, the DPRK and Laos [statist in Rozman’s terminology], East Asia is firmly in the control of monopoly capitalism. Rozman thinks attempts to counter "U.S. influence endanger the gains achieved through trans-Pacific economic and security ties," The WTO is cited as a "gain." He forgot the IMF and the World Bank. This is, to my mind, merely using Confucianism as a cover for the trans-national imperialist exploitation of Asian peoples under the guise of "humanism" and decentralization.
Daniel Bell, one of the editors, in his contribution, explicitly states that he assumes "some form of capitalism is here to stay for the foreseeable future and any realistic defense of economic arrangements in East Asia needs to take this fact into account."
Since I am not interested in using Confucian philosophy in order to make a "defense of economic arrangements in East Asia" but rather to see what the logical implications of its humanistic values are, I cannot agree with Professor Bell’s use of Confucianism.
I agree with him that the material welfare of the people is one of, if not the main duty of the state according to Confucianism, but disagree completely when he says, "There is no doubt that Confucians would... oppose Soviet-style planned economies." I say this because the reason he gives for saying that, "Absolute private property rights" might be justified if they provided for "the basic means of subsistence." This argument from instrumental grounds also applies to a planned economy.
In fact, I think Confucian humanism is completely compatible with a Marxist interpretation and totally incompatible with the theoretical and practical functioning of capitalism with the possible exception of some capitalist inspired market reforms guided by a desire to strengthen a socialist state.
By Thomas Riggins
"I have always heard that a gentleman helps the needy; he does not make the rich richer still."-- Confucius
Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong have edited a book called Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge, 2003). In their introduction the editors discuss the contemporary relevance of the Confucian tradition (the purpose of the book). The question is – is Confucianism a dead tradition or is it meaningful for the contemporary world?
There are five questions which they say must be addressed. I don’t think they are formulated quite rightly so I shall amend them slightly. The first is what Confucian values "should be promoted in contemporary East Asian societies?" This I think is too narrow. The "modern world" encompasses more than just East Asia. I would maintain that Confucianism has useful traditions that societies other than the traditional Asian ones can benefit from studying and applying.
The second question is, "How should this be promoted?" The third is, "What are the political and institutional implications of ‘Confucian humanism’?" Confucian "humanism" can be summed up by saying that for a good Confucian the slogan "People Before Profits," that we on the left are very familiar with, would not sound out of place.
The fourth question is "How do the practical implications of modern Confucianism differ from the values and workings of liberal capitalist societies?" The editors have added "modern" as a modifier for good reason. The values of traditional Confucianism can, I think, be brought into line with those of socialist or communist humanism but they can only be adapted to the values of capitalism, liberal or otherwise, by doing violence to their core ethical commitments. I think this question also reveals one of the purposes of the book is to try and use a warped and mutated "Confucianism" as an apologetic for East Asian capitalism.
The last question deals with the adoption of Confucianism to this project (conformity to liberal capitalism) and if it can "be justified from a moral point of view." I don’t think that it can be, but I think the editors of this book think that it can. Here are two examples.
One of the contributors, Gilbert Rozman, argues that Confucianism can be adapted to support "decentralization," "regionalism" and "localism." But to what purpose? Some of his examples suggest that purpose is to further the interests of corporate globalization and not Confucian "humanism".
For example, his reading of modern "Confucianism" might convince China to respect "Taiwan’s right to autonomy." He also suggests that it is a good counter balance to "Anglo-Saxon liberalism" [Rozman’s term for monopoly capitalism] on the one hand, and "Soviet-launched socialism" on the other. The former represents "individualism," the latter "statism." He maintains East Asia has a third system – some type of "familyism." Actually, with the exception of China, Vietnam, the DPRK and Laos [statist in Rozman’s terminology], East Asia is firmly in the control of monopoly capitalism. Rozman thinks attempts to counter "U.S. influence endanger the gains achieved through trans-Pacific economic and security ties," The WTO is cited as a "gain." He forgot the IMF and the World Bank. This is, to my mind, merely using Confucianism as a cover for the trans-national imperialist exploitation of Asian peoples under the guise of "humanism" and decentralization.
Daniel Bell, one of the editors, in his contribution, explicitly states that he assumes "some form of capitalism is here to stay for the foreseeable future and any realistic defense of economic arrangements in East Asia needs to take this fact into account."
Since I am not interested in using Confucian philosophy in order to make a "defense of economic arrangements in East Asia" but rather to see what the logical implications of its humanistic values are, I cannot agree with Professor Bell’s use of Confucianism.
I agree with him that the material welfare of the people is one of, if not the main duty of the state according to Confucianism, but disagree completely when he says, "There is no doubt that Confucians would... oppose Soviet-style planned economies." I say this because the reason he gives for saying that, "Absolute private property rights" might be justified if they provided for "the basic means of subsistence." This argument from instrumental grounds also applies to a planned economy.
In fact, I think Confucian humanism is completely compatible with a Marxist interpretation and totally incompatible with the theoretical and practical functioning of capitalism with the possible exception of some capitalist inspired market reforms guided by a desire to strengthen a socialist state.
Monday, June 9, 2008
The Puppet and the Dwarf
Slavoj Zizek and Perverse Christianity
By Thomas Riggins
In a recent book, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts forth the view that Marxists can no longer make a frontal attack on the institutions of imperialism, thus a feint under the cover of Christianity is necessary. Zizek calls himself "a materialist through and through" and believes that Christianity has a "subversive kernel" which can only be demonstrated by a materialist analysis. But he also holds that the relationship is so intimate that "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience."
Zizek maintains that for "intelligent Marxists" the most interesting questions are not those about change and development – but about permanence and stability. Why has Christianity persevered from ancient times? We "find it in feudalism, capitalism, socialism..." etc. The clue is to be found in the writings of the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton who wrote that despite the rigid ethical and moral demands of the Church and its priests, an inhuman "outer ring", it actually protected the masses of people where one would find "the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom." Pagan freedom is here another term for joy in living.
This may explain the persistence of Christianity, but why must Marxists have the Christian experience? This is too unrealistic a claim. Do Asian Marxists from non-Christian cultural backgrounds have to convert to Christianity in order to have the "Christian experience" before fully understanding dialectical materialism?
Other religions have also been persistent. Hinduism, for example, is older than Christianity, as is Buddhism, and has adapted to the modern world. Zizek does discuss some of these other religions but is on shaky ground. He seems to think, for instance, that "Bodhisattva" is the name of a person rather than being a title used to describe Mahayana Buddhist deities.
Zizek’s "materialism" or at least his "Marxism" is also all mixed up with categories borrowed from Lacanian psychoanalysis. And here a digression based on W.L. Reese’s work. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was a French psychoanalyst who thought the unconscious Id expresses itself in language because it is structured like a language. The Ego should recognize the depth and plurality of meanings of the Id. This is hard to do as the Ego = our personal identity, our conscious self which is only composed of the info allowed through by the Censor. Lacan wants to subvert not strengthen the Ego. The Ego is a mess due to problems in infancy and it is this screwed up infantile Ego, surviving into adulthood, that must be subverted by the usual psychoanalytic methods.
Using this Lacanian world view plus "Marxism," Zizek decides that by using a "perverse" version of Christianity leftists can smuggle in, as it were, progressive ideas and put them into play in our society. Having concluded that Marxism cannot get a hearing in our culture this is really the only way that we can advance the revolutionary cause. Marxists in Christian clothing.
No doubt that because Christianity originated among oppressed national minorities and slaves there are many features of progressive social justice that can be deduced from it. The battle against the Christian right could be more easily waged by showing that its political and social formulations are contrary to Christian teachings and the logic of Christianity.
In this respect Zizek has a point. But it is not necessary for Marxists to go through a Christian moment themselves. By the way, the "puppet" in the book’s title is Christian theology – we will use theology to forward our secular ends – the dwarf will use the puppet.
People interested in philosophy and religion will want to read this book. I have only scratched the surface in this brief article. At the end, Zizek says the point of his book is to show that Christianity at its core reveals the secret of the passion of the Christ (one that Mel Gibson missed).
When Christ dies after asking his Heavenly Father why He has abandoned him, the historical secret is that there is no Heavenly Father. There is no "Other" to judge us. We are responsible. This is the perverse core of Christianity and Zizek takes us on an interesting tour of the history of Western thought to get there. You might not like all of the stops along the way, or even the final destination, but you will enjoy the trip.
By Thomas Riggins
In a recent book, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts forth the view that Marxists can no longer make a frontal attack on the institutions of imperialism, thus a feint under the cover of Christianity is necessary. Zizek calls himself "a materialist through and through" and believes that Christianity has a "subversive kernel" which can only be demonstrated by a materialist analysis. But he also holds that the relationship is so intimate that "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience."
Zizek maintains that for "intelligent Marxists" the most interesting questions are not those about change and development – but about permanence and stability. Why has Christianity persevered from ancient times? We "find it in feudalism, capitalism, socialism..." etc. The clue is to be found in the writings of the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton who wrote that despite the rigid ethical and moral demands of the Church and its priests, an inhuman "outer ring", it actually protected the masses of people where one would find "the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom." Pagan freedom is here another term for joy in living.
This may explain the persistence of Christianity, but why must Marxists have the Christian experience? This is too unrealistic a claim. Do Asian Marxists from non-Christian cultural backgrounds have to convert to Christianity in order to have the "Christian experience" before fully understanding dialectical materialism?
Other religions have also been persistent. Hinduism, for example, is older than Christianity, as is Buddhism, and has adapted to the modern world. Zizek does discuss some of these other religions but is on shaky ground. He seems to think, for instance, that "Bodhisattva" is the name of a person rather than being a title used to describe Mahayana Buddhist deities.
Zizek’s "materialism" or at least his "Marxism" is also all mixed up with categories borrowed from Lacanian psychoanalysis. And here a digression based on W.L. Reese’s work. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was a French psychoanalyst who thought the unconscious Id expresses itself in language because it is structured like a language. The Ego should recognize the depth and plurality of meanings of the Id. This is hard to do as the Ego = our personal identity, our conscious self which is only composed of the info allowed through by the Censor. Lacan wants to subvert not strengthen the Ego. The Ego is a mess due to problems in infancy and it is this screwed up infantile Ego, surviving into adulthood, that must be subverted by the usual psychoanalytic methods.
Using this Lacanian world view plus "Marxism," Zizek decides that by using a "perverse" version of Christianity leftists can smuggle in, as it were, progressive ideas and put them into play in our society. Having concluded that Marxism cannot get a hearing in our culture this is really the only way that we can advance the revolutionary cause. Marxists in Christian clothing.
No doubt that because Christianity originated among oppressed national minorities and slaves there are many features of progressive social justice that can be deduced from it. The battle against the Christian right could be more easily waged by showing that its political and social formulations are contrary to Christian teachings and the logic of Christianity.
In this respect Zizek has a point. But it is not necessary for Marxists to go through a Christian moment themselves. By the way, the "puppet" in the book’s title is Christian theology – we will use theology to forward our secular ends – the dwarf will use the puppet.
People interested in philosophy and religion will want to read this book. I have only scratched the surface in this brief article. At the end, Zizek says the point of his book is to show that Christianity at its core reveals the secret of the passion of the Christ (one that Mel Gibson missed).
When Christ dies after asking his Heavenly Father why He has abandoned him, the historical secret is that there is no Heavenly Father. There is no "Other" to judge us. We are responsible. This is the perverse core of Christianity and Zizek takes us on an interesting tour of the history of Western thought to get there. You might not like all of the stops along the way, or even the final destination, but you will enjoy the trip.
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