Gadfly Spring 2013

1

2

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS letter from the editor ethan edwards neoconservatism william holt the failure of philosophy: a success #ory dan jacob wallace a conversation with taylor carman mounia abousaid here is rhodes: the failure of marxism in contemporary academia krishna hegde a failure of economics: a response to “here is rhodes� evan burger failure and use martin tarrou the ordinary and the extraordinary: challenging schmitt's concept of the political clava brodsky

4

11 22

32

38 40

45

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR ethan edwards

When looking at the #ate of the world today, one cannot help but be overwhelmed by a sense of failure. Banks are failing and whole economies with them. Our politicians are failing to provide any solution to our myriad problems. Humanity even seems to be failing in the always-too-serious que# not to de#roy itself in all the confli§s and #ando„s around the world. And alarmingly, solutions to these problems have failed to escape the walls of the academy into the wider world of pra§ice.

Herein lies the task of the Gadfly. By bringing a non-technical philosophy to the problems at hand, we hope to bring under#anding to this omnipresent failure and its desired counterpart, success. This issue contains articles on philosophy itself, its applications to politics, and a debate on the success or failure of Marxism as the solution to our current crises. By no means can we address all these problems alone or adequately, but hopefully these articles will #art to open the pathway for philosophy to address our problems, and perhaps guide philosophy itself towards success.

5

NEOCONSERVATISM william holt

6

Somewhat improbably, neoconservatism has #ruck back. The political ideology of unfettered markets, aggressive democracy promotion, and American exceptionalism not only dominates the pages of The Weekly Standard, but has begun to ree#ablish itself as an undeniable force in more general talks about American foreign policy.

In response to President Barack Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense back in January, the neocons clawed their way back into the news cycle and attempted to hijack the vetting process and senatorial hearings on the former Nebraska Senator's record.

Hagel's one-time remark about the “Jewish lobby” has been pounced on by movement conservatives like Elliott Abrams and William Kri#ol, who have tried their very harde# to portray the former senator as a foaming-at-themouth anti-Semite and inveterate enemy of the #ate of Israel.

Even the nominee's impeccable military career has come under vicious attack from these relentless hangers-on to the neoconservative cause. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former dire§or at the Proje§ for the New American Century, continues to argue that Hagel su„ers from “Vietnam syndrome” and is “scared of using force abroad.” The implication of these #atements is that Hagel does not under#and the role of the United States abroad, that he is weak on foreign policy, and ultimately cannot be tru#ed with decision-making in the Pentagon Of course, Hagel does indeed under#and the role of the United States in global politics, and his political career and military service render him as qualified for the job as anyone. It is for this reason that the recent outbur# from the neocon fringes of the right—the seemingly endless media fire#orm and subsequent filibu#er in the Senate (the very fir# regarding the confirmation of a nominee for Secretary of Defense) ignited by none other than by Kri#ol himself—came as such a di#a#eful surprise. The neocons, it seemed, had #aged a very public comeback.

Ju# a few months ago, this might have seemed impossible;;one could have safely wagered that the validity of neoconservatism died somewhere outside of Baghdad

with the roadside bombings of the Iraqi insurgency. The Iraq War was supposed to be neoconservatism in a§ion: the United States would topple the brutal di§atorship of Saddam Hussein, even going it alone if it had to. The Americans would be greeted as liberators once the tanks hit the capital, and a democratic renaissance would soon sweep across the Middle Ea#.

But of course it didn't turn out that way. And over the la# few years, a sub#antial and extremely vocal segment of the Republican base has been moving toward an isolationi# foreign policy. Er#while defenders of the Iraq War like Senators John McCain and Mitch McConnell had no trouble exhibiting their skepticism over intervention in Libya, and the recent ascendance and main#ream acceptance of Tea Party darlings like Rand Paul represent a sharp departure from the interventioni# foreign policy under Bush.

And this phenomenon does not appear re#ri§ed to the GOP, as more and more Americans embrace principled non-interventionism with open arms. On a recent poll from the Pew Research Center that li#ed 19 options for cutting government spending, only one received more than 40 percent approval from those surveyed: reducing foreign aid.

Nevertheless, neoconservatives continue to shape the dialogue in the 24-hour news cycle, hammering away with their bellicose talking points and attempts to purge the Republican body politic of anyone too “so‡” to embrace their uncompromising vision of American exceptionalism. Inextricably associated with principles of American hegemony, unilateralism, preventive warfare, and democracy promotion (read: coercive regime change), the neoconservative cause was, until very recently, a central feature of the modern GOP, part and parcel of the socalled “Bush Do§rine.” However, its origins are much less clear.

Counterintuitive to anyone familiar with the la# few decades of American political thought, neoconservatism emerged from the le‡, where mid-1960s intelle§uals and anticommuni#s like Irving Kri#ol and Daniel Bell began to gather in opposition to what they regarded as the governmental overreach of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. While initially supportive of a #rong, a§ivi# government, these figures began to harden into a cohesive movement that came to reje§ government inter-

7

8

vention of almo# every variety. Their final break with Democratic liberalism took place with the nomination of George McGovern in 1972 and the New Le‡'s pronounced opposition to the Vietnam War. At this point, the neocons #arted jumping ship for the Republican Party. While Irving Kri#ol was raised a Trotskyite, his son William came of age in the GOP. It was at this time that the young, impressionable minds of Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz were being plied and molded by cold warrior Democrats like Henry “Scoop” Jackson and professors like the political philosopher Leo Strauss.

While much of contemporary neoconservatism emerged from a context of Cold War anticommunism, its intelle§ual foundations reside with Strauss. Strauss should be considered more of an academic than a commentator on current a„airs, but his teachings across a decades-long career at the University of Chicago influenced more than a few young neocons who went on to exert a pernicious influence over policymaking in Washington (Wolfowitz included). Kri#ol identifies as a Straussian, as does Gary Schmitt, the former executive dire§or of the Proje§ of a New American Century. In fa§, Strauss con#itutes what might be considered the main intelle§ual current among o·cials in the Bush admini#ration.

Mo#ly a classici#, Strauss nevertheless held a keen under#anding of current events, and o‡en pointed to the failure of political scienti#s to predi§ the rise of 20th century tyrannical movements like European fascism and Soviet Communism. An o‡-quoted line of his runs as follows: “To make the world safe for democracy, one mu# make the whole globe democratic, each country in itself as well as the society of nations.””The Wilsonian thread of neoconservatism is unmi#akable here;;in fa§, reali# thinker John Mearsheimer has rather sardonically referred to the ideology as ““Wilsonianism with teeth.””

Leo Strauss viewed deception as a necessity in politics, presaging almo# a decade of Bush-era secrecy, including wiretaps and extraordinary rendition. He believed in the e·cacy of the “noble lie,””prote§ing an elite few from the ignoble many. Perhaps even more troubling, Strauss felt that internal order depended upon outside threats— and that sometimes those threats had to be manufa§ured, like many of the policy reports about Saddam's purported WMD program. We#ern civilization mu# maintain itself at any co#. ““The only re#raint in which the We#

can put some confidence,”” he wrote, ““is the tyrant's fear of the We#'s immense military power.”

The sugge#ion here is empire, and many neocons aren't afraid to admit it. As a gue# on Fox News in 2003, Kri#ol declared, “We need to err on the side of being #rong. And if people want to say we're an imperial power, fine.”

In a 2004 New York Times Magazine article titled “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,”” journali# Ron Suskind attributes the following quote to Bush advisor Karl Rove: “We're an empire now, and when we a§, we create our own reality. And while you're #udying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll a§ again, creating other new realities, which you can #udy too, and that's how things will sort out. We're hi#ory's a§ors . . . and you, all of you, will be le‡ to ju# #udy what we do.”

The more recent conflation of neoconservatism with the Chri#ian fundamentalism of certain fringes of the Republican Party is a curious thing in light of the fa§ that the movement had its origins in a group of secular Jewish intelle§uals, mo# of whom attended City College in the 1930s and '40s. The virulent anticommunism and unremitting faith in social progress that was shared by neocons and mid-20th century liberals began with a coterie of Trotskyites who eventually turned again# Communism as the bitter realities of the Soviet Union set in.

Through the 1980s, neocons were hardly di#inguishable from the government-is-not-the-solution libertarianism of Ronald Reagan and the American Enterprise In#itute (in fa§, it was here that the movement became forever wedded to the Chri#ian right). The #rains of Wilsonian progressivism that would emerge under the Bush admini#ration were not yet so pronounced as during the lead-up to the Iraq War. A‡er the September 11 attacks, Bush believed that the United States would have to launch a series of wars to prevent future #rikes on American soil, and that an e„ort to democratize the Middle Ea# mu# be part and parcel of this #rategy. But perhaps mo# importantly, Bush believed that the United States could go it alone if necessary. And this was his greate# mi#ake.

American neoconservatism re#s upon the concept of benevolent hegemony. Neocons believe that the United States can and should a§ preemptively, and that its allies will follow in good faith. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, public intelle§uals like William Kri#ol and Rob-

9

ert Kagan have expressed the belief that America’s unprecedented supremacy in a unipolar sy#em represents a global force for good and that other #ates are likely to rally behind its agenda. “It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality,” they wrote during the run-up to Iraq, “that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power.”

What the neocons (and Bush) should have realized is that hegemony only #okes ho#ility. A‡er the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the fall of Baghdad, the whole world roiled with anti-American sentiment. The bandwagoning that Bush expe§ed turned into balancing, as any reali# would have told him—and as 33 international relations scholars did in the form of an advertisement on The New York Times op-ed page.

Today the neoconservatives appear to be waging another kind of war, an ideological battle over the soul of the GOP. Hagel, who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq War during his time in the Senate, represents a personal repudiation of the neoconservative cause within his own party, and his confirmation as Secretary of Defense should signify a sea change in Republican thinking on foreign policy. But regardless of whether this recent fight over the Hagel confirmation truly represents the final throes of the movement or its unlikely resurgence, neoconservatism has proven itself a uniquely irrepressible force in American politics. Part of its power derives from a nearly unrivalled ability to #ay on point and dominate the news cycle. Readers of Kri#ol's The Weekly Standard were probably shocked by the Hagel confirmation, convinced that ““pro-Chuck Hagel forces [. . .] seem to be getting desperate.” Meanwhile, Fox News viewers who were li#ening to Karl Rove on ele§ion night were probably shocked at a decisive Obama vi§ory in Ohio a‡er hearing it #ated time and again that the results were too close to call. Creating new realities, indeed.

10

THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY: A SUCCESS STORY dan jacob wallace I. INTRODUCTION One way of viewing the hi#ory of We#ern philosophy is as a gradual separating out of que#ions that are essentially empirical in nature from those that aren't;; the former con#itutes today's science, the latter what we currently think of as philosophy. While tru# in the explanatory power of science has grown, philosophy has come to be seen as increasingly unreliable in what it can tell us about the world. This, however, is to misca# philosophy based on a scientific model. Indeed, once a philosophical que#ion becomes addressable by a scientific method of falsification, it has moved over into the domain of science.

Philosophy as a field is largely made up of que#ions that have yet, or never will, move over to the scientific domain. As such, it's philosophy's task to ask que#ions that current science isn't prepared to ask, much less te#, though it's even more than this. The claim that I'll ultimately be working to unfold here, as I explore various notions of failure in relation to philosophy, is that at the bottom of any field there is a level of conception, and when one works at this level, philosophy is happening, and science-like falsification does not play a role.

There is a special relationship between science and philosophy, and neither is re#ri§ed to its home department. The two are #ill o‡en mixed in various ways, and, indeed a wide range of fields borrow from either or both as needed; this tends to take the form of some combination of the conceptual and the pra§ical, each of which guides the other. What I mean by “conceptual” is something di„erent than theory, and is more akin to “philosophy.””

This is an important di#in§ion, and points to the ongoing role that philosophy plays, or should play, in relation to other fields. Simply put, the conceptual serves as a philosophical basis that motivates theory, which is designed to formulate a way in which to apply the conceptual to the pra§ical. The conceptual, then, is limited only by the

11

12

imagination, while theory serves to reconcile the conceptual with what's a§ually possible in the world. Economics, for example, has an underlying #arting point that consi#s in certain ethical presumptions, which economic theory attempts to formulate into a pra§ical model. To achieve this, economics uses math and, increasingly, experimental social psychology. Underlying concepts need not always be of this sort, however, and their scope is rarely tidy.

Philosophy of physics and theoretical physics, which are at times indi#inguishable from one another, motivate experimental physics, which in turn serves to inform applied physics, which is a kind of bridge between physics and engineering. Engineering, then, puts con#raints on archite§ure in pra§ice, which provides a fascinating example of an interdependent relationship between the conceptual and the pra§ical. Conceptual archite§ure, which consi#s of designs that need not be buildable, serves to show what can be imagined, to inspire, or to simply provide an ae#hetic experience. Archite§ural ab#ra§ions also serve to provide a deeper under#and of a #ru§ure's exi#ence in time and space, because the designer is able to remove those physical con#raints.

Archite§ure in pra§ice is con#rained, of course, but may be motivated by impossible concepts and a wide range of deep philosophical concerns, including, for example, the ways in which we define ourselves within a context of con#ru§ed physical spaces that are otherwise usually taken for granted. We begin to see that, though science describes the laws that con#rain our ability to realize our imagined world in the real one, it need not con#rain our imagination. This is true of the arts as well.

I should briefly clarify what I mean by “con#rain”” here, which gets a bit deeper into the heart of the di„erence between the philosophical-conceptual and the empirical-scientific. There are two broad ways in which a discipline can accompany con#raints upon what's possible in the world. For example, physics, as a discipline, #rives to describe physical laws that are in e„e§ whether or not there is a human discipline called “physics.” These “laws” con#rain, and are a produ§ of our physical situation. The other kind of con#raint results from the human endeavor of doing physics, whether in terms of methodology and models used to execute that methodology, or in terms of the sort of socio-cultural-scientific paradigm within

unbuildable perfection.

13

which pra§itioners are engaging in the discipline. In this sense, some of these con#raints come from within physics as a discipline (methodology; models; accepted theories), while others come from without (independent physical reality; political, societal, and cultural pressures). It is the role of philosophy and science to con#antly push again# all such con#raints, known or unknown, under#ood or not, though neither field is equipped for the entirety of this job.

Yet, in a world that increasingly looks to science for guidance, some philosophers have been tempted to emphasize the pra§ical over the conceptual, not by citing data or evaluating science and its methodology, as in the cases of philosophy of mind and philosophies of science, but rather by borrowing scientific models as a way of doing philosophy. The prime current example of this comes in the shape of the so-called “Experimental Philosophers,” who attempt to address the legitimately philosophical domain of ethics with empirical research. But in adopting scientific techniques, they leave philosophy behind; these thinkers are in e„e§ doing sloppy social psychology that reveals nothing about ethics we don't already know, and its experimental aspe§s would be much better handled by a lab or field researcher. Indeed, moral psychology, which has a #rong philosophical contingent, is a growing field that appeals to empirical findings to help us better under#and how it is that people resolve ethical que#ions based on things like, for example, the sorts of physical anomalies that result in depression and erratic behavior. However, and this is absolutely key, these data tell us nothing obje§ive about what it is that makes a§s morally right or wrong. Moral philosophers will cite scientifically acquired empirical data as they consider philosophical que#ions insomuch as those que#ions are not yet te#able.

II. PHILOSOPHY AS DEFINED BY FAILURE

14

What does all this have to do with failure? Failure is the general sense that arises when philosophy is viewed through a scientific framework: the failure of a que#ion to be answered or a problem solved, or the failure of a claim to even be formulated in such a way that makes it te#able.

The sum of this makes philosophy out to be a field consi#ing largely of ideas that have yet failed to migrate into the scientific domain. But this is a very wrong way

to view philosophy, ju# as it would be wrong to say that conceptual archite§ure fails due to not being buildable.

One reason for this is that philosophy #rives to take very little as given. For in#ance, to address the que#ion of what it is to be happy, the scienti# mu# devise an operational definition of happiness—perhaps based on how many times a subje§ smiles per minute. Then there mu# be a definition of what it is to smile, such as the putting into motion of some combination of muscles. This definition is then bound to con#raints of measurements, i.e., equipment capable of monitoring facial muscle movement in conditions that are designed to be something like the real world, which itself comes with scientifically measurable definitions. Mo# scienti#s are well aware of the limited scope of these methods, but, when #udies come out about happiness, many outside the field of hard science are not. How these operational definitions are founded is not que#ioned by the culture at large, nor o‡en even by social scienti#s who borrow from hard science, any more than the economi#'s notion of economic growth as a measurable definition of individual and societal well-being is que#ioned.

Philosophy, on the other hand, is known to not have this sort of authority as a provider of answers, and is therefore increasingly shunned as a failed field, one whose survival depends upon the extent to which it can manage to achieve an empirical #ance. This, again, is to misca# philosophy. When taken-for-granted foundational concepts, such as what it means to be happy, are brought into que#ion by a neuroscienti# or economi#, philosophy is happening. When those concepts are given an operational definition that makes them empirically measurable, science is happening. The extent to which a person is engaged in and attempts to bring attention to these sorts of que#ions—i.e., of what's generally taken for granted —versus engaging in inve#igating the te#able theories that can be derived from that which such que#ions address, determines the extent to which the person is a philosopher or scienti#, or something in-between.

It's also possible for there to be disagreement over the domain in which a que#ion can exi#, as with que#ions surrounding the nature of consciousness, which some argue are in the domain of one or the other, but in reality seem to belong to both. Philosophers of mind, then, often must need to revise philosophical views surrounding

15

the mind-body relationship based on scientific data. One can draw a line in this regard from Descartes' notions of the conne§ion between the pineal gland and the soul (a view that was, in fa§, empirically o„ even according to the knowledge of his time) to more current views, such as David Chalmers's natural dualism, which provides an updated, current-science-friendly-ish duali# explanation of consciousness. Even if Chalmers is wrong, though, and consciousness can be explained in purely neurophysiological terms, mo# significant are his arguments that scientific explanations of consciousness fall short, which many neuroscienti#s take seriously. Such dynamics between philosophy and science can make it di·cult to draw precise lines between the domains, but di#in§ions need not be so clear cut.

III. FAILURE AS RELEVANT TO THE SUCCESS OF INDIVIDUAL PHILOSOPHERS

16

The sense of failure I'm intere#ed in here is that in which a philosophical—i.e., unte#able—claim is taken to be false, or simply cannot be not taken seriously, even if it is well argued. It seems that for a philosopher to become a success, such claims mu# play a significant role in his or her body of thought. By success, I mean influential, being read and discussed, becoming part of the canon, and so on.

Philosophical hi#ory is of course highly con#ituted by now-disregarded claims from philosophers who continue to influence, including more of Plato's ideas than I could li# here. Nietzsche is an intere#ing example as well: whether he succeeded in solving the problem of nihilism (perhaps he did, but we've failed to li#en) is irrelevant to whether he succeeded in putting forth ideas about nihilism that would inform the discourse going forward.

These philosophers #ill have much to o„er, of course, and it could be argued that their conceptual failures— though, more precisely put, their failure to shape the world according to their conceptual notions—has a lot to do with the fa§ that their ideas are outdated, but this seems not to be true in the mo# intere#ing cases. Indeed, extreme ideas attra§ us, as not many of us would find a flier advertising a debate between two moderates very sexy, nor can I imagine someone saying, “Hey, you have to read this book full of reasonable claims, it'll blow your mind!” No, it's the fringes we're mo# intere#ed in and

this project was based on a ratio dealing with beauty in nature, but that can't be executed at the size of a building, yet remains an ideal that informs the design of buildings

17

that are the #u„ of debate in philosophy classes. That said, let's do a brief survey of some of the mo# influential philosophers of today.

Catharine MacKinnon has argued that it is not possible for a man and a woman to have sex without it counting as an in#ance of rape, and, furthermore, that on those occasions in which a man rapes another man, this too counts as an in#ance of a woman being raped. Slavoj Žižek has said that to say “I love you” is among the mo# evil a§s one can commit, and that what we need in the world is more artificial nature (made of pla#ic, etc.), not less. Peter Singer has prescribed a #ri§ life#yle in which we all give away as much money as we can to the world's poor, a scheme he's since revised to increase the likelihood that people will take up his prescriptions, though it remains prohibitively #ri§ for the majority of us. It would be a very big proje§ indeed to do a thorough survey of the current philosophers whom we generally consider to be successful in the field, however, I don't think it's unreasonable to sugge# that success comes with maintaining a balance between attention-grabbing ideas that aren't generally taken seriously in terms of corresponding to something true in the world, and those that are.

Those three thinkers I've li#ed here have managed to become influential in philosophy and in society— consider MacKinnon's work in international law and human tra·cking; Žižek's presence in the media, pop culture, and as speaker for the radical le‡;;Singer's The Life You Can Save organization and his influence on animal rights—not despite having extreme concepts that mo# of us wouldn't adopt, but because of having them as a foundational guide for how these thinkers ultimately intera§ with the world in pra§ice. It's worth noting here that the discipline of philosophy itself combines the conceptual and the pra§ical, mediated by the theoretical.

At any rate, the extent to which these ideas will persi# as obje§s of #udy in the intelle§ual canon in the future will not depend on whether their claims are true or false, ju# as true claims about the world don't account for why Plato, Descartes and Kant are considered essential for #udy in so many universities.

IV. THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY AS A FIELD

18

One might sugge# that the view of philosophy de-

scribed here supports the o‡-encountered notion that philosophy is a dying field that currently exi#s only in the extent to which it is useful for science and social science, two areas by which philosophy has been seemingly marginalized. Additionally, philosophy seems to have been appropriated by the arts and humanities. One gets the di#in§ impression that philosophy's value is o‡en seen in what, for example, a political theori#, musicologi#, physici#, art hi#orian, critical theori#, and so on, can take from it—and that without some such application, philosophy in itself seems to lose tra§ion. Philosophers are read by #udents of sociology, anthropology, economics, archaeology, film, archite§ure, photography, music, hi#ory, and on and on, and philosophers are cited in main#ream newspapers and by political pundits. However, philosophy itself is considered by many to be a dying field. One could speculate at length on this phenomenon, but to keep it very simple, I'll refer to one possible explanatory solution.

Philosophy has not traditionally been a pure discipline in itself. It has, over the millennia, been pra§iced in the service of, or in tandem with, what we now would consider to be physical science. What's key here is that the philosophers who sought both metaphysical and physical explanations of the world were intere#ed in figuring out how it all hangs together—the big pi§ure. Science developed, however, and then became atomized, and those who were intere#ed in scientific pra§ice went one way, which demands specialization, while philosophers have continued to look at the big pi§ure. The aforementioned ubiquitous references to philosophers deal for the mo# part with thinkers who predate, or worked outside of, science as we know it today, and are considered philosophers, mathematicians, scienti#s, anthropologi#s, or what have you, depending on the context imposed by the discipline in que#ion. O‡en, these are presented with hi#orical intere#, such as when Descartes is spotlighted in a geometry textbook or Pythagoras in a music theory treatise, or, really, ju# about whenever we are meant to consider the foundations of We#ern thought.

So, this field of philosophy as we currently think of it is fairly new, and is finding its footing. Philosophers o‡en try to atomize along with science, but this isn't feasible as scientific specializations become incredibly narrow. However, philosophy continues to be con#ituted as a

19

field, at lea# in some vague way, by this tradition of looking at how the world hangs together and in its resi#ance to specialized empirical inquiry. As such, philosophy has been with us all along and will continue to be, and, as a discipline that continually repositions itself so that it can see as much of the big pi§ure as possible, it need not fail. Indeed, philosophy cannot fail any more than music or archite§ure can, though the manife# appearance of these things may change. Science can't really fail either, though it can develop into something else as methodologies and how we interpret the tangible, observable physical world change, and as more of the world becomes tangible and observable. But no matter how measurable the world becomes, there will always be #ill deeper que#ions whose essence defies measurement.

V. CONCLUSION

20

To conclude, considering failure-success within philosophy the same way in which it's viewed in lab science is to commit a category error. The result of this is to further marginalize philosophy as a residue le‡ behind by science as it sheds its unempirical detritus, which are in turn picked up by those who lack the discipline or intelle§ual rightness or rigor to pursue science—the daydreamers, those who never outgrew asking the que#ion “why?”, and those who naively think that it's possible to gain insight into the world by asking broad and perhaps unanswerable que#ions rather than only te#ing narrow ones.

I propose an alternative view of philosophy, in which the philosopher is not bound to being corre§ and is liberated by science in the way that painters were liberated by camera technology. This puts philosophers, in their many guises and with the greate# bird's eye view across disciplines, at the forefront of thought, frees them from the con#raining notions of theoretical success or failure, and allows the philosopher to go deeper than ever and to ask new que#ions that today's scienti#s can't formulate as scienti#s.

When held to the #andards of science, philosophy becomes shaped by an avoidance of empirical failure. But in reality it is the di·culty in determining what failure and success mean for philosophy that makes it important. Philosophy, then, should be viewed as a continuation

of humanity's ongoing que# to thrive within a context largely defined by utter my#ery, and by a lack of satisfa§ory answers as to why there is anything at all that exi#s, to what it means to cease to exi#, and to how it’s possible that, as far as we know, we alone on this planet are aware of living in such a context. To pra§ice philosophy is to attempt to make sense of, or at lea# bring attention to, the essential, foundational concepts that underlie and motivate all manner of con#ru§ive human endeavor.

In this way, concepts that provide a foundation for theory cannot be said to have failed if it turns out that they cannot be turned into adequate theory. The point of the concept is to galvanize, to guide, to imagine, to inspire.

Theory's point is to convert the concept into something that can happen in the world, while the concept's purpose is to push theory to find the limits of what's truly possible. Once the concepts become con#rained by empirical methodological pra§ice, they can no longer serve their foundational purpose. This is a kind of failure, but what has failed is not clear. It is perhaps a failure of a sy#em to recognize the exi#ence or fun§ion of its philosophical foundation, but it's not the foundational philosophical concept itself that has failed.

21

A CONVERSATION WITH TAYLOR CARMAN mounia abousaid

22

Gadfly: The Gadfly's spring issue is about failure — and so we've been intere#ed in looking at what might lead one to think of certain philosophical sy#ems as failures.

One of the things that came to mind — and that led us to think of you — is the idea that a philosopher's political engagement might lead to the invalidation of his philosophy. So, my fir# que#ion is a somewhat annoying one, that you mu# be asked entirely too often: what is your answer to those who argue that Heidegger's political failure (in his engagement with the Nazi party) invalidates his philosophy?

Taylor Carman: To say “Burn it!” is a very bad impulse, generally speaking. There's lots of good reasons to read Heidegger, even if you think he was the wor# person in the world. There's some extreme critics of Heidegger, for example the French philosopher Emmanuel Faye, who thinks that one ju# shouldn't read Heidegger — because it'll corrupt minds. Reading Heidegger will make it easier for forces of evil and totalitarianism to assert themselves.

And I think that this idea that there are books we should lock away and take off shelves is not only foolish but dangerous. Emmanuel Faye was concerned with whether Heidegger should be on the French high school philosophy curriculum, and we don't have that, so there's no analogous issue for us. But now, that aside, there are people who think that Heidegger's politics delegitimize his philosophy — that his philosophy mu# have been a failure because of his politics. Emmanuel Faye thinks that Heidegger literally cannot not have been a philosopher, because of his Nazism. For Faye there isn't any point in reading Heidegger, because his works ju# aren't philosophy, a priori. But other critics, like Vi§or Farías, whose book made the bigge# splash on this topic, says something like this: “it's philosophy all right, but it's tainted by fascism, it's fasci#ic philosophy.” Other people have said there is this complicated relationship between the philosophy and

23

the politics, that his politics reveal something about the philosophy — that it's inherently authoritarian and intolerant. Habermas has a nuanced view sort of like this.

He says that Being and Time is the mo# important work of philosophy since Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, but that Heidegger's politics really do refle§ something deeper about Heidegger's #yle of thinking.

But now, my view is that it's more complicated than that. It's not a clear case of separation between the philosophy and the politics — for in#ance, Frege was anti-Semitic, but as far as I know, that has no bearing to his work in logic, philosophy of language and so on. Heidegger wanted there to be a close conne§ion of some kind between his philosophy and the Nazi regime, at lea# in the 1930s. He really wanted to be the Nazi philosopher, and wanted to draw these conne§ions, and it's particularly evident in Introdu§ion to Metaphysics. He was also trying to dismiss the Neo-Kantians and the Nietzscheans, which shows you how underdetermined (or overdetermined) these things are. There were Nietzschean Nazis, there were Kantian Nazis, I'm sure there were Ari#otelian Nazis somewhere.

And I think that what this shows is that there was less of a conne§ion between Heidegger's philosophy and Nazism than he wanted there to be.

It's not to say that there is no conne§ion. In the mid'30s, there are some conne§ions. But I think that the que#ion of the relationship between his philosophy and his politics is not be# under#ood as a single que#ion with a single answer. Certain parts of his thinking bear as little relationship to Nazism as Frege's logic. In other cases it does seem like he's describing a certain ideal for culture, with a certain homogeneity and unity of purpose. So I think that the que#ion really should be whether this part of Heidegger's philosophy is linked to Nazism, but rarely do people have the patience to go through it piece by piece like that. So there's no good inference to be made from the cata#rophe of his involvement with Nazis to whether his philosophy can be deemed a failure.

24

Gadfly: Then to what degree should Heidegger's Nazism inform our reading of his works? Or should it inform our reading?

TC: Ah, I see! It should definitely inform our reading of Heidegger. I mean, you can't ju# put it off the table, it's #aring you in the face. But I think that one should be

candid as to whether it's relevant or not when reading different elements of Heidegger's work — and I don't think that it's a priori e#ablished that it's always relevant. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. I also think that when it does seem that there is a close conne§ion, we have to be careful not to make the kind of all-or-nothing inference, where if there seems to be a resonance or an inference with Nazism then we have to throw out the philosophy. That's all too often what ends up happening. Farías did that, and so did Richard Wolin, a hi#orian who's written a lot about Heidegger and Nazism. And the argument often is “this argument of Heidegger's bears a superficial similarity with something he said in a political context, so you now have to wash your hands of it.” Because it's tainted, you can #op thinking about it, and often those discussions don't go very far. When there are these resonances, and there often are, particularly in the mid-'30s, for example in the essay “The Origin of the Work of Art,” there is no doubt that he's expressing a nationali#ic ideal but then you have to keep reading and see what he's saying. I think that it has to be present in your mind when reading Heidegger, but I think that has to be what motivates you to read even more carefully what he's written — in#ead of drawing ha#y and often easy morali#ic conclusions.

Gadfly: My next que#ion is absolutely not related to politics, but #ill has to do with Heidegger. Some would say that another thing that might make Heidegger's philosophical proje§ a failure is his own attitude towards it, since he abandoned Being and Time. What would be your take on that?

TC: I don't think that Heidegger's attitude is quite so categorical, as if it had to be either a success or a failure.

What's definitely true is that he abandoned the proje§, #opped pursuing it, by the time it was published or shortly thereafter — and took up different dire§ions. I think that it's clear that he gave up on some ideas. One such idea is the premise of Being and Time, which is that the only way to answer the que#ion of being is to go through what he called an “analytic of Dasein,” or an account of what it is to be a human being. The human being is the entity that has an under#anding of being, and so it's who you talk to if you want to ask the que#ion of being. The entire book was predicated on the idea that the analytic of Dasein was a prerequisite to asking the que#ion of being.

25

26

I think that it's pretty clear that he gave up on the idea that it was a prerequisite. I don't think he gave up on the idea that it is one way to get closer to the que#ion of being. In his later writings, Heidegger talks about works of art, technology, things (by which he meant the jug, at a family meal, the bridge in Heidelberg). Later Heidegger has lots of ways of getting closer to the que#ion of being, and in retrospe§ the analytic of Dasein looks like one way among others to get closer to the que#ion of being. So I think that he gave up on the idea that it is a sy#ematic prerequisite. And I think that he gave up on the idea that anxiety is a fundamental, con#itutive element of human exi#ence — I think that he came to view that as symptomatic of modernity rather than basic to human life. But that's something that you can infer indire§ly, he doesn't come out and say it. So, he gave up on the proje§ of Being and Time — there are aspe§s of it that he abandoned. Another thing that he abandoned is the very idea of a sy#ematic philosophical proje§, that you could give a sy#ematic account of what it is to be a human being, of what the under#anding of being properly is. He came to see under#andings of being as changing through hi#ory. In his later work, after 1938, the task of describing the hi#ory of the We# as the hi#ory of a series of under#andings of being — that's what takes the place of the single sy#ematic account he was aiming for in Being and Time. But I think, again, that one mu# proceed piecemeal and say “he gave up on this, he took this up, etc.” He later described his method as something like following paths in a wood, and what that means is that sometimes the path peters out, and you have to back up and try a different path. It's not exa§ly a failure, it's ju# that some paths are produ§ive and some aren't. I think that that's the way he probably would look back on it, saying that it �Being and Time� was a dead end. So I think that it's not quite right to want to say that it's a failure or a success. I mean, in the end it was a dead end, but we learned a lot along the way.

Gadfly: How does the way that Heidegger viewed certain parts of his work as dead ends influence the way you read him? Should it influence the way you read him?

TC: I don't think one should necessarily should follow Heidegger's self-assessments. Because sometimes they're reliable and sometimes they're not. As I said before, in the

27

mid-'30s Heidegger saw what he was doing as intimately bound up with his political engagement with the Nazi regime — and I think that one has to be very cautious of that way of reading his philosophy. It's a self-imposed di#ortion. But I do think that the proje§ of Being and Time, for example, was so ambitious, and seemed to have such sy#ematic promise — that we could finally, after thousands of years, get clear about the meaning of being— that it's not surprising that it didn't pan out. And I think that it's di·cult to read Being and Time naively, as though if Heidegger had ju# done certain things differently we could have made some real progress in the que#ion of being. It seems to me that he came to a very sensible position, reje§ing that ambition. Since the meaning of being is what one under#ands when one has an under#anding of being, it's much more sensible to think that all you can do is describe under#andings of being. There's no reason to assume a priori that those under#andings all converge on the same interpretation.

28

Gadfly: Along the same lines, but not necessarily related to Heidegger: you're saying that Heidegger's readings of his own works weren't necessarily very produ§ive, that some of those readings should be discarded. What I'd love to hear you speak about is how to differentiate produ§ive readings from those that aren't? Assuming a certain level of intelligence in the readings examined?

TC: Heidegger liked to make a di#in§ion between whether something was corre§ness and truth, and would sometimes say that certain views were corre§ but not true —and that makes room for there being readings of texts that are incorre§ but true; deep, insightful, produ§ive, but not right. And I think there's plenty of ways in which Heidegger's readings of other philosophers were deep and insightful but not corre§. There's another philosopher, the late John Haugeland, who had a very eccentric reading of Heidegger, but it's one that's ingenious and illuminating, and that leads to all sorts of fresh insights — but it's #ri§ly not corre§. So corre§ness is not everything! In the kind of scientific and technological culture we're in, we all, philosophers especially, get obsessed with corre§ vs. incorre§, true vs. false in a very #raightforward way. And I think that you lose a lot of nuance if you're not willing to abide a little incorre§ness for the sake of depth.

There are a lot of readings that are wrong, but it would be a mi#ake to dismiss them, right off the bat, ju# because you can see that they're not corre§. There's an example in Heidegger's own work: in Being and Time, there's a concept of resoluteness, Entschlossenheit in German, which literally means, if you take the word apart, something like unclosedness. Later, Heidegger wanted to back away from this emphasis on spontaneous, resolute, seemingly willful attitudes of proje§ing into proje§s in the future, and moved in a very different dire§ion, where he wanted to emphasizing attitudes of receptivity, responsiveness to the world and so on. Heidegger claimed in retrospe§ that when he was talking about Entschlossenheit, he was talking about an attitude of openness and receptivity all along— because the words means unclosedness when taken apart.

In ordinary German, though, Entschlossenheit just means decisiveness. So, I think he was fudging. I don't think that claim is quite corre§ —but when he was writing Being and Time, he couldn't have not noticed that that word lends itself to that ambiguity. It's not altogether wrong, but I do think that it's an intere#ingly produ§ive misreading because there's something about the account of resoluteness in Being and Time that does seem to indicate that to be resolute you do have to be responsive to the situation you're in, you can't ju# be blindly forging ahead. That's a case in which it's kind of right and kind of not. Same thing with his readings of other philosophers. You can read things in a way that's #ri§ly speaking wrong but that shines a light on things you didn't see before.

Gadfly: I'm not sure if this makes sense, but I'm curious as to what this misreading does. Does it uncover things that were there all along, or is it a creative hijacking of a text?

TC: Different cases will be different! There are misreadings and misreadings! There is the kind of misreading which does get things wrong on the surface but uncovers something else that's going on that we wouldn't have noticed otherwise. That's why some truths can cover things up. I think that we all know in philosophy that if you read a text in the hi#ory of philosophy with an eye only to sorting out what's true and what's false, you'll miss mo# of what's intere#ing about the text. If you throw out every thing that appears to be wrong, you'll throw out 99� of Descartes, Plato and Ari#otle. But there are different cases: there are misreadings that are ju# total-

29

ly wrong, there's nothing to say for them. I wish I could remember an example, but they usually aren't memorable. Sometimes people misread text because they don't know the original languages. It sounds obvious, it should go without saying, but it doesn't sometimes. You might wind up saying something intere#ing totally by accident.

Gadfly: The Ezra Pound school of scholarship?

TC: Something like that.

30

Gadfly: I have one la# regarding the topic of (mis)reading — what degree of allegiance should one keep to the text, if we're not necessarily looking for a "corre§" interpretation? I guess I'm particularly reminded of charitable reading and Gadamer.

TC: Well, I have a very old-fashioned way of approaching these texts — I think of them as old friends. And I think that you carry with you the great works of literature that mean the mo# to you, you carry them for the re# of your life. You #and by them in hard times. You're devoted to them in some sense. You keep going back to them, you're not intere#ed in ju# arriving at a final verdi§ — you don't do that with your friends. You try to see what's in them, what their possibilities are, what might happen to them in the future if you lead them to a different place.. I think that a lot of great scholarship comes form this kind of devotion to certain works.

I find myself not at home in a certain kind of attitude towards philosophical texts, which is that they're all resource material for doing philosophy. Pick it up, make use of it, discard it when it's not taking you in the dire§ion you want. I'm not saying this is not legitimate, but it seems to me that there's a lot to be gained by #anding by certain texts, cherishing them and reading them critically but charitably — and I don't think those two things are incompatible. And there are certain texts you need to part with — ju# like you need to part with some friends. But I think that a certain degree of charity and devotion is necessary to a§ually find certain things about those texts. That's the relation I myself try to cultivate with the texts I love. I got intere#ed in them from an early age, I grew up with them, I'll grow old with them — they're like friends.

Gadfly: So, what is someone missing if they take the in#rumental approach you're critiquing?

TC: Well, what you miss is the overall chara§er of an author or a work. You miss the hi#orical context motivating their proje§. Often, you miss details if you're not willing to read and reread a text carefully. There's a lot of detail you'll miss if you're not willing to see a text in its own context, see that it's up to certain tasks that are not yours but theirs. You'll also miss discovering a way of thinking that is radically different from your own. This is a point that Gadamer makes. When he talks about charitable reading, he makes two points: one is that one should try to see the text as saying something true. That is not purely a hi#orian's attitude — a hi#orian would bracket that que#ion and try to see what that text meant for those who read it at the time it was published, or at some other time. In a way, charitable reading means reading a text as you would read a letter from a friend — regarding it as possibly or putatively true and right. So you have to begin by bringing your own judgment to the text, but if you #ick with it you might very well be brought around — your horizons may be expanded by the text. The text may change you and bring you to see the text in a different light. And that is something you miss with the in#rumentali# method of approaching texts.

31

HERE IS RHODES:

THE FAILURE OF MARXISM IN CONTEMPORARY ACADEMIIA

krishna hegde

32

Some arguments again# evolution rely on the Bible or other religious sources as assumed truth. Other arguments, however, do not appear to rely on any such a priori assumptions, and instead pretend to rely on “scientific” bases.

Under this guise of modeling their arguments on such presuppositions, proponents of intelligent design claim a place in science classrooms.

Scienti#s and secular humani#s simply reply by asking whether these formulations are falsifiable, and if they have greater evidence than the dominant theory of Evolution. In rebutting, some creationi#s play a sleight of hand by attacking the usefulness of considering their theories' “truth value”” entirely and instead seek to validate it as a pragmatic truth. Would it be a useful proje§, (and, perhaps more pertinently, what would it even mean) to assess whether some vocabulary or language was true? I can term this attempted shi‡ “preemptive immunity” because it “immunizes” claims from certain te#s used by the natural and social sciences. Assessing this technique of rebuttal ought to give us intuitive pause because on one hand, it attempts to defend claims whose “assumptions” are grounded in tests of scientific truth value and, on the other hand, undermines their very value by subverting the viability of scientific tests of truth value in general.

And so the educated public is likely to sco„ at such formulations of “intelligent design,” with good reason for doing so. Nevertheless, creationi#s o‡en imagine themselves as lone warriors engaged in an intelle§ual tug of war, which will in the end be won over when biology departments, and more generally the scientific academy, su·ciently broadens its narrow and dogmatic exclusion of professionals subscribing to intelligent design. What we need, according to this view, is a revolutionary change in our thinking of biology.

But in fa§ they are not alone in this endeavor. There

is another tradition of a§ivism that believes it has been sy#ematically disincluded from its proper discourse.

However, in#ead of regi#ering their complaints in the Chri#ian theology departments of mildly disreputable evangelical colleges scattered across the Bible Belt, they are perched amid# the towers of contemporary sociocultural anthropology and English departments, in universities with inflated pre#ige. The tradition of Marxi# economic a§ivism has found viability within some theori#s of these departments, a‡er having been categorically reje§ed by the overwhelming majority of departments in the social sciences. I group the #rains of Marxi# organizing and creationi# propaganda to which I am referring as “a§ivism” for two closely related reasons: one, in the more intuitive sense of convincing in#itutions and individuals of changing their modes of exi#ence through concrete policy changes, and secondly, of claiming a position in the pedagogy of scientific disciplines.

It is slightly di·cult to e#ablish the point at which Marxi# economic thought fell out of favor in modern economic academia, in the late 1980's the Nobel Prize-winning economi# Robert Solow felt ju#i‡ed in claiming that “Marx was an important and influential thinker, and Marxism has been a do§rine with intelle§ual and pra§ical influence. The fa§ is, however, that mo# serious English-speaking economi#s regard Marxi# economics as an irrelevant dead end.” Shortly a‡er, the Nobel Prize winner George Stigliz remarked that “Economi#s working in the Marxian-Sra·an tradition represent a small minority of modern economi#s, and that their writings have virtually no impa§ upon the professional work of mo# economi#s in major English-language universities.”

Unsurprisingly, fewer than ten economics departments nationwide o„er classes on Marxi# economics.

Consider what I termed “preemptive immunity” earlier in this article. It becomes clearer now that this shi‡ in focus, whether used by Chri#ian apologi#s or Marxi# theori#s, represents a form of perspe§ivism that unsuccessfully bypasses the attacks it attempts to subvert and is epi#emically dangerous both in what it represents as a method, and teleologically so as a means for progressing knowledge as a whole. Both show an inconsi#ency between considering material claims while simultaneously refusing to subje§ them to material (scientific) te#s of truth-value.

33

34

However, Marxism taught in the university as intelle§ual hi#ory is not analogous in this way to creationism.

When taught descriptively, discussion surrounding these theoretical works may try to parse the exa§ meaning of their text, but not for the purpose of assessing truth value.

This is the ju#ification many claim for having Marxism as part of a liberal education. Yet Marxism in the university is not merely described. Marxi# a§ivi#s desire to convince both their #udents and their colleagues of the prescriptive value of Marxism and #rive for inclusion in other departments.

If they demand that Marxi# claims should be considered for their truth value, then they should also remain vulnerable to scientific te#s of this. These te#s are not ju# in the text itself, but also involve inve#igating the theories' correspondence to the material conditions they are purportedly based on as well as te#ing the predi§ive power of their models.

Yet rather than submit to these te#s, they seek “preemptive immunity” by focusing on what might be be# described as the internal consi#ency of the texts' arguments. This method purportedly allows the claims of the author's texts to be considered as true in themselves while simultaneously bypassing the scienti‡c rigor which claims about the material world are typically subje§ed to. While the terms and grounds upon which they are subsequently inve#igated (i.e. the methods of verbal discourse used by English and sociocultural anthropology departments) may indeed be relevant for e#ablishing the truth of their claims, these theori#s, by inje§ing a type of a§ivism into their dialogue, are essentially using the same #rategic sleight of hand as the creationi#s. They want their claims to be considered solely in these terms and not susceptible to the material rigor demanded of other theories.

It is under this framework that Marxi# theori#s'““preemptive immunity” of sacralizing the survival of their authors' views is problematically derived by chara§erizing their argument as a #ru§ure, perspe§ive, or vocabulary. Such conceptualization preserves the argument as a candidate for consideration in itself even if its method and results of data acquisition and data application are comprehensively false. Perspe§ives, according to this argument, need not accurately describe what is happening in the material world surrounding them, nor do their nor-

35

mative recommendations need to materialize themselves.

However, Marxism as a theory is inextricably linked to the material science which its defenders claim as irrelevant. Hi#orical materialism, which claims to be based on the a§ual and scienti‡cally veri‡able material conditions of society, cannot simply be an ab#ra§ perspe§ive.

In advocating the philosophies of such texts, these theori#s are claiming that their “insights” are, at their mo# essential form, material claims.

More o‡en than not, the theori#s engaged in Marxi# a§ivism are culpable of a type of intelle§ual laziness by not showing intere# in seriously engaging in the material observation of the sciences to which they casually and haphazardly make reference. If they were, they might do well to a§ually #udy the techniques of the social sciences before proposing massive conspiracies in the academic departments to ju#ify why they have been categorically reje§ed from such disciplines. Of course, maybe there is a massively politicized environment in contemporary academic departments that unfairly prevents alternative views from being appropriately considered. They are not alone in perceiving this, however I would ask them to #ep down from their insulated perches and fully engage with the tools and vocabulary they preemptively deny.

In The Professor of Parody, an article written for The New Republic critiquing queer theori# Judith Butler, Martha Nussbaum attacks the tendency to indiscriminately place value on any a§ of subverting perceived power, because such subversion could do real harm if a§ualized in a context where power #ru§ures were prote§ing something good and valuable: “Try teaching Foucault at a contemporary law school, as I have, and you will quickly find that subversion takes many forms, not all of them congenial to Butler and her allies. As a perceptive libertarian #udent said to me, Why can't I use these ideas to resi# the tax #ru§ure, or the anti-discrimination laws, or perhaps even to join the militias? Others, less fond of liberty, might engage in the subversive performances of making fun of femini# remarks in class, or ripping down the po#ers of the lesbian and gay law #udents’ association.”

36

When placing them in contradi#in§ion to a capitali# #atus quo, academic theori#s love to fetishize critiques

of social and natural sciences. But when they're placed outside their theoretical comfort zone and moved into praยงice, everyone #arts to feel a little antsy.

37

A FAILURE OF ECONOMICS: A RESPONSE TO “HERE IS RHODES”

evan burger

38

Today, the discipline of mainstream economics finds itself faced with a barrage of seemingly insoluble problems. As Europe digs itself ever-deeper into the austerity hole, America is stuck with an unsustainably high level of structural unemployment, and even China is facing the phenomenon, unexplainable by economists, of workers choosing to not work at all rather than toil in the hellish conditions of Foxconn et al. Economists working within the dominant tradition can only offer the same tired old analyses, and absolutely nothing in the way of policy prescriptions (although God knows they have tried). And this is not even to mention the field's planet-sized blind spot concerning the impeding global climatic catastrophe -- a catastrophe which is the direct result of an ideology that prizes growth over all else.

It's clear we need a paradigm shift in the way we organize our societies' productive capacity. And right now, the only people offering any alternative to the dominant sort of economics are those coming out of a tradition of Marxian socialism. Marx has been ignored in mainstream economics departments for decades. But this is evidence not of the irrelevance of Marx, but of the ideological blinkers which render mainstream economics a dead end.

These ideological blinkers come in the shape of a set of pre-theoretical assumptions which the entire field of mainstream economics is built upon. To name just a few of the more salient: 1. Humans are atomistic individuals; any social bonds are an accidental property of their existence.

2. Human happiness can be quantified and compared, in the form of utility.

3. Humans are exclusively motivated by self-interest, which is to be understood in the idiosyncratic sense of “maximizing utility.”

All three of these basic tenets comprise a rather comprehensive picture of human nature, but also an extremely counter-intuitive one. Each of the three suppositions

I mentioned is by no means obvious—social bonds are an integral part of human identity, the question of how one could even begin to quantify happiness is an open one, and every day we see people acting out of concerns other than self-interest. We must recognize that economics, insofar as it is a science, is totally unable to address the truth-value of statements of this kind. Empirical investigation can only bring us a very short way in addressing whether this picture is the best model of human nature.

To address that question any further, we must turn to philosophy, where debates over these kinds of deep, important questions properly belong.

Here, it would seem that I agree with my interlocutor: we both seem to be saying that questions about theories that are not amenable to empirical investigation properly belong in the “non-sciences,” or what I would call the humanities. But his theory of why they are taught there is diametrically opposed to mine; where I see these battles between competing philosophical traditions as the most important part of a liberal arts education, he argues that the only reason they persist in the academy is to teach us how other people think.

So, for example, we learn about feminism not because it will change our own worldview, but so that we can understand what feminists are about, or in the context of this particular debate, we read Marx so we can understand what is going on inside the heads of Marxists. This, I believe, is an impoverished view of the liberal arts, one that misses the entire point of reading literature and discussing theory: to change how you yourself think about the world. Alternate worldviews are not worth studying if we simply treat them as artifacts to be observed—however, if they have the power to make us examine our own preconceived notions, and thus to change the way we thinkabout the world, they are the most important part of a well-rounded education.

This idea, in the abstract, has always been the promise of an education in the humanities. And in the context of today's failure of mainstream economics, exploring alternate ways of conceptualizing economic relations is one of the most important tasks the academy has ever known. In this project, the writings of Marx and other critics of capitalism are essential guideposts—more relevant than ever.

39

FAILURE AND USE martin tarrou

40

Everyone fails, and everyone encounters failure. Receiving a failing grade, failing to meet expe§ations, all fall under this concept. What follows is not so much an attempt at defining failure as to say something about it.

Inquiring into a working definition will hopefully allow us to see a little more about failure and how we can use it.

Failure is not an inherent property—it always depends on a context. When confronted with anything—a plan, an obje§, a person—the que#ion, “Has it failed?” or “Is it a failure?” is made clearer by some answer to another que#ion: “Failed at what?””Failure always requires something to fail at, some kind of blundered purpose. Economic plans fail to encourage the growth they were intended to and chairs fail to #and up. Success, failure's opposite, conforms to this same principle: some purpose is always presupposed.

Any thing, in an especially broad sense, has its success or failure determined by the purpose inscribed onto it.

The inventor, the doer, the creator all have specific purposes in mind. When a carpenter creates a chair that does not #and up, he has failed. His intention was not fulfilled.

Napoleon launched his invasion of Russia in order to gain control of that country and this plan failed. Reference is of course messy when determining this, since it is always the intention behind an event and not the event itself that determines failure. From the Russian perspe§ive, the war surrounding Napoleon's invasion was a success, and Napoleon would not conte# this.

When considered apart from specific agents and intentions, things can draw their purpose from a higher principle. This higher principle can take many forms, but ultimately manife#s as a sort of pragmatism. Pragmatism adapted for this purpose can mean that anything which is useful for some ultimate end is also successful. This version #retches far beyond pragmatism's usual bounds, not concerned with adapting knowledge, but with the useful as the good. For example, the transcendental principle of the Church is to consider that all that does service to God is good and, separate from any more local purpose, is therefore useful. A person may have achieved everything he

set out to do, yet all who have accomplished their goals, from Genghis Khan to Gandhi, fail as people under the Chri#ian viewpoint if they do not do the proper service to God. This concept of failure is also closely conne§ed to wa#e. When someone or something is wa#e, this means that they have no use for the wider society—they impair progress towards a larger purpose. Failures are separated from the realm of the useful. Like unnecessary dirt on a tool, they are brushed o„.

When something fails, it does not disappear. Failure is the fir# point at which we regard the obje§ separate from its purpose and under#and it in itself. We don't ju# use it, we examine it and find what causes it to fail. In Heidegger's terms, this is the recognition of the obje§ as presentto-hand, as a sub#ance, separate from the ready-to-hand useful being. When a tool fails to work, say a door knob, we inve#igate it in its properties. It may be ru#ed, or it may have loose parts. We look at its inner workings to determine fir# what was wrong, then to put it back towards its purpose—the door knob can be made better so it will not break again. This is largely how technical progress proceeds: when something fails to live up to our demands, the natural course is to examine it and make something better. Without failure, what isn't broken wouldn't be improved. What, though, of true wa#e, of that which cannot be repaired for its purpose?

An obje§'s purpose may originally be inscribed by its inventor, but this binding is not permanent. Failure does not condemn everything to wa#e, and either the culture, or even individual users, can e„e§ively repurpose so that success and failure are redefined. The locksmith who fails to repair the door knob may later need a blunt obje§ to hammer with, and the failed doorknob becomes a successful hammer. A classic example on the societal level would be the board game Monopoly. Monopoly was invented by a Quaker woman opposed to the exploitative nature of capitalism, and specifically the pra§ice of land-grabbing.

The game illu#rated the evils by showing that under the sy#em one winner would inevitably dominate everyone else. Ironically, capitalism as a dominant discourse evaluated the game itself as highly useful, or profit producing, and repurposed this failed obje§ without the wa#eful ideology. On the individual level and on the societal, obje§s can be repurposed and their success or failure redeter mined.

41

42

However, when there is more than one power of definition, there will o‡en be confli§. Inventors, users, and society as a whole all have the power to define use, and confli§ between them over what is successful and what not has major implications for social discourse. For example, pornography is very successful for its inventors and for its users; however, society will commonly regard it as wa#e. The confli§ between individuals and society is also the site of prote#. Very o‡en, fights over the power #ru§ure have been between those people and programs regarded as wa#e reasserting themselves again# the more dominant principle, going a‡er the principle itself to have themselves reevaluated.

This is also the site of decon#ru§ion, to wre# success and failure from the power #ru§ure and its inventors.

The repurposing and reinterpretation of literature is an attempt to reevaluate success and failure. The Other is wa#e from the cultural perspe§ive, yet resi#ant reading attempts to find new value in failed texts, a value which turns them into successes. Derrida in particular is skillful at taking the tool of words and repurposing them. The sy#em of #ru§uralism which gives a total view of knowledge ultimately fails once ju# a few of its key principles are reexamined under its own #andards Derrida's insight was not only to look at failed texts, but more especially at successful ones and examine their un#able inner workings. Close reading reveals the tools of their power and with that Derrida is able to either show them as failures or repurpose them to be successful for his own ends.

If the prior inve#igation holds, this #ru§ure of classification seems to succeed in having at lea# a little explanatory power. Yet a better purpose might be a concrete application to see if something seen as a failure can go through this repurposing, and for this I look at philosophy. Philosophy began with Plato as a successful pra§ice for life. Philosopher kings ruled the be# society, and philosophers were the happie#, be# people, which followed from the fa§ of them loving wisdom. Truth seeking was the a§ivity, it did not fail if truth was not reached. However the pure pursuit of truth followed, so that the purpose of philosophy was to a§ually discover this absolute truth in this life. Although there are deviations, the dominant purpose of philosophy was to find truth. And under this purpose philosophy has failed. The pa# several centuries have shown philosophy asserting again# itself the #ri§

limits of knowledge, and even doubting its own possibility. It is a tool which has turned again# itself.

Yet philosophy serves the unique role of not simply being a tool but one that works to define and redefine purposes. What the ends of philosophy are is itself a philosophical que#ion. And intere#ingly, where we've seen success has always been in the inve#igation of philosophy as having failed. Kant's mature philosophy was prompted as a fixing again# the failure of speculative metaphysics. Heidegger inve#igated the failure to articulate an under#anding of Being. Perhaps the mo# radical of all was Wittgen#ein, who saw the whole verbal a§ivity of philosophy as some sort of wa#e. Corre§ly dire§ed, philosophy for Wittgen#ein should serve to dispose of this wa#e, opening us up to things that cannot be said. For philosophy to succeed then, it mu# always inve#igate and reinve#igate its own failures. Once we under#and the failure, we can change so that we might succeed. Or, if philosophy is truly wa#eful, perhaps we can find a new purpose for it.

43

44

THE ORDINARY AND THE EXTRAORDINARY: CHALLENGING SCHMITT'S CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL

clava brodsky ““Ju#ice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.”

-Polemarchus, Republic I ““The specific political di#in§ion to which political a§ions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”

-Carl Schmitt, Concept of the Political A few months ago, I sat on the train across from two men: one had ju# been released from jail;;the other had come to pick him up. Their conversation, as the occasion would facilitate, was an introspe§ive one. “I've decided—I'm not going back to jail anymore. That's what I've decided.””The other—the skeptic—looked over at his friend and pro„ered, “Decisions. Decisions.” There was a sad sort of wisdom in their exchange: the decision to take charge; the claim that his “decision” wasn't worth much and, at any rate, would be short-lived. Decisions and decision-making power lie at the heart not ju# of weighty subway talk, but of con#itutional design as well. And it is on the latter, rather than on the former, that this paper will focus.

Notorious but by no means discredited, Carl Schmitt wrote in 1934 that “sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”[Simultaneously simple and cryptic, Schmitt's #atement is worth unpacking. Clearly, the sovereign is defined by his power to both determine when there is an exception and to decide what that exception entails. The exception that Schmitt refers to is an exemption from the prevailing legal order. He writes, “What chara§erizes an exception is principally unlimited authority, which means the suspension of the entire exi#ing order. In such a situation it is clear that the #ate remains, whereas law recedes.” The exception, then, transcends the law. Indeed, the exception “cannot � be derived from [the] norm,” since “what chara§erizes an exception is � unlimited authority, which means the suspension of the entire exi#ing order.” A decision that there exi#s an exception entails

45

46

going beyond the prevailing rule of law. The #ate's sovereign, then, is he who decides when the #ate's laws mu# be suspended. The power to decide endows the sovereign with revolutionary and radical potential. This, I would claim, is not a good idea.

Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political (1927) and Political Theology (1934) build up a political theology in which the sovereign becomes a sort of omnipotent lawgiver. In the beginning, Schmitt might claim, was the Sovereign. The root of Schmitt's political theology lies at the interse§ion between his concept of the political and his theory of the sovereign. Politics, he tells us, is the “mo# intense and extreme antagonism” between friend and enemy. His concept of the political focuses on the extraordinary, on “the extreme case.” The con#ant threat of war and confli§ keeps politics relevant. In Political Theology, Schmitt explains that the sovereign is he “who definitely decides whether this normal situation a§ually exi#s.” The sovereign #ands at the helm of the political. The sovereign's decision entails an “exception”” to the prevailing legal order. Schmitt blends the two di#in§ concepts of the extraordinary and the exception: the extraordinary moment requires an exception to the prevailing order. By collapsing the di#in§ion between the extraordinary and the exception, Schmitt endows the sovereign with boundless power to make political decisions: he is unlimited.

The political, Schmitt tells us, is the antagonism “between friend and enemy.” Politics consi#s in designating the enemy, and the “high points of politics” are those moments “in which the enemy is � recognized as the enemy.”

The political #ands alone, wholly autonomous from morality, ae#hetics or economics. Thus, the political friend is not necessarily morally good, ae#hetically beautiful or economically profitable. Similarly, “the political enemy need not be morally evil or ae#hetically ugly.” As a consequence of its autonomy, the political holds within it its own ju#ifications. Thus, if an enemy has been designated and a war begins, “the ju#ification of war does not reside in its being fought for ideals of norms of ju#ice, but in its being fought again# a real enemy.”

By classifying the political as the basic antagonism between friend and enemy, Schmitt formulates a sort of politics of the extraordinary. His is not an everyday brand of politics—negotiations between parties, ele§ions, in#itutions; this is all part of the legal #ru§ure. The politi-

cal, on the other hand, lies outside this day-to-day order.

The political is in#ead something passionate, fierce and extreme. Throughout Concept of the Political, Schmitt #resses that “the political is the mo# intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the mo# extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.” Politics, in other words, is hardly an everyday occurrence; it is an extreme and passionate grouping. Indeed, Schmitt even writes that “[the political]� does not describes its own sub#ance, but only the intensity of an association or dissociation of human beings whose motivates can be religious, national�” It requires men “to sacrifice life�and kill other human beings.” Schmitt refers to this possibility of war as the “extreme case.”

Besides references to the “political entity,” Concept of the Political leaves unclear who is to decide on the enemy and determine whether the “real war” has arrived.

In Political Theology, Schmitt charges the sovereign with determining “what con#itutes public order and security �when they are di#urbed, and so on.” The sovereign, then, is the political entity. Mo# di#in§ive of the sovereign is that he “decides on the exception.” We see here the dire§ thread linking Schmitt's politics of the extraordinary to his concept of sovereignty and the exception. Politics, Schmitt tells us, is the intense association or disassociation between friends and enemies. War again# the enemy is the “extreme case.””The sovereign makes the “extreme decision,””the political decision. As Schmitt sugge#s in the very fir# sentence of Political Theology, that decision forms an exception to legal norm. By placing the sovereign at the helm of the politics of the extraordinary, Schmitt collapses the di#in§ion between the extraordinary and the exception. In other words, the extraordinary moment requires an exception from the legal norm, which becomes “the true�absolute.”

The identification of the extraordinary with the exception lies at the heart of Schmitt's political theology.

By placing the sovereign in charge of the political decision, Schmitt elevates him to a kind of omnipotent lawgiver, endowed with the limitless power of the exception.

The lawgiver expresses this sort of theological omnipotence in at lea# two ways. Fir#, he may use the exception as a secular analog to creation ex nihilo. This theological analogy be# corresponds to the exception as the “con#i-

47

48

tution-making” moment in which the new #ate order is e#ablished. In the con#ituent moment, the exception entails not simply a suspension of the legal order, but also the creation of a new set of legal rules and norms. The exception, in this case, “proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its exi#ence, which derives only from the exception.” The sovereign emerges as the initial source of the #ate's order: the #ate's radical beginning can be traced back to the sovereign's exception. Because the new order is born of the exception, rather than built atop previously exi#ing law, it is created ex nihilo. The sovereign's decision is the beginning.

The sovereign may use the exception for a second, slightly less radical purpose. Chapter 3 of Political Theology shi‡s focus to this second theological analogy: “the exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.” The miracle parallel presents more of a rea·rmation of the sovereign's power and the #ate's order—a momentary suspension of the legal norm—than a radical reorienting of the #ate. Ju# as “the power and providence of God are mo# clearly displayed by events that are extraordinary and contrary to the conception � of nature,”] so too does the sovereign “intervene everywhere.” The exception, in this case, seeks to preserve, rather than to alter, the #atus quo. The sovereign's exception does not seek to create new law, but rather to prote§ the #ate from the temporary enemy. Thus, Schmitt's use of the miracle parallel further highlights the role of the sovereign as an absolute authority. Indeed, if the exception is akin to the miracle, then any con#raints on the sovereign are unclear.

There are at lea# two inconsi#encies associated with Schmitt's political theology. Fir#, it seems to problematize his claim about the autonomy of the political: can a political theology continue to claim autonomy from morality and other spheres? A‡er all, traditional Catholic theology certainly renounces religion as an autonomous sphere, separated away from morality, ae#hetics, law and economics. Theologians like St. Augu#ine and St. Thomas Aquinas made it their principal task to situate the Bible's teachings in each of these spheres. If we take Schmitt at his word and agree that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the #ate are secularized theological concepts,” then what of the friend-enemy di#in§ion? Schmitt specifically claims in Concept of the Political that the friend-enemy di#in§ion is entirely

49

50

separate from morality;;yet, following the logic of Political Theology, the friend-enemy di#in§ion should be under#ood as a secular echo of the theological antagonism between good and evil. Morality, all of a sudden, does not seem so di#ant from the political. In other words, if we are to take Schmitt’s claim in Political Theology seriously, then his vision of absolute autonomy is weakened. If we accept his assertion of autonomy, then his claim about political theology appears on shaky ground.

The second problem with Schmitt's political theology revolves around his concept of the omnipotent lawgiver.

As shown above, Schmitt claims that the extraordinary requires an exception and thereby places the sovereign at the helm of political decisions. Schmitt thereby unites the concepts of the political, the sovereign, and as a consequence, the #ate. Thus, when the sovereign decides on an exception, the laws are suspended and the #ate can no longer identify itself in terms of the legal order. In#ead, the #ate mu# identify itself with the sovereign's exceptions. Without the con#raints of the con#itutional order, what is #opping the sovereign from adopting the ways of the “enemy”? This is one of the major dangers of the omnipotent lawgiver: once an exception is made, the #ate may become unrecognizable. Indeed, Schmitt's use of the miracle analogy nearly intimates that it almo# certainly will. In fighting the enemy the #ate might so wholly change that it can only be under#ood and identified in relation to the enemy. Furthermore, without the bounds of the con#itutional order, it does not seem that there is anything #opping the sovereign from adopting the wor# qualities of the enemy.

Schmitt is in a way right to focus on the extraordinary, for it is here that politics is mo# immediate and relevant.

In a moment of heightened challenge, though, why turn away from law? Why separate the extraordinary so absolutely from the ordinary? The point of a con#itutional order is to create law that is flexible and forward-thinking enough to be relevant in extraordinary moments. At lea# one solution to this problem posed by Schmitt's political theology is to create a di#in§ion between the exception and the extraordinary. The con#itutional order and the sovereign mu# di#inguish between the two: the extraordinary does not immediately presuppose an exception.

Today's international human rights conventions, dra‡ed in the wake of WWII, precisely try to counter Schmitt's

thesis and envision this di#inยงion. Extraordinary decisions like going to war are not the moment to seek an exception; those are precisely the times we mo# need the guidance of the law. By envisioning an omnipotent sovereign, whose decisions are akin to miracles and creation, Schmitt impoverishes law's ability to apply and adapt to extraordinary times.

51

52

53

54