Conjectures Concerning Freedom of Speech (long)
Noel Smith
faculty who do not have their own convictions tempered by
exposure to other points of view, ..."
- Benno Schmidt
"I'm not going to let you spin that."
- Maxine Waters, silencing a witness before a House committee
Freedom of speech may be based more on an epistemological hypothesis
than on a concept of the natural rights of individuals. Unlike the
concept of the natural right, based in the dignity and worth of
individuals, to prompt and fair trial, freedom from self-
incrimination, and habeas corpus, freedom of speech involves the
belief that truth is a matter of following carefully thought-out
processes, such as logic and evidential reasoning, and most
importantly, rational civil discourse among individuals who may have
differing perspectives, biases, and interests, but who all have a
moral commitment to rationality.
That is, the most important consideration, in respect to the principle
of freedom of speech, may not be that the individual has a _right_ to
it (although the aspect of political freedom is not to be dismissed),
but that in open societies freedom of speech is central to the liberal
way of knowing.
Freedom of speech is opposed to the concept of revealed truth, which
by definition is not a subject of discussion; and to the concept of
finally known truth, that is, truth which is known with such certainty
that we need not continue to examine it--which also would not be a
subject of discussion. In Karl Popper's terms, truth must be
falsifiable. If a purported truth cannot be questioned, by the same
token it can't be validated. It is truth by fiat or revealed truth.
For this reason, freedom of speech requires the moral commitment to
listen to other viewpoints. It requires giving one's opponent(s) in
the debate a good-faith hearing. This means--and here I come to the
point of this discussion--that talking over an opponent or shouting
down an opponent is not an exercise of free speech but an unmistakable
violation of it. So also is the sort of "protest" which aims to
prevent the appearance of offensive speakers.
Freedom of speech presumes that no truth should be taken to be finally
known, and this in turn requires that challenges to what we sincerely
believe to be the truth must be heard. For this reason, freedom of
speech requires openness to offensive speech, to speech about which we
may have formed an a priori judgment that it is offensive, or obscene,
or that it is hate speech.
Likewise, if in the process of hearing a speaker we begin to suspect
that he or she is manifestly wrong, or espousing bigotry, or offending
standards of reasoning, factuality, or decency, the ethic of civil
discourse provides that the proper response is to demonstrate, by
responding argument, what is false about what we have heard, and why
no one should be persuaded by it. The all-too-familiar tactics of
disruption--talking over what one does not want to listen to, shouting
the speaker down, or marching out of the room in righteous
indignation--may be emotionally satisfying, but they are a profound
and grave violation of the principle of freedom of speech.
-*--
Sources:
From Popper's _The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II: The High
Tide of Prophecy_:
...the 'public character of scientific method'. [p. 218]
The scientific attitude means criticizing everything.
[p. 218]
Scientists try to avoid talking at cross-purposes. [...] They
try very seriously to speak one and the same language, even
if they use different mother tongues. In the natural sciences
this is achieved by recognizing experience as the impartial
arbiter of their controversies. [p. 218]
The discipline of clear and reasoned communication [...] is
part of scientific method. [p. 219]
To sum up these considerations, it may be said that what
we call 'scientific objectivity' is not a product of the
individual scientist's impartiality, but a product of the
social or public character of scientific method. [p. 220]
The mode of science is [...] to look out for facts which
may refute the theory. [p. 260]
It is, I hold, the possibility of overthrowing it, or its
falsifiability, that constitutes the possibility of testing
it, and therefore the scientific character of a theory;
and the fact that all tests of a theory are attempted
falsifications of predictions derived with its help,
furnishes the clue to the scientific method. This view of
scientific method is corroborated by the history of science,
which shows that scientific theories are often overthrown
by experiments, and that the overthrow of theories is
indeed the vehicle of scientific progress. [p. 260]
No theory is final. [p. 261]
Only if we can look out for counter examples can we test
a theory. [p. 267]
From Margaret C. Jacob, "Reflections on Bruno Latour's Version of the
Seventeenth Century" in N. Koertge Ed., _House Built on Sand_:
Put more dynamically, experimental practices invented a new
social space that was more than simply, as Latour would have
it, a place for the passive "observation of a phenomenon
produced artificially in the closed and protected space of a
laboratory." The creation of civil society--the zone of
relatively free exchange that lies both between and outside
the state and the domestic sphere--owes a debt to science.
Experimental science requires voluntary associations and
practices intended for verification by an independent audience,
however gentlemanly or oligarchic its original composition.
As both readers and witnesses, the original seventeenth-
century audience for science required a new quasi-public space.
The interaction of the experimenters with their spectators
and consumers could be neither coerced nor predicted; it
presumed a _relatively_ free market for new rhetorical and
experimental technologies. [p. 242]
From Nat Hentoff, _Free Speech for Me--But Not for Thee_:
[Donald Kagan, now President of Yale College, wrote of
student demonstrations which prevented unpopular invited
lecturers from speaking:]
"They assert a right to prevent free expression. They rest
upon the assumption that speech can be suppressed by anyone
who deems it false and offensive. They deny what Justice
Holmes termed 'freedom for the thought we hate.' They make
the majority, or any willful minority, the arbiters of truth
for all. If expression may be prevented, censored or
punished, because of its content or because of the motives
attributed to those who promote it, then it is no longer free.
It will be subordinated to other values that we believe to
be of lower priority in a university." [p. 116]
"A significant number of students and some faculty members
appear to believe that when speakers are offensive to
majority opinion, especially on such issues as war and race,
it is permissible and even desirable to disrupt them....
"The banning or obstruction of lawful speech can never be
justified on such grounds as that the speech or the speaker
is deemed irresponsible, offensive, unscholarly, or untrue...."
[p. 117]
[In 1989 Yale President Benno Schmidt said:] "Offensive,
erroneous, and obnoxious speech is the price of freedom.
Offensive speech cannot be suppressed under open-ended
standards without letting loose an engine of censorship that
cannot be controlled. [...]
"To stifle expression because it is obnoxious, erroneous,
embarrassing, not instrumental to some political or ideological
end is--quite apart from the invasion of the rights of
others--a disastrous {p. 134} reflection on the idea of
the university. It is to elevate fear over the capacity for
a liberated and humane mind.
"Then there is the problem of disruption of unpopular or
controversial speakers....
"The first victims of such suppression are the students and
faculty who do not have their own convictions tempered by
exposure to other points of view, ... [pp. 134-5]
Needless to say, all this emphatically disagrees with the Marcusean
doctrine of "repressive tolerance," and with moggin's goofy variation:
We have freedom of speech imposed on us.
- Noel Smith <noel...@worldnet.att.net>
jac_o...@my-dejanews.com
noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith) wrote:
> [ ... snipped ...]
> Freedom of speech may be based more on an epistemological hypothesis
> than on a concept of the natural rights of individuals.
> [ ... snipped ...]
One interesting theory, which we should not forget, explains the invention of
human language, by claiming that when the groupsize of hunters increased,
aggression within the group increased, so these hunters had to take more care
of eachother, to prevent the group from falling apart. So, the hunters had
less time to hunt. To be able to increase the time to hunt, the hunters had
to invent a language, and a corresponding freedom of speech, to create
ingroups, within the group, by means of spreading gossip.
Jac.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
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Dao Jones
says...
> You postmodern types are all alike.
That is either the most profound joke I've heard in some time, or one of
the most ridiculous calumnies ever perpetrated in the name of
rationality. Actually, I suspect it is both.
> Confounding the concept of "truth"
> with "determination of the truth".
More interesting, though I suspect ultimately empty. Expand, please.
Dao Jones
'Ursprung Durch Technik'
Dao Jones
noel...@worldnet.att.net says...
> "The first victims of such suppression are the students and
> faculty who do not have their own convictions tempered by
> exposure to other points of view, ..."
> - Benno Schmidt
>
> "I'm not going to let you spin that."
> - Maxine Waters, silencing a witness before a House committee
Interesting, come to think of it, that one of the places where free
speech is rigorously curtailed is in the Courtroom, where you might think
it was doubly important that all the views and arguments be heard.
> Freedom of speech may be based more on an epistemological hypothesis
> than on a concept of the natural rights of individuals....
SNIP
> freedom of speech involves the
> belief that truth is a matter of following carefully thought-out
> processes, such as logic and evidential reasoning, and most
> importantly, rational civil discourse among individuals who may have
> differing perspectives, biases, and interests, but who all have a
> moral commitment to rationality.
A little too rich for my blood: I would say that the rational
justification for this freedom rests upon the idea that the best way of
getting close to the truth - or the true desire - or the least
offensive general course of action - is through the process of an open
negotiation of consensus.
The concept of free debate is lodged at the heart of Liberal Democracy -
but it is not Truth which is the object of this debate, but consensus;
justice, or the fair division of spoils and damages, where what is 'fair'
is determined by the conscience of the group.
Truth is a little more slippery in this context - it seems to imply the
possibility of deception, and lead towards a kind of global panopticon,
in which everyone is simultaneously guard and inmate.
> That is, the most important consideration, in respect to the principle
> of freedom of speech, may not be that the individual has a _right_ to
> it (although the aspect of political freedom is not to be dismissed),
> but that in open societies freedom of speech is central to the liberal
> way of knowing.
This relates more to the first quotation you used. I like the idea of a
'way of knowing' drawn along these lines, and of tempering the opinions
of students in the fire of debate, although not everyone is positively
affected in this way; some just become more entrenched and others give
up good ideas - 'the best lack all conviction, while the worst are
filled with passionate intensity.'
> In Karl Popper's terms, truth must be
> falsifiable. If a purported truth cannot be questioned, by the same
> token it can't be validated. It is truth by fiat or revealed truth.
Crucial. Discussion questions the former and likely the latter as well,
since there are often as many revealed truths about one thing as there
are thinkers, and is central to communal, argued constructions of truth.
> Freedom of speech presumes that no truth should be taken to be finally
> known, and this in turn requires that challenges to what we sincerely
> believe to be the truth must be heard.
Not sure. Certainly epistemology tends in this direction. I think it's
a stretch to say Freedom of Speech does.
> For this reason, freedom of
> speech requires openness to offensive speech, to speech about which we
> may have formed an a priori judgment that it is offensive, or obscene,
> or that it is hate speech.
Certainly the instrumental aspect of Freedom of Speech (the tempering of
the listener's views by exposing them to controversy) benefits from this,
and honest epistemology must admit that learning is possible from the
most unlikely source. Again I am unclear that FoS directly requires it.
The Liberal Democratic process may.
> Likewise, if in the process of hearing a speaker we begin to suspect
> that he or she is manifestly wrong, or espousing bigotry, or offending
> standards of reasoning, factuality, or decency, the ethic of civil
> discourse provides that the proper response is to demonstrate, by
> responding argument, what is false about what we have heard, and why
> no one should be persuaded by it. The all-too-familiar tactics of
> disruption--talking over what one does not want to listen to, shouting
> the speaker down, or marching out of the room in righteous
> indignation--may be emotionally satisfying, but they are a profound
> and grave violation of the principle of freedom of speech.
The question, I suppose, is how highly you rate FoS and the benefits you
suggest on the scale of things. Assuming you are correct all the way
down the line, how higly would you priortise Freedom of Speech against
public saftey, national security, indoctrination, the spread of violent
and non-consent based ideologies and so on? I'm not hyping these things,
and I don't claim that all of them would be relevant all the time. I've
also missed a few hundred of them - but you get the idea.
Dao Jones
Richard Harter
>In article <36b98906...@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
> noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith) wrote:
>
>> [ ... snipped ...]
>> Freedom of speech may be based more on an epistemological hypothesis
>> than on a concept of the natural rights of individuals.
>> [ ... snipped ...]
>
>One interesting theory, which we should not forget, explains the invention of
>human language, by claiming that when the groupsize of hunters increased,
>aggression within the group increased, so these hunters had to take more care
>of eachother, to prevent the group from falling apart. So, the hunters had
>less time to hunt. To be able to increase the time to hunt, the hunters had
>to invent a language, and a corresponding freedom of speech, to create
>ingroups, within the group, by means of spreading gossip.
For which see _Gossip, Grooming, and the Evolution of Language_ by Robin
Dunbar.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
We do not ask of the enlightened one what mountains he has moved.
It suffices that he sits there with a mysterious smile.
-Mammel,L.H.
<jac_o...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>
>One interesting theory, which we should not forget, explains the invention of
>human language, by claiming that when the groupsize of hunters increased,
>aggression within the group increased, so these hunters had to take more care
>of eachother, to prevent the group from falling apart. So, the hunters had
>less time to hunt. To be able to increase the time to hunt, the hunters had
>to invent a language, and a corresponding freedom of speech, to create
>ingroups, within the group, by means of spreading gossip.
"Hey guys, I got a great idea! ... DOH!"
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Puss in Boots
[...]
> Needless to say, all this emphatically disagrees with the Marcusean
> doctrine of "repressive tolerance," and with moggin's goofy variation:
> We have freedom of speech imposed on us.
Twice wrong. Repressive tolerance isn't Marcuse's doctrine:
it's the target of his criticism. And I didn't say we have
freedom of speech imposed on us -- you've forgotten (that should
probably be "forgotten") the scare-quotes as well as the
context.
What's that you said about scholarly standards? Never mind.
You'll be interested to learn that your "conjecture on free
speech" echoes Marcuse's. You say, "Freedom of speech may be
based more on an epistemological hypothesis than on a concept of
the natural rights of individuals." Herbie was more succinct:
"The _telos_ of tolerance is truth" (90).
ObBook: Critique of Pure Tolerance (Wolff, Moore, Marcuse).
-- Moggin
Gerry Quinn
>noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith):
>
> You'll be interested to learn that your "conjecture on free
>speech" echoes Marcuse's. You say, "Freedom of speech may be
>based more on an epistemological hypothesis than on a concept of
>the natural rights of individuals." Herbie was more succinct:
>"The _telos_ of tolerance is truth" (90).
>
> ObBook: Critique of Pure Tolerance (Wolff, Moore, Marcuse).
>
>-- Moggin
And an attack on tolerance is an attack on truth. Did he speak of 'repressive
truth', too?
- Gerry
Puss in Boots
[...]
>> You'll be interested to learn that your "conjecture on free
>> speech" echoes Marcuse's. You say, "Freedom of speech may be
>> based more on an epistemological hypothesis than on a concept of
>> the natural rights of individuals." Herbie was more succinct:
>> "The _telos_ of tolerance is truth" (90).
ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
> And an attack on tolerance is an attack on truth.
When tolerance is serving truth, yes, it is.
> Did he speak of 'repressive truth', too?
No, not that I know about. Should he have?
-- Moggin.
Gerry Quinn
>mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots):
>
>[...]
>
>>> You'll be interested to learn that your "conjecture on free
>>> "The _telos_ of tolerance is truth" (90).
>
>ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
>
>> And an attack on tolerance is an attack on truth.
>
> When tolerance is serving truth, yes, it is.
>
>> Did he speak of 'repressive truth', too?
>
> No, not that I know about. Should he have?
>
>-- Moggin.
It sounds like a necessary implication of his thesis.
- Gerry
Puss in Boots
>>>> You'll be interested to learn that your "conjecture on free
>>>> speech" echoes Marcuse's. You say, "Freedom of speech may be
>>>> based more on an epistemological hypothesis than on a concept of
>>>> the natural rights of individuals." Herbie was more succinct:
>>>> "The _telos_ of tolerance is truth" (90).
ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
>>> And an attack on tolerance is an attack on truth.
Moggin:
>> When tolerance is serving truth, yes, it is.
Gerry:
>>> Did he speak of 'repressive truth', too?
Moggin:
>> No, not that I know about. Should he have?
Gerry:
> It sounds like a necessary implication of his thesis.
It does? How? (I could try and guess what you're thinking,
but I'll wait for you to explain.)
-- Moggin
Gerry Quinn
>mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots):
>
>>>>> You'll be interested to learn that your "conjecture on free
>>>>> "The _telos_ of tolerance is truth" (90).
>
>ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
>
>>>> And an attack on tolerance is an attack on truth.
>
>Moggin:
>
>>> When tolerance is serving truth, yes, it is.
>
>Gerry:
>
>>>> Did he speak of 'repressive truth', too?
>
>Moggin:
>
>>> No, not that I know about. Should he have?
>
>Gerry:
>
>> It sounds like a necessary implication of his thesis.
>
> It does? How? (I could try and guess what you're thinking,
>but I'll wait for you to explain.)
>
>-- Moggin
Suppose tolerance of opposing viewpoints is seen as an embodiment of a
philosophy that claims the search for truth is worthwhile, and is carried out
by means of free and tolerant debate [this is what I understand by the
concepts quoted above]. Tolerance is then a means to an end, the end being
truth.
It follows that if tolerance is seen as "repressive" it must be only because
the truths emerging from such debate are themselves seen as repressive - that
is to say, in conflict with the truths espoused by Marcuse. (But what can you
expect from a guy who saw ordinary people as one-dimensional? Evidently he
had an entire plane to himself, and the intersection with others' lives was
slight...)
- Gerry
Puss in Boots
>>>>>> You'll be interested to learn that your "conjecture on free
>>>>>> speech" echoes Marcuse's. You say, "Freedom of speech may be
>>>>>> based more on an epistemological hypothesis than on a concept of
>>>>>> the natural rights of individuals." Herbie was more succinct:
>>>>>> "The _telos_ of tolerance is truth" (90).
ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
>>>>> And an attack on tolerance is an attack on truth.
Moggin:
>>>> When tolerance is serving truth, yes, it is.
Gerry:
>>>>> Did he speak of 'repressive truth', too?
Moggin:
>>>> No, not that I know about. Should he have?
Gerry:
>>> It sounds like a necessary implication of his thesis.
Moggin:
>> It does? How? (I could try and guess what you're thinking,
>> but I'll wait for you to explain.)
Gerry:
>Suppose tolerance of opposing viewpoints is seen as an embodiment of a
>philosophy that claims the search for truth is worthwhile, and is carried out
>by means of free and tolerant debate [this is what I understand by the
>concepts quoted above]. Tolerance is then a means to an end, the end being
>truth.
>It follows that if tolerance is seen as "repressive" it must be only because
>the truths emerging from such debate are themselves seen as repressive - that
>is to say, in conflict with the truths espoused by Marcuse.
Thanks for explaining. That's not it, tho. Positing truth
as the telos of tolerance doesn't imply that tolerance always
produces truth. In other words, what emerges from debate may be
false -- the goal can remain unachieved.
> (But what can you
> expect from a guy who saw ordinary people as one-dimensional? Evidently he
> had an entire plane to himself, and the intersection with others' lives was
> slight...)
If you have any interesting comments about _One Dimensional
Man_, pass 'em along. That one fell flat.
-- Moggin
Gerry Quinn
>Gerry:
>
>>Suppose tolerance of opposing viewpoints is seen as an embodiment of a
>>philosophy that claims the search for truth is worthwhile, and is carried out
>>by means of free and tolerant debate [this is what I understand by the
>>concepts quoted above]. Tolerance is then a means to an end, the end being
>>truth.
>
>>It follows that if tolerance is seen as "repressive" it must be only because
>>the truths emerging from such debate are themselves seen as repressive - that
>>is to say, in conflict with the truths espoused by Marcuse.
>
> Thanks for explaining. That's not it, tho. Positing truth
>as the telos of tolerance doesn't imply that tolerance always
>produces truth. In other words, what emerges from debate may be
>false -- the goal can remain unachieved.
>
From Marcuse's point of view, what emerges from debate can only be seen as
false by Marcuse. Now I also would agree that democracy does not necessarily
produce truth, but then I am not proposing democratic political activism, or
objecting to the fact that my 'truths' are ignored in a democracy as Marcuse
is. How does Marcuse propose to distinguish good tolerance from bad
tolerance, except insofar as good tolerance supports the opinions of Marcuse?
>> (But what can you
>> expect from a guy who saw ordinary people as one-dimensional? Evidently he
>> had an entire plane to himself, and the intersection with others' lives was
>> slight...)
>
> If you have any interesting comments about _One Dimensional
>Man_, pass 'em along. That one fell flat.
>
>-- Moggin
Just exploring his metaphors - a popular sport here when applied to
conservative thinkers! I think it's quite revealing. If you don't align your
observations along the dimensions important to people, their lives may well
seem to lack a dimension or two compared to your own... Maybe from the
perspective of '1D Man', Marcuse was lacking along some axes.
- Gerry
Noel Smith
[...]
>From Marcuse's point of view, what emerges from debate can only be seen as
>false by Marcuse. Now I also would agree that democracy does not necessarily
>produce truth, but then I am not proposing democratic political activism, or
>objecting to the fact that my 'truths' are ignored in a democracy as Marcuse
>is. How does Marcuse propose to distinguish good tolerance from bad
>tolerance, except insofar as good tolerance supports the opinions of Marcuse?
[...]
Marcuse's concept of "repressive tolerance" appears to have some
relationship to a recurrent theme of Chomsky's, "manufactured
consent." Both are rooted in Marx's belief that capitalism, and the
ideology that provides its conceptual legitimization, are impervious
to reform, or piecemeal improvement.
Marcuse argued that the voices of the oppressed would not be heard so
long as those in power could keep reinforcing the conventional wisdom
by continuing their propaganda under the "mere formal freedom" of
speech. (Similarly, the concept of "manufactured consent" modifies
Lincoln's "You cannot fool all of the people all of the time" by
asserting "You can fool enough of the people enough of the time.")
Speech by the powerful should be restricted, and speech by their
victims should be fostered, in the cause of real truth and real
freedom.
One error that Marcuse makes--it's probably the most prevalent error
of those who oppose freedom of speech in the name of social justice,
such as Catharine MacKinnon--is to presume that we already know who
the good guys are, and what the right cause is, before it is argued
out in open public debate.
The public character of freedom of speech lies in the belief that any
individual perspective is likely to be improved when forced to defend
itself against the arguments of other reasonable people. "_I may be
wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the
truth_," as Popper says in Vol. II of _The Open Society_. Objectivity
is not attained by any single person's careful effort to attain
objectivity, but by inter-subjectivity, that is, by public debate
among many, each of whom contributes to identifying possible blind
spots.
Marcuse didn't understand that freedom of speech is not like power,
which is best concentrated; or that speech is not analogous to war,
but is a cooperative enterprise involving intellectual contributions
from many. "Reason, like science," says Popper, "grows by way of
mutual criticism; the only possible way of 'planning' its growth is to
develop those institutions that safeguard the freedom of this
criticism, that is to say, the freedom of thought."
Marcuse belongs to a right-wing philosophical tradition (as in
Nietzsche, "rights are power") which either does not understand that
reason and speech can replace violence, or considers such a solution
undesirable because it is inauthentic or an attempt to hide natural
aggression by a false facade.
>- Gerry
- Noel Smith <noel...@worldnet.att.net>
Noel Smith
>noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith) writes:
>> Freedom of speech may be based more on an epistemological hypothesis
>> than on a concept of the natural rights of individuals. Unlike the
>> concept of the natural right, based in the dignity and worth of
>> individuals, to prompt and fair trial, freedom from self-
>> incrimination, and habeas corpus, freedom of speech involves
[...]
>> the belief that truth is a matter of following carefully thought-out
>> processes,
[...]
>> such as logic and evidential reasoning,
>Two of several ways of discovering truth. There's also intuition, for
>example.
Intuition generates hypotheses, which can be valuable. "Government
(should be) by consent of the governed" was a hypothesis before it
became a successful political practice. In order to merit recognition
as truth, a hypothesis or proposition has to meet reality tests.
Scientific hypotheses have to survive attempts to falsify them;
political proposals and ethical principles have to answer the
question, How does it play out?
>> and most importantly,
>
>Why most importantly?
>
>> rational civil discourse
>
>Why civil? Isn't it possible that uncivil discourse may also lead to
>finding truth? [...]
No, because truth is not authoritarian. It is not imposed, because the
infallible knower posited by Plato--who could be such an
authority--does not exist. Uncivil discourse is not a cooperative
reasoned endeavor to learn the truth, but a power contest disguised as
speech. Reasoned inquiry, as I say in a current post, is an
inter-subjective enterprise, and requires the willingness to listen
and to learn. The reason uncivil discourse can't "also lead to finding
truth" is that by definition it does not listen, but only seeks to
impose a belief on the other.
Schopenhauer describes the transition from a reasoned philosophy of
civil discourse to an oracular, authoritarian philosophy as follows:
The character of honesty, that spirit of undertaking an
inquiry together with the reader, which permeates the works
of all previous philosophers, disappears here completely.
Every page witnesses that these so-called philosophers do
not attempt to teach, but to bewitch the reader.
- Noel Smith <noel...@worldnet.att.net>
Puss in Boots
> What about freedom FROM speech?
Damn right. Including the freedom to not speak. (Cordelia
as culture-hero.)
-- Moggin
Puss in Boots
>From Marcuse's point of view, what emerges from debate can only be seen as
>false by Marcuse. Now I also would agree that democracy does not necessarily
>produce truth, but then I am not proposing democratic political activism, or
>objecting to the fact that my 'truths' are ignored in a democracy as Marcuse
>is. How does Marcuse propose to distinguish good tolerance from bad
>tolerance, except insofar as good tolerance supports the opinions of Marcuse?
I can't find a thread here, so I'll have to go step by step.
> From Marcuse's point of view, what emerges from debate can only be seen as
> false by Marcuse.
You mean Marcuse has no choice but to see it as false, I'll
assume. Unfortunately you don't say what makes you think so.
It seems wrong. Pointing out that debate can produce falsehoods
doesn't require Marcuse to see everything that emerges from
debate as false.
>Now I also would agree that democracy does not necessarily
>produce truth, but then I am not proposing democratic political activism, or
>objecting to the fact that my 'truths' are ignored in a democracy as Marcuse
>is.
I can go along with that: I've never seen you question the
status quo.
>How does Marcuse propose to distinguish good tolerance from bad
>tolerance, except insofar as good tolerance supports the opinions of Marcuse?
You're criticizing him but you don't know what he says?
"Repressive Tolerance" isn't long and it's not hard going. Like
I said about Adorno, I'd be happy to talk about Marcuse with
you once you have an idea what you're talking about. (If that's
too much to ask, see below.)
Gerry:
>>>(But what can you
>>>expect from a guy who saw ordinary people as one-dimensional? Evidently
>>>he had an entire plane to himself, and the intersection with others'
>>>lives was slight...)
Moggin:
>> If you have any interesting comments about _One Dimensional
>> Man_, pass 'em along. That one fell flat.
Gerry:
>Just exploring his metaphors - a popular sport here when applied to
>conservative thinkers! I think it's quite revealing. If you don't align your
>observations along the dimensions important to people, their lives may well
>seem to lack a dimension or two compared to your own... Maybe from the
>perspective of '1D Man', Marcuse was lacking along some axes.
Or in two words, "You're another!" That might be revealing.
But not about Marcuse. I take it that you've never read him.
Give him a try. You won't find much to agree with, but it might
add some depth to your criticism. M doesn't have the
brilliance of Adorno or Benjamin, but he makes very easy reading.
Or then we could talk about Bierce's definition for "idiot."
That's not a dig at you -- I figure you probably won't read
Marcuse, so I'm offering a good alternative. Here's how it goes:
IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose
influence in human affairs has always been dominant and
controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any
special field of thought or action, but "pervades and
regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything;
his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and
opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and
circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.
-- Moggin
Puss in Boots
> Marcuse's concept of "repressive tolerance" appears to have some
> relationship to a recurrent theme of Chomsky's, "manufactured
> consent." Both are rooted in Marx's belief that capitalism, and the
> ideology that provides its conceptual legitimization, are impervious
> to reform, or piecemeal improvement.
Yep, there's a similarity (although you should credit
"manufacturing consent" to Liebling -- Chomsky just borrowed the
phrase). And Marcuse is certainly working from Marx. But
Chomsky's planted in classic liberalism; he's what Marcuse would
call an "authentic liberal," meaning he protests against
tyranny and domination like the bourgeoisie did when they were a
revolutionary class, rather than a ruling one.
[...]
> One error that Marcuse makes--it's probably the most prevalent error
> of those who oppose freedom of speech in the name of social justice,
> such as Catharine MacKinnon--is to presume that we already know who
> the good guys are, and what the right cause is, before it is argued
> out in open public debate.
That's not his presumption. As I mentioned before, Marcuse
posits truth as the goal of tolerance. "The _telos_ of
tolerance is truth." Truth is an aim, something that remains to
be found:
Tolerance of free speech is the way of improvement, of
progress in liberation, _not_ because there is no
objective truth, and improvement must necessarily be a
compromise between a variety of opinions, but because
there _is_ an objective truth which can be discovered,
ascertained only in learning and comprehending that which
is and that which can and ought to be done for the sake of
improving the lot of mankind. The common and historical
'ought' is not immediately evident, at hand: it has to be
uncovered by 'cutting through,' 'splitting, 'breaking
asunder,' (_dis-cutio_) the given material -- separating
right and wrong, good and bad, correct and incorrect. The
subject whose 'improvement' depends on a progressive
historical practice is each man as man, and this
universality is reflected in that of the discussion, which
a priori does not exclude any group or individual.
(_A Critique of Pure Tolerance_ 89-90)
> The public character of freedom of speech lies in the belief that any
> individual perspective is likely to be improved when forced to defend
> itself against the arguments of other reasonable people. "_I may be
> wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the
> truth_," as Popper says in Vol. II of _The Open Society_. Objectivity
> is not attained by any single person's careful effort to attain
> objectivity, but by inter-subjectivity, that is, by public debate
> among many, each of whom contributes to identifying possible blind
> spots.
That's no argument against Marcuse, as you can see from the
passage I just quoted. You're agreeing with him. But he
doesn't assume that "open public debate" is a guarantee of truth.
> Marcuse didn't understand that freedom of speech is not like power,
> which is best concentrated; or that speech is not analogous to war,
> but is a cooperative enterprise involving intellectual contributions
> from many. "Reason, like science," says Popper, "grows by way of
> mutual criticism; the only possible way of 'planning' its growth is to
> develop those institutions that safeguard the freedom of this
> criticism, that is to say, the freedom of thought."
Again, no argument with Marcuse. (You really ought to read
him, don't you think?) He simply brings out what Sir Karl
leaves unsaid -- reason can benefit from "mutual criticism" only
when the critics are rational. He certainly agrees about the
impossibility of planning: "...the true positive is the society
of the future and therefore beyond definition and
determination, while the existing positive is that which must be
surmounted" (87).
(Reminiscent of the passage from Barthes' _Mythologies_ you
attributed to Foucault.)
> Marcuse belongs to a right-wing philosophical tradition (as in
> Nietzsche, "rights are power") which either does not understand that
> reason and speech can replace violence, or considers such a solution
> undesirable because it is inauthentic or an attempt to hide natural
> aggression by a false facade.
Tolerance is an end in itself. The elimination of
violence and the reduction of suppression to the extent
required for protecting man and animals from cruelty and
aggression are preconditions for the creation of a humane
society. Such a society does not yet exist; progress
toward it is perhaps more than before arrested by violence
and suppression on a global scale.
(_A Critique of Pure Tolerance_ 82)
-- Moggin
Noel Smith
book _Post-liberalism_, says that according to Gray
"none of the four constitutive elements of doctrinal
liberalism--universalism, individualism, egalitarianism,
and meliorism--can survive the ordeal by value pluralism."
On Thu, 4 Feb 1999 dao_...@disinfo.net (Dao Jones) wrote:
>noel...@worldnet.att.net says...
[...]
>> freedom of speech involves the
>> belief that truth is a matter of following carefully thought-out
>> processes, such as logic and evidential reasoning, and most
>> importantly, rational civil discourse among individuals who may have
>> differing perspectives, biases, and interests, but who all have a
>> moral commitment to rationality.
>A little too rich for my blood: I would say that the rational
>justification for this freedom rests upon the idea that the best way of
>getting close to the truth - or the true desire - or the least
>offensive general course of action - is through the process of an open
>negotiation of consensus.
Why is the true desire, or the least offensive course of action, in a
discussion of truth? Desire is essentially irrational (not thereby
illegitimate in itself), as is offense (given the tenor of the times,
in which the romantic notion of 'expression' is equated by the Court
with speech).
>The concept of free debate is lodged at the heart of Liberal Democracy -
>but it is not Truth which is the object of this debate, but consensus;
>justice, or the fair division of spoils and damages, where what is 'fair'
>is determined by the conscience of the group. [...]
This line of argument has slid away from the autonomy of truth
("Reason cannot accommodate the claims of any kind of power whatever,"
as Allan Bloom noted). Political decision-making is in the end an
eminently practical affair, in great need of truth if it is to be
sound; however political decision-making produces not truth but, at
best, a just adjudication among competing interests and priorities.
>> That is, the most important consideration, in respect to the principle
>> of freedom of speech, may not be that the individual has a _right_ to
>> it (although the aspect of political freedom is not to be dismissed),
>> but that in open societies freedom of speech is central to the liberal
>> way of knowing.
>This relates more to the first quotation you used. I like the idea of a
>'way of knowing' drawn along these lines, [...]
It was a satiric allusion to the radical feminist concept of "women's
ways of knowing"--an ironic reference which seems to have confused
more than one reader. About this, a couple of comments: First, the
somewhat postmodernist notion that truth is relative to interpretive
communities is a negation of liberal universalism (see the epigraph
prefacing this post). Second, if we identify differing conceptual
realms, such as the rational-empirical, the aesthetic, and the
religious-cultist-ideological, only the first produces truth in the
sense of public, verifiable facts. ("Beauty is truth" confuses the
empirical and the aesthetic; "God, not evolution, produced the
species" confuses the empirical and the religious.)
Liberalism (which is nearly as concerned with economic prosperity as
it is with political freedom) is a politics, and as such critically in
need of realism about facts. Liberalism's ontology and epistemology
strongly resemble those of science. If, in a non-ironic sense "way of
knowing" refers to a methodology for learning what is true,
liberalism's inquiry into truth is quite similar to scientific method.
Thus Popper can be at the same a contributor to our understanding of
scientific epistemology--"falsifiability"--and to our understanding of
the open (liberal) society.
>> In Karl Popper's terms, truth must be
>> falsifiable. If a purported truth cannot be questioned, by the same
>> token it can't be validated. It is truth by fiat or revealed truth.
>Crucial. Discussion questions the former and likely the latter as well,
>since there are often as many revealed truths about one thing as there
>are thinkers, and is central to communal, argued constructions of truth.
[...]
There seems to be a collectivist slant to this and other of your
remarks, that seems to allow no room for freedom of conscience, or for
the individual who marches to the sound of a different drummer (see
liberal individualism in the above epigraph by Rowley and Gray).
Popper takes pains to emphasize that the _social_ nature of truth
inquiry "does not assume the existence of collectives." Collectives
assume that "'society' is everything and the individual nothing; or
that whatever value the individual possesses is derived from the
collective, the real carrier of all values."
Popper's concept of the value of inter-subjective debate is related to
his thoughts about falsifiability, in that the unrealized biases and
presuppositions--the failure of the attempt to achieve objectivity--of
any single reasoner, however perceptive he or she may be, can be
recognized and discarded in a public debate among many individual
reasoners. Your phrase, "communal, argued constructions of truth" is a
concession to a presumed right or authority of the group or collective
to proclaim what is true--for that group's members. It subordinates
truth under the aspect of power. To repeat Bloom's remark, "reason
cannot accommodate the claims of any kind of power whatever." Communal
constructions of truth are truth by fiat.
>> Likewise, if in the process of hearing a speaker we begin to suspect
>> that he or she is manifestly wrong, or espousing bigotry, or offending
>> standards of reasoning, factuality, or decency, the ethic of civil
>> discourse provides that the proper response is to demonstrate, by
>> responding argument, what is false about what we have heard, and why
>> no one should be persuaded by it. The all-too-familiar tactics of
>> disruption--talking over what one does not want to listen to, shouting
>> the speaker down, or marching out of the room in righteous
>> indignation--may be emotionally satisfying, but they are a profound
>> and grave violation of the principle of freedom of speech.
>The question, I suppose, is how highly you rate FoS and the benefits you
>suggest on the scale of things. Assuming you are correct all the way
>down the line, how higly would you priortise Freedom of Speech against
>public saftey, national security, indoctrination, the spread of violent
>and non-consent based ideologies and so on? [...]
Assuming that knowledge does not "kill action," as Nietzsche taught in
_The Birth of Tragedy_, but that knowledge instead makes right action
possible, the question is not how highly I rate freedom of speech,
because freedom of speech is not a value. The thesis of the original
post was that freedom of speech was, in the liberal conception of
things, an indispensable epistemological method. "Ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free" lies at the heart of
liberalism. To be deprived of freedom of speech would be to be forced
to operate under illusion, in ignorance and superstition and fear.
Your question presupposes that there is a zero-sum game in which one
might have to choose between freedom of speech, on the one hand, and
public safety, national security, and protection from
might-makes-right ideologies on the other. On the contrary, freedom of
speech is a necessary condition for counteracting abuse of power and
for unmasking false doctrines that attempt to make the worse appear
the better cause.
You posit a false dichotomy if you suppose that we have to give up
anything of real value in order to have freedom of speech. On the
contrary, freedom of speech is a win-win situation (one of many in
liberalism--that is liberalism's appeal). I have mentioned only one of
its virtues, the truth-values of openness. To mention others, freedom
of speech is indispensable for freedom of thought and for political
freedom generally--this was what the founders expected to achieve with
the First Amendment--and it has produced something they probably did
not foresee, the information economy.
Necessarily there are costs to freedom of speech as well. One must
develop the emotional maturity which a democratic disposition
requires. One must, in Walter Bagehot's words, "have nerve to endure
incessant discussion and frequent change"; to respect and listen to
critique, to be willing to relinquish cherished notions and
comfortable ideologies, and most of all to allow ideas to change us
throughout our lives. One must inform oneself, and labor to develop
the critical faculties necessary to analyze the arguments of such
enemies of freedom of speech as Marcuse and MacKinnon.
>Dao Jones
- Noel Smith <noel...@worldnet.att.net>
Gerry Quinn
>ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn):
>
>>From Marcuse's point of view, what emerges from debate can only be seen as
>>false by Marcuse. Now I also would agree that democracy does not necessarily
>>produce truth, but then I am not proposing democratic political activism, or
>>objecting to the fact that my 'truths' are ignored in a democracy as Marcuse
>>is. How does Marcuse propose to distinguish good tolerance from bad
>>tolerance, except insofar as good tolerance supports the opinions of Marcuse?
>
> I can't find a thread here, so I'll have to go step by step.
>
>> From Marcuse's point of view, what emerges from debate can only be seen as
>> false by Marcuse.
>
> You mean Marcuse has no choice but to see it as false, I'll
>assume. Unfortunately you don't say what makes you think so.
>It seems wrong. Pointing out that debate can produce falsehoods
>doesn't require Marcuse to see everything that emerges from
>debate as false.
>
Perhaps I didn't put it clearly. Marcuse implies that he can decide whether,
in his opinion, an opinion or decision emerging from debate is true or false.
Now that's fine if he follows up with "...the majority are wrong, but they
have the same right to utter opinions as I do." But his concept of
'repressive tolerance' would seem to be at odds with that.
>>Now I also would agree that democracy does not necessarily
>>produce truth, but then I am not proposing democratic political activism, or
>>objecting to the fact that my 'truths' are ignored in a democracy as Marcuse
>>is.
>
> I can go along with that: I've never seen you question the
>status quo.
>
We have something in common, so. Just to please you, I will assert that
current European taxes and subsidies are absurdly high and should be reduced.
He dictates the limitations of speech - I wonder who that could be?
- Gerry
Puss in Boots
>Perhaps I didn't put it clearly. Marcuse implies that he can decide whether,
>in his opinion, an opinion or decision emerging from debate is true or false.
>Now that's fine if he follows up with "...the majority are wrong, but they
>have the same right to utter opinions as I do." But his concept of
>'repressive tolerance' would seem to be at odds with that.
You didn't lack clarity: you lacked an explanation. Still
do. I'm happy to have your thoughts, but your perceptions
would be more interesting if you had looked at Marcuse. I don't
mind you're trying to fake it -- the problem is you're not
pulling it off. That's why I suggested reading him -- it's much
easier than making guesses (assuming you wanna guess right)..
Maybe you like the challenge.
So you'll know, the concept of repressive tolerance doesn't
imply anything about the rights of the majority. It's a
description, not a prescription. Marcuse's remedy is liberating
tolerance. You wouldn't have any truck with that, I'm sure,
but he admits it's just a gedankenexperiment. (It supposes what
it's meant to achieve.)
-- Moggin
Noel Smith
>noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith):
>[...]
>> One error that Marcuse makes--it's probably the most prevalent error
>> of those who oppose freedom of speech in the name of social justice,
>> such as Catharine MacKinnon--is to presume that we already know who
>> the good guys are, and what the right cause is, before it is argued
>> out in open public debate.
> That's not his presumption. As I mentioned before, Marcuse
>posits truth as the goal of tolerance. "The _telos_ of
>tolerance is truth." Truth is an aim, something that remains to
>be found:
> Tolerance of free speech is the way of improvement, of
> progress in liberation, _not_ because there is no
> objective truth, and improvement must necessarily be a
> compromise between a variety of opinions, but because
> there _is_ an objective truth which can be discovered, [...]
> The subject whose 'improvement' depends on a progressive
> historical practice is each man as man, and this
> universality is reflected in that of the discussion, which
> a priori does not exclude any group or individual.
> (_A Critique of Pure Tolerance_ 89-90)
[...]
Marcuse makes quite a different argument in "Repressive Tolerance." In
the November '98 issue of Reason, Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate's
article "Codes of Silence" argues that campus speech codes have their
"roots in the provocative work of the late Marxist scholar Herbert
Marcuse."
Maybe yes, maybe no; but RT, in their analysis, shows Marcuse
contradicting the above passage:
The holders of power, Marcuse argued, maintained their control
by keeping the population "manipulated and indoctrinated," so
that ordinary people "parrot, as their own, the opinion of
their masters." In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
guaranty of political rights and liberties" is actually
"repressive." [... Marcuse argued] "they would have to get
information slanted in the opposite direction, [which] cannot
be accomplished within the established framework of abstract
tolerance and spurious objectivity." He posited that there was
a true and superior species of "tolerance which enlarged the
range and content of freedom." This tolerance, however, "was
always partisan," because it was "intolerant toward the
protagonists of the repressive status quo." For Marcuse,
tolerance was moral and real only when harnessed to the cause
of "liberation." [... Therefore Marcuse advocated] "the
withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups
and movements which promote aggressive policies [...] or
which oppose the extension of public services."
Clearly, Marcuse, contrary to your claim, presumes that we already
know who the good guys are, and what the right cause is, before it is
argued out in open public debate.
Your argument appears correct in respect to the Marcuse passage you
excerpt from _A Critique..._, but it is not his position in
"Repressive Tolerance." I would guess that the latter position is more
popular with left critics of liberal universalism, because it
deconstructs the Enlightenment liberal position on freedom of speech,
validates one's oppositional credentials, and vaccinates one against
charges of having been coopted by "the repressive status quo."
What I don't understand is why you would describe Marcuse's position
on tolerance in terms of a relatively unknown publication, while
failing to account for his "repressive tolerance" position. Yours was
the weakest possible argument, because it made you look ignorant
concerning the author you proposed to explain.
Such hasty and ill-thought expositions don't do much to support your
claim of superior intellectual probity, either.
>-- Moggin
- Noel Smith <noel...@worldnet.att.net>
Michael S. Morris
Noel and moggin, I am stepping into the middle
of this, having read none of the foregoing, but
I am doing so in order to try and make a gentle
point to you, Noel.
Noel writes:
Marcuse makes quite a different argument in
"Repressive Tolerance." [1] In the November
'98 issue of Reason, Alan Kors and Harvey
Silverglate's article "Codes of Silence" argues
that campus speech codes have their "roots in
the provocative work of the late Marxist scholar Herbert
Marcuse."
Maybe yes, maybe no; but RT, in their analysis, shows Marcuse
contradicting the above passage:
The holders of power, Marcuse argued, maintained their control
by keeping the population "manipulated and indoctrinated," so
that ordinary people "parrot, as their own, the opinion of
their masters." [2] In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
guaranty of political rights and liberties" is actually
"repressive." [... Marcuse argued] "they would have to get
information slanted in the opposite direction, [which] cannot
be accomplished within the established framework of abstract
tolerance and spurious objectivity." [3] He posited that there
was a true and superior species of "tolerance which enlarged the
range and content of freedom." [4] This tolerance, however, "was
always partisan," because it was "intolerant toward the
protagonists of the repressive status quo." [5] For Marcuse,
tolerance was moral and real only when harnessed to the cause
of "liberation." [6] [... Therefore Marcuse advocated] "the
withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups
and movements which promote aggressive policies [...] or
which oppose the extension of public services." [7]
[8]
OK, Noel: I've inserted 8 footnotes after specific sentences
where I wish to respond.
[1] *You* haven't shown this out of Marcuse. Maybe
Cors and Silvergate are being fair to Marcuse,
maybe they aren't (I believe as you do that
they probably are, but without Marcuse on
the table in front of us, we cannot say that they
are).
[2] Note how much of this sentence is Cors' and Silvergate's
opinion about what Marcuse is saying, and how the
actual quotes from Marcuse are meaningless fragments
unless we trust Cors and Silvergate represent Marcuse
fairly.
[3] In these next two sentences, even though the quoted bits
from Marcuse seem to be substantial, they are nevertheless
meaningless without interpretations of Cors and Silvergate
like "In such circumstances," and "[...Marcuse argued]".
[4] The part in quotes here sounds like any number of praises
of free speech you have made yourself. It is only the
context given to it by Cors and Silvergate that makes it
sound sinister. Are Cors and Silvergate being fair to Marcuse?
Why do they keep quoting Marcuse so fragmentarily?
[5] Again, take out Cors and Silvergate's words and we
end up with two unrelated sentence fragments---"was
always partisan" and "intolerant toward the protagonists
of the repressive status quo". Granted the latter stuff
about there being a repressive status quo sounds like
Marxist nonsense in the first place, but, heck, for
all we know here, Marcuse could be talking not about
Western liberal democracy, but communist China, in
which case "repressive status quo" is apt.
[6] This whole sentence is Cors and Silvergate's interpretation
of Marcuse. Should one trust them in this or no?
[7] Again, at first glance this whole sentence looks like
a damning quote from Marcuse. But, it isn't. The only
part from Marcuse is "the withdrawal of toleration of
speech and assembly from groups and movements which
promote aggressive policies [...] or which oppose the
extension of public services." Is Marcuse *for* or
*against* this withdrawal? We don't know without
Cors and Silvergate's assertion that he is for it.
And what has been deleted in the [...]?
In other words, Noel, I would take a passage
like what you quote from Cors and Silvergate
as a *provisional* take or interpretation
of Marcuse. It is evidence perhaps for what
you are saying---that Marcuse wishes to
withdraw free speech---but only of a very
tentative kind (we have to assume Cors and
Silvergate are good readers and fair and
accurate reporters of what they read). I
might value it as part of a triangulation on
Marcuse---it creates an expectation about
I would find by reading Marcuse, and helps me
to judge whether reading Marcuse is something
I want to do, but I think I would not use
it in the midst of a polemic as "this is
what Marcuse thinks" since that is so
contingent on Cors and Silvergate.
[8] Moggin's quote from _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_
gives us more of a complete assertion from Marcuse
than any fragment in the Cors and Silvergate passage.
I personally find it objectionable, because of
the linking of tolerance with "progress in liberation".
I believe Rights to be inalienable, Creator-endowed,
an expression of a fundamental fact of human nature,
namely Free Will and the individual sovereignty that
this implies, and that the linking of Rights to any
_telos_ of progress or good means that a door has
just been opened for government to assume the power
to violate those Rights if ever and whenever that
_telos_ has not been empirically realized. Or when
the political faction in support of a different _telos_
comes to power. In this sense, I *assume* that when
human beings speak freely that they *will* choose to
speak wrongly, hurtfully, untruthfully and so on, at least
some of the time. And that the reason for free speech
isn't our faith that right and healing amd truth will
win out over the others in the end, but because right
speech or wrong speech, speakers or listeners, the human
condition is such that the choice is ours individually
and not ours communally.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Puss in Boots
noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith):
>>> One error that Marcuse makes--it's probably the most prevalent error
>>> of those who oppose freedom of speech in the name of social justice,
>>> such as Catharine MacKinnon--is to presume that we already know who
>>> the good guys are, and what the right cause is, before it is argued
>>> out in open public debate.
mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots):
>> That's not his presumption. As I mentioned before, Marcuse
>> posits truth as the goal of tolerance. "The _telos_ of
>> tolerance is truth." Truth is an aim, something that remains to
>> be found:
>> Tolerance of free speech is the way of improvement, of
>> progress in liberation, _not_ because there is no
>> objective truth, and improvement must necessarily be a
>> compromise between a variety of opinions, but because
>> there _is_ an objective truth which can be discovered,
>> ascertained only in learning and comprehending that which
>> is and that which can and ought to be done for the sake of
>> improving the lot of mankind. The common and historical
>> 'ought' is not immediately evident, at hand: it has to be
>> uncovered by 'cutting through,' 'splitting, 'breaking
>> asunder,' (_dis-cutio_) the given material -- separating
>> right and wrong, good and bad, correct and incorrect. The
>> subject whose 'improvement' depends on a progressive
>> historical practice is each man as man, and this
>> universality is reflected in that of the discussion, which
>> a priori does not exclude any group or individual.
>> (_A Critique of Pure Tolerance_ 89-90)
Noel:
> Marcuse makes quite a different argument in "Repressive Tolerance."
That _is_ what he argues in "Repressive Tolerance" (or part
of what he argues, to be precise) -- I'm quoting it directly.
("Repressive Tolerance" is in _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_, 81-
123.) Strange that you don't recognize the essay you're
criticizing. Or maybe not so strange as all that: it's typical
of you to attack work you haven't read.
> In
> the November '98 issue of Reason, Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate's
> article "Codes of Silence" argues that campus speech codes have their
> "roots in the provocative work of the late Marxist scholar Herbert
> Marcuse." Maybe yes, maybe no.
No, I'd say. Unless I'm missing something, they don't make
a case -- that is, they don't demonstrate that campus speech
codes are rooted in Marcuse's work. They don't even give a good
try -- nothing that I noticed in the article attempts to
establish an historical link. I wonder if they just tossed that
out to draw attention.
> But RT, in their analysis, shows Marcuse contradicting the above
> passage:
> The holders of power, Marcuse argued, maintained their control
> by keeping the population "manipulated and indoctrinated," so
> that ordinary people "parrot, as their own, the opinion of
> their masters." In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
> guaranty of political rights and liberties" is actually
> "repressive." [... Marcuse argued] "they would have to get
> information slanted in the opposite direction, [which] cannot
> be accomplished within the established framework of abstract
> tolerance and spurious objectivity." He posited that there was
> a true and superior species of "tolerance which enlarged the
> range and content of freedom." This tolerance, however, "was
> always partisan," because it was "intolerant toward the
> protagonists of the repressive status quo." For Marcuse,
> tolerance was moral and real only when harnessed to the cause
> of "liberation." [... Therefore Marcuse advocated] "the
> withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups
> and movements which promote aggressive policies [...] or
> which oppose the extension of public services."
> Clearly, Marcuse, contrary to your claim, presumes that we already
> know who the good guys are, and what the right cause is, before it is
> argued out in open public debate.
I'm not sure how that could be clear to you, since you
haven't read him -- it's certainly not clear to me, since I have.
See the quote from "Repressive Tolerance" above. Of course
Marcuse would disagree with the notion that public debate offers
an unfailing guide to the "good guys" and the "right cause."
> Your argument appears correct in respect to the Marcuse passage you
> excerpt from _A Critique..._, but it is not his position in
> "Repressive Tolerance."
It's precisely his position -- more accurately, part of his
position -- in "Repressive Tolerance." Like I said, I'm
quoting it directly. As you would know if you had read the damn
thing.
> I would guess that the latter position is more
> popular with left critics of liberal universalism, because it
> deconstructs the Enlightenment liberal position on freedom of speech,
> validates one's oppositional credentials, and vaccinates one against
> charges of having been coopted by "the repressive status quo."
> What I don't understand is why you would describe Marcuse's position
> on tolerance in terms of a relatively unknown publication, while
> failing to account for his "repressive tolerance" position.
Simple -- I _am_ discussing "Repressive Tolerance." All my
quotes come right from it. But you don't recognize them: you
think I'm discussing some "relatively unknown publication." Get
hip -- I'm talking about the same essay you're trying to
criticize. You might want to read it, just to save yourself any
further embarrassment.
> Yours was
> the weakest possible argument, because it made you look ignorant
> concerning the author you proposed to explain.
It makes me look like I've read the essay we're talking
about. ("Repressive Tolerance." Pretty well known -- most good
libraries.will have it.) It makes you look like you're
picketing a movie you haven't seen.
> Such hasty and ill-thought expositions ...
Sorry to interrupt, but lengthy criticism of an essay which
you don't even recognize when you see it pretty well
exemplifies "hasty and ill-thought exposition." (Thanks for the
demonstration, tho.)
> ... don't do much to support your claim of superior intellectual
> probity, either.
What claim? I just think it's funny to hear you talk about
"scholarly standards."
-- Moggin
Puss in Boots
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net>:
> Noel and moggin, I am stepping into the middle
> of this, having read none of the foregoing, but
> I am doing so in order to try and make a gentle
> point to you, Noel.
Jump right in. I'm going to reformat, tho. Hope you won't
mind. I don't want to hop back and forth, so I'll put the
footnotes you made right next to the text you were commenting on.
(Or that's what I'll do if I don't screw it up.)
Noel:
>> Marcuse makes quite a different argument in
>> "Repressive Tolerance."
>> In the November
>> '98 issue of Reason, Alan Kors and Harvey
>> Silverglate's article "Codes of Silence" argues
>> that campus speech codes have their "roots in
>> the provocative work of the late Marxist scholar Herbert
>> Marcuse."
Mike:
> *You* haven't shown this out of Marcuse. Maybe
> Cors and Silvergate are being fair to Marcuse,
> maybe they aren't (I believe as you do that
> they probably are, but without Marcuse on
> the table in front of us, we cannot say that they
> are).
Let's be fair to Noel. He doesn't claim to show that
campus speech codes are rooted in Marcuse -- he doesn't even say
that Kors and Silverglate succeed in showing it. I took a
quick glance at the article, and it looks like they don't have a
case. (Adroit use of the passive voice aside.)
Noel:
>> Maybe yes, maybe no; but RT, in their analysis, shows Marcuse
>> contradicting the above passage:
Kors and Silverglate:
>> The holders of power, Marcuse argued, maintained their control
>> by keeping the population "manipulated and indoctrinated," so
>> that ordinary people "parrot, as their own, the opinion of
>> their masters."
Mike:
> Note how much of this sentence is Cors' and Silvergate's
> opinion about what Marcuse is saying, and how the
> actual quotes from Marcuse are meaningless fragments
> unless we trust Cors and Silvergate represent Marcuse
> fairly.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, and sometimes they
split the difference. In this case they do fine. The whole
sentence runs, "Universal toleration becomes questionable when
its rationale no longer prevails, when tolerance is administered
to manipulated and indoctrinated individuals who parrot, as
their own, the opinion of their masters, for whom heteronomy has
become autonomy" (90).
K&S:
>> In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
>> guaranty of political rights and liberties" is actually
>> "repressive." [... Marcuse argued] "they would have to get
>> information slanted in the opposite direction, [which] cannot
>> be accomplished within the established framework of abstract
>> tolerance and spurious objectivity."
MIke:
> In these next two sentences, even though the quoted bits
> from Marcuse seem to be substantial, they are nevertheless
> meaningless without interpretations of Cors and Silvergate
> like "In such circumstances," and "[...Marcuse argued]".
Kors and Silverglate are supplying snippets of Marcuse, and
Noel is quoting snippets from them. These two sentences are
separated by paragraphs in their article -- in Marcuse they're a
half dozen pages apart. K&S have also melded together two
different sentences without indicating it. "These two sentences"
are parts of three sentences in Marcuse.
The results aren't so bad, tho. Marcuse isn't opposing the
"indiscriminate guaranty of political rights and liberties."
He's asking if it can ever be repressive. "Are there historical
conditions under which such toleration impedes liberation and
multiplies the victims who are sacrified to the status quo?" (91).
In his view the answer is yes, there are -- so K&S' "In such
circumstances" is an accurate and even a necessary qualification.
"Marcuse argued..." is a bit more complicated. That's Noel,
not K&S -- they write, "Marcuse responded..." Those are both
unobjectionable phrases -- the trouble is K&S elide his argument.
The bit they quote is a little off, too. As I said, they run
together two separate sentences. Not the worst thing they could
have done, but not exactly commendable.
K&S:
>> He posited that there
>> was a true and superior species of "tolerance which enlarged the
>> range and content of freedom."
Mike:
> The part in quotes here sounds like any number of praises
> of free speech you have made yourself.
I mentioned a few posts back that Noel argrees with Marcuse
alot more than he seems to realize.
Mike:
> It is only the
> context given to it by Cors and Silvergate that makes it
> sound sinister.
_Of course_ it's sinister -- Marcuse's a lefty. (Me, too.)
Mike:
> Are Cors and Silvergate being fair to Marcuse?
It varies; all in all, I'd say they're as fair as they feel
they can get away with. Here Marcuse is making an historical
observation: "The tolerance which enlarged the range and content
of freedom was always partisan -- intolerant toward the
protagonists of the repressive status quo" (85). Yep, he thinks
widening the scope of freedom is a good thing.
Mike:
> Why do they keep quoting Marcuse so fragmentarily?
K&S:
>> This tolerance, however, "was
>> always partisan," because it was "intolerant toward the
>> protagonists of the repressive status quo."
Mike:
> Again, take out Cors and Silvergate's words and we
> end up with two unrelated sentence fragments---"was
> always partisan" and "intolerant toward the protagonists
> of the repressive status quo".
They're related in the original, so that's no problem. One
could ask why they fragmented the sentence, but basically
they've got it right: Marcuse is pointing out that historically,
tolerance played a liberating role.
> Granted the latter stuff
> about there being a repressive status quo sounds like
> Marxist nonsense in the first place, but, heck, for
> all we know here, Marcuse could be talking not about
> Western liberal democracy, but communist China, in
> which case "repressive status quo" is apt.
He's speaking historically. As I read him, "the repressive
status quo" is a reference to feudalism. The concept of
tolerance wasn't some impartial thing -- it was a weapon against
the domination of Church and Throne.
K&S:
>> For Marcuse,
>> tolerance was moral and real only when harnessed to the cause
>> of "liberation."
Mike:
> This whole sentence is Cors and Silvergate's interpretation
> of Marcuse. Should one trust them in this or no?
As far as you can throw them. But that doesn't mean they're
wrong.
Noel and K&S:
>> [... Therefore Marcuse advocated] "the
>> withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups
>> and movements which promote aggressive policies [...] or
>> which oppose the extension of public services."
Mike:
> Again, at first glance this whole sentence looks like
> a damning quote from Marcuse. But, it isn't. The only
> part from Marcuse is "the withdrawal of toleration of
> speech and assembly from groups and movements which
> promote aggressive policies [...] or which oppose the
> extension of public services." Is Marcuse *for* or
> *against* this withdrawal? We don't know without
> Cors and Silvergate's assertion that he is for it.
It's a gedankenexperiment, as I was explaining to Gerry. M
does indeed suggest it, as K&S say. (Apparently Noel wasn't
satisfied, and decided to substitute "advocated.") But he
doesn't offer it as a practical suggestion -- something Kors and
Silverglate don't even hint at. He observes that it's an
impractical idea -- it makes a premise of the conditions it aims
to achieve.
> And what has been deleted in the [...]?
In K&S, nothing, as you must know -- they provide the whole
list. Noel left off armament, chauvinism, and discrimination
on the grounds of race and religion. K&D also include Marcuse's
examples of "public services" -- social security and medical
care.
> In other words, Noel, I would take a passage
> like what you quote from Cors and Silvergate
> as a *provisional* take or interpretation
> of Marcuse. It is evidence perhaps for what
> you are saying---that Marcuse wishes to
> withdraw free speech---but only of a very
> tentative kind (we have to assume Cors and
> Silvergate are good readers and fair and
> accurate reporters of what they read). I
> might value it as part of a triangulation on
> Marcuse---it creates an expectation about
> I would find by reading Marcuse, and helps me
> to judge whether reading Marcuse is something
> I want to do, but I think I would not use
> it in the midst of a polemic as "this is
> what Marcuse thinks" since that is so
> contingent on Cors and Silvergate.
That's Noel's SOP -- don't tell me you're just now noticing.
I wouldn't suggest you put Marcuse at the top of your reading
list. He can be great, but he can also be pretty dull I'd vote
for Adorno instead.
> Moggin's quote from _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_
> gives us more of a complete assertion from Marcuse
> than any fragment in the Cors and Silvergate passage.
It was better before Noel cut out the middle of it, I think.
> I personally find it objectionable, because of
> the linking of tolerance with "progress in liberation".
I'm sure that's the least you would object to if you looked
at the essay. But do you disagree with Marcuse when he says
that the link existed at a certain point in history? Maybe I've
got this all wrong. I thought liberals were _proud_ that
liberalism was related to "progress in liberation." (It's right
there in the name.) So I'm surprised you object.
> I believe Rights to be inalienable, Creator-endowed,
> an expression of a fundamental fact of human nature,
> namely Free Will and the individual sovereignty that
> this implies, and that the linking of Rights to any
> _telos_ of progress or good means that a door has
> just been opened for government to assume the power
> to violate those Rights if ever and whenever that
> _telos_ has not been empirically realized. > Or when
> the political faction in support of a different _telos_
> comes to power. In this sense, I *assume* that when
> human beings speak freely that they *will* choose to
> speak wrongly, hurtfully, untruthfully and so on, at least
> some of the time. And that the reason for free speech
> isn't our faith that right and healing amd truth will
> win out over the others in the end, but because right
> speech or wrong speech, speakers or listeners, the human
> condition is such that the choice is ours individually
> and not ours communally.
I've been meaning to ask: how does your assertion that
capital-R Rights are "Creator-endowed" fit with your atheism? I
would think that if Rights are "Creator-endowed," and God
doesn't exist, Rights aren't endowed. But presumably you've got
a different line of reasoning.
Anyway, you don't _have_ to open the door for government to
assume this power or that: if necessary, the government will
kick the door in. You can stand there and say, "Ooh! God isn't
gonna like _that_!" Won't make any difference -- not unless
God hears you and decides to intervene.
So you'll know, Marcuse's line is "The _telos_ of tolerance
is truth" (90). That's where we began. Noel suggested that
"Freedom of speech may be based more on an epistemological
hypothesis than on a concept of the natural rights of
individuals," adding that he emphatically disagreed with Marcuse.
I pointed out that Noel was echoing him.
-- Moggin
Herb Smits
"Simple -- I _am_ discussing "Repressive Tolerance." All my
quotes come right from it. But you don't recognize them: you
think I'm discussing some "relatively unknown publication." Get
hip -- I'm talking about the same essay you're trying to
criticize. You might want to read it, just to save yourself any
further embarrassment."
Another record broken...this is even more ambitious than the guy who
claimed that Catch 22 took place in Korea and sternly corrected someone
else who had said it was World War II. Moggin, don't even argue with
this poseur. He's a propagandist without the knowledge or the critical
acumen to back up his pretentious and vague claims. It is patent that he
doesn't know anything about Marcuse - except perhaps some bits he got
second-hand. Marcuse's books can be had for a dime at the charity store;
Noel Smith should avail himself of the bargain and, as collateral
reading, pick up some Freud and Marx.
Herb Smits
New York City
Noel Smith
> [8]
I had written:
The holders of power, Marcuse argued, maintained their control
by keeping the population "manipulated and indoctrinated," so
that ordinary people "parrot, as their own, the opinion of
their masters."
First, to quote Mike Morris before he became so strident about certain
extreme ideological positions, I don't have a lot invested in this,
i.e., I don't particularly care about such a small player as Marcuse,
except as a possible symptom or example of a much larger intellectual
issue, which one might describe as the bifurcation of the intellectual
tradition into open and closed, or liberal and conservative, wings
from its very inception. (Plato and Aristotle, the scholastics of the
middle ages who were under their sway, Nietzsche, Heidegger, de Man,
and Derrida represent the latter; Socrates, Yeshua, the Enlightenment,
Kant, and Popper represent the former.)
Anyway, Marcuse's own words above, unless Cors et. al. have taken him
completely out of context, do express a most anti-liberal skepticism
("parrot," "masters") toward speech by the people. You seem to be
arguing from possibility, that is, implying that possibility is proof.
Militating against your strained argument is the context in which
Marcuse stood (and which he helped establish), a context wherein
refugees from Hitler Germany somehow managed to find the hospitality
of their nation of refuge as sinister as the repression from which
they fled. As Richard Wolin wrote in _The Terms of Cultural
Criticism_:
It is clear, moreover, that [The Frankfurt Institute for
Social Research's] members, once expulsed from their native
land, had difficulties in transferring a framework of social
analysis that had been developed under Weimar conditions to
their adoptive home. Their Weimar experiences had taught
them a lesson that in many respects proved inapplicable to
the majority of Western democratic societies: behind the
democratic normalcy of liberalism there lurked the specter
of a fascist, authoritarian state. In this respect, their
initial diagnosis of the relationship between liberalism,
capitalism, and fascism proved deficient; a diagnosis whose
essence was captured by Marcuse's 1934 observation that "the
turn from the liberal to the total authoritarian state
occurs on the basis of one and the same economic order"
--viz., capitalism. [p. 58]
The ease with which Weimar democracy passed over into a
fascist social order was turned by the Frankfurt School
into a parable concerning the foibles of liberal democracy
in general. Under the influence of this misleading
historical paradigm, the Institute's later treatment of
American society tended to elide too many of the essential
differences between these two fundamentally different
political systems. [p. 59]
>[2] Note how much of this sentence is Cors' and Silvergate's
> opinion about what Marcuse is saying, and how the
> actual quotes from Marcuse are meaningless fragments
> unless we trust Cors and Silvergate represent Marcuse
> fairly. [...]
I had written:
[2] In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
guaranty of political rights and liberties" is actually
"repressive." [... Marcuse argued] "they would have to get
information slanted in the opposite direction, [which] cannot
be accomplished within the established framework of abstract
tolerance and spurious objectivity."
Apparently you cannot recognize such language as "the indiscriminate
guaranty of political rights and liberties" and "they would have to
get information slanted in the opposite direction, [which] cannot be
accomplished within the established framework of abstract tolerance
and spurious objectivity" as expressive of illiberal prejudice toward
the open society. The quotes are not "meaningless fragments" to a
reasonable observer, and your insinuation that Cors and Silverglate
misrepresent Marcuse by quoting does them injustice.
In the interest of brevity, I omit [3] and [4], which look like more
of the same Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) spin of the first two.
>[5] [...] for
> all we know here, Marcuse could be talking not about
> Western liberal democracy, but communist China, in
> which case "repressive status quo" is apt.
More argument from possibility.
>[6] This whole sentence is Cors and Silvergate's interpretation
> of Marcuse. Should one trust them in this or no?
More FUD. Rhetorical question is not sufficient argument here. If C &
S are untrustworthy, it should be easy for Mike Morris,
internationally recognized physicist, to develop and present the
position. That you instead substitute shady rhetorical device suggests
to me that you're blowin' smoke.
>[7] Again, at first glance this whole sentence looks like
> a damning quote from Marcuse. But, it isn't. The only
> part from Marcuse is "the withdrawal of toleration of
> speech and assembly from groups and movements which
> promote aggressive policies [...] or which oppose the
> extension of public services." Is Marcuse *for* or
> *against* this withdrawal? We don't know without
> Cors and Silvergate's assertion that he is for it.
> And what has been deleted in the [...]?
[...]
Given that Marcuse titled the whole shebank "Repressive Tolerance,"
any reader who had not completely taken leave of his senses would
suspect that he was agin' it. Mike, you're practicing mogginism:
tangled, convoluted, and contradictory argument from unreasoning
hostility.
> [I wouldn't buy this] as "this is
> what Marcuse thinks" since that is so
> contingent on Cors and Silvergate. [...]
Marcuse is not necessarily the basis for repressive campus speech
codes (I've already said so), but if Marcuse did not believe that
freedom of speech was "Repressive Tolerance," and if the selections
from his own words do not amply illustrate that he so believed at the
time he wrote that article, produce your own selections from the
article to support your position. Without them, skepticism is merely
an attitude, not a substantive position.
>[8] Moggin's quote from _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_
> gives us more of a complete assertion from Marcuse
> than any fragment in the Cors and Silvergate passage. [...]
Again, I already recognized that the two articles are contradictory:
thus, that Marcuse is inconsistent. I don't find this surprising,
given the poor quality of his reasoning generally, his hostility to
the democratic disposition, his biting the hand that feeds him when he
turned on the nation which granted him asylum, and his failure to
notice the difference between Nazism and democratic society.
Your claim that _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_ represents the real
Marcuse is insupportable for two reasons. First, there is the context
I supplied, which you were not aware of, or suppressed for rhetorical
purposes: That Marcuse was part of the Frankfurt group which, upon
taking refuge (most were Jewish) in the U.S. from Hitler Germany,
devoted the rest of their intellectual careers to excoriating the
horrors of bourgeois society.
Second, there is the name Marcuse made for himself, which is based on
such illiberal notions as "repressive tolerance," and not, except in
apologetics so far-fetched as to be disgraceful, on any recognizable
humanism or any genuine appreciation of that which is liberal.
> I personally find it objectionable, because of
> the linking of tolerance with "progress in liberation".
> I believe Rights to be inalienable, Creator-endowed, [...]
As I write in my concurrent "Darkness at Noon" post, you, as "an
approximate atheist," have no right to form
argument-from-the-supernatural. From the secular, rational
perspective, there is no standard of evidence concerning a "creator,"
and "creator" is therefore an empty term (or whatever the phrase is)
in an argument. The basis for your personal rhetorical use of the
rights doctrine appears to be the purest metaphysical idealism: As
such, your use of "Rights" to formulate ostensibly intellectual
justification of injustice is based on propositions which are
inherently not falsifiable, and which therefore cannot in themselves
be valid truth-claims.
I would have expected you, as a scientist, to be committed to what
Ernest Gellner calls "an empiricist repudiation of untestable
explanatory notions," but instead I find that your current line of
argument is almost entirely based on arguments from the invisible.
> [...] the human condition is such that
> the choice [of our speech] is ours individually
> and not ours communally.
Here I agree. I would say, provisionally, that speech is not subject
to the paradox of freedom, because speech is not action; and because
free speech, despite what Marcuse clearly believes, is its own
corrective. (Marcuse says speech must be controlled by power. Speech
by oppressor groups ((but how do we know, apart from speech, who they
are?)) is to be suppressed, i.e., by power, so that then, and only
then, good ((but how do we know?)) speech, propped up by Something
Else, can win.)
The other liberal freedoms or rights, generally, are conditioned
"communally," as you say, because the paradox of freedom renders the
notion of individual sovereignty, as opposed to individual worth and
dignity, untenable. As I wrote in "The Right to Free Association,"
/* Start of Excerpt */
My second objection to the Right to Free Association of Persons is
that in its absolutism--again deriving from its Platonist
character--it ignores the paradox of freedom. In a society which is,
nominally, completely (i.e., absolutely) free, one is free to be a
criminal. The freedom to assault, rob, and murder is as unchecked as
the freedom to build a house and raise a family in it. This is freedom
as Milton's Satan portrayed it, which was by definition unaccountable
to anything: freedom in which each individual was sovereign.
The paradox of freedom is that absolute freedom produces a situation
in which the majority are terrorized by the few. "Freedom in the sense
of absence of any restraining control," says Popper, "must lead to
very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the
meek." (And the employer free to screw the employee) The paradox,
then, is that freedom requires careful and difficult choices
concerning which freedoms to restrict in order to afford the maximum
individual freedom possible without harm to the freedom and well-being
of other individuals.
To secure this freedom, something must intervene between the predatory
or aggressive or violent individual and those he or she would harm.
This has a couple of corollaries: the individual thus restrained is no
longer sovereign--sovereignty is incompatible with freedom (it is
rather compatible with anarchy, in which there is no protection from
domination by the worst)--; and the intervening agency, whatever you
might choose to call it, will most likely be, in effect if not in
name, a government.
It is the nature of every government, and appropriately so, to
intervene in specified categories of situations between individuals
who act to harm, and those who would be harmed. (The rule of law has
turned out to be, in the most fundamental sense, inescapable and
necessary;...)
/* End of Excerpt */
> Mike Morris (msmo...@netdirect.net)
- Noel Smith <noel...@worldnet.att.net>
Puss in Boots
[Adding alt.culture.theory]
noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith):
mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots):
Noel:
> Marcuse makes quite a different argument in "Repressive Tolerance."
That _is_ what he argues in "Repressive Tolerance" (or part
of what he argues, to be precise) -- I'm quoting it directly.
("Repressive Tolerance" is in _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_, 81-
123.) Strange that you don't recognize the essay you're
criticizing. Or maybe not so strange as all that: it's typical
of you to attack work you haven't read.
> In
> the November '98 issue of Reason, Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate's
> article "Codes of Silence" argues that campus speech codes have their
> "roots in the provocative work of the late Marxist scholar Herbert
> Marcuse." Maybe yes, maybe no.
No, I'd say. Unless I'm missing something, they don't make
a case -- that is, they don't demonstrate that campus speech
codes are rooted in Marcuse's work. They don't even give a good
try -- nothing that I noticed in the article attempts to
establish an historical link. I wonder if they just tossed that
out to draw attention.
> But RT, in their analysis, shows Marcuse contradicting the above
> passage:
> The holders of power, Marcuse argued, maintained their control
> by keeping the population "manipulated and indoctrinated," so
> that ordinary people "parrot, as their own, the opinion of
> their masters." In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
> guaranty of political rights and liberties" is actually
> "repressive." [... Marcuse argued] "they would have to get
> information slanted in the opposite direction, [which] cannot
> be accomplished within the established framework of abstract
> tolerance and spurious objectivity." He posited that there was
> a true and superior species of "tolerance which enlarged the
> range and content of freedom." This tolerance, however, "was
> always partisan," because it was "intolerant toward the
> protagonists of the repressive status quo." For Marcuse,
> tolerance was moral and real only when harnessed to the cause
> of "liberation." [... Therefore Marcuse advocated] "the
> withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups
> and movements which promote aggressive policies [...] or
> which oppose the extension of public services."
> Clearly, Marcuse, contrary to your claim, presumes that we already
> know who the good guys are, and what the right cause is, before it is
> argued out in open public debate.
I'm not sure how that could be clear to you, since you
haven't read him -- it's certainly not clear to me, since I have.
See the quote from "Repressive Tolerance" above. Of course
Marcuse would disagree with the notion that public debate offers
an unfailing guide to the "good guys" and the "right cause."
> Your argument appears correct in respect to the Marcuse passage you
> excerpt from _A Critique..._, but it is not his position in
> "Repressive Tolerance."
It's precisely his position -- more accurately, part of his
position -- in "Repressive Tolerance." Like I said, I'm
quoting it directly. As you would know if you had read the damn
thing.
> I would guess that the latter position is more
> popular with left critics of liberal universalism, because it
> deconstructs the Enlightenment liberal position on freedom of speech,
> validates one's oppositional credentials, and vaccinates one against
> charges of having been coopted by "the repressive status quo."
> What I don't understand is why you would describe Marcuse's position
> on tolerance in terms of a relatively unknown publication, while
> failing to account for his "repressive tolerance" position.
Simple -- I _am_ discussing "Repressive Tolerance." All my
quotes come right from it. But you don't recognize them: you
think I'm discussing some "relatively unknown publication." Get
hip -- I'm talking about the same essay you're trying to
criticize. You might want to read it, just to save yourself any
further embarrassment.
> Yours was
Puss in Boots
[Adding alt.culture.theory]
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net>:
> Noel and moggin, I am stepping into the middle
> of this, having read none of the foregoing, but
> I am doing so in order to try and make a gentle
> point to you, Noel.
Jump right in. I'm going to reformat, tho. Hope you won't
mind. I don't want to hop back and forth, so I'll put the
footnotes you made right next to the text you were commenting on.
(Or that's what I'll do if I don't screw it up.)
Noel:
>> Marcuse makes quite a different argument in
>> "Repressive Tolerance."
>> In the November
>> '98 issue of Reason, Alan Kors and Harvey
>> Silverglate's article "Codes of Silence" argues
>> that campus speech codes have their "roots in
>> the provocative work of the late Marxist scholar Herbert
>> Marcuse."
Mike:
> *You* haven't shown this out of Marcuse. Maybe
> Cors and Silvergate are being fair to Marcuse,
> maybe they aren't (I believe as you do that
> they probably are, but without Marcuse on
> the table in front of us, we cannot say that they
> are).
Let's be fair to Noel. He doesn't claim to show that
campus speech codes are rooted in Marcuse -- he doesn't even say
that Kors and Silverglate succeed in showing it. I took a
quick glance at the article, and it looks like they don't have a
case. (Adroit use of the passive voice aside.)
Noel:
>> Maybe yes, maybe no; but RT, in their analysis, shows Marcuse
>> contradicting the above passage:
Kors and Silverglate:
>> The holders of power, Marcuse argued, maintained their control
>> by keeping the population "manipulated and indoctrinated," so
>> that ordinary people "parrot, as their own, the opinion of
>> their masters."
Mike:
> Note how much of this sentence is Cors' and Silvergate's
> opinion about what Marcuse is saying, and how the
> actual quotes from Marcuse are meaningless fragments
> unless we trust Cors and Silvergate represent Marcuse
> fairly.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, and sometimes they
split the difference. In this case they do fine. The whole
sentence runs, "Universal toleration becomes questionable when
its rationale no longer prevails, when tolerance is administered
to manipulated and indoctrinated individuals who parrot, as
their own, the opinion of their masters, for whom heteronomy has
become autonomy" (90).
K&S:
>> In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
>> guaranty of political rights and liberties" is actually
>> "repressive." [... Marcuse argued] "they would have to get
>> information slanted in the opposite direction, [which] cannot
>> be accomplished within the established framework of abstract
>> tolerance and spurious objectivity."
MIke:
> In these next two sentences, even though the quoted bits
> from Marcuse seem to be substantial, they are nevertheless
> meaningless without interpretations of Cors and Silvergate
> like "In such circumstances," and "[...Marcuse argued]".
Kors and Silverglate are supplying snippets of Marcuse, and
Noel is quoting snippets from them. These two sentences are
separated by paragraphs in their article -- in Marcuse they're a
half dozen pages apart. K&S have also melded together two
different sentences without indicating it. "These two sentences"
are parts of three sentences in Marcuse.
The results aren't so bad, tho. Marcuse isn't opposing the
"indiscriminate guaranty of political rights and liberties."
He's asking if it can ever be repressive. "Are there historical
conditions under which such toleration impedes liberation and
multiplies the victims who are sacrified to the status quo?" (91).
In his view the answer is yes, there are -- so K&S' "In such
circumstances" is an accurate and even a necessary qualification.
"Marcuse argued..." is a bit more complicated. That's Noel,
not K&S -- they write, "Marcuse responded..." Those are both
unobjectionable phrases -- the trouble is K&S elide his argument.
The bit they quote is a little off, too. As I said, they run
together two separate sentences. Not the worst thing they could
have done, but not exactly commendable.
K&S:
>> He posited that there
>> was a true and superior species of "tolerance which enlarged the
>> range and content of freedom."
Mike:
> The part in quotes here sounds like any number of praises
> of free speech you have made yourself.
I mentioned a few posts back that Noel argrees with Marcuse
alot more than he seems to realize.
Mike:
> It is only the
> context given to it by Cors and Silvergate that makes it
> sound sinister.
_Of course_ it's sinister -- Marcuse's a lefty. (Me, too.)
Mike:
> Are Cors and Silvergate being fair to Marcuse?
It varies; all in all, I'd say they're as fair as they feel
they can get away with. Here Marcuse is making an historical
observation: "The tolerance which enlarged the range and content
of freedom was always partisan -- intolerant toward the
protagonists of the repressive status quo" (85). Yep, he thinks
widening the scope of freedom is a good thing.
Mike:
> Why do they keep quoting Marcuse so fragmentarily?
K&S:
>> This tolerance, however, "was
>> always partisan," because it was "intolerant toward the
>> protagonists of the repressive status quo."
Mike:
> Again, take out Cors and Silvergate's words and we
> end up with two unrelated sentence fragments---"was
> always partisan" and "intolerant toward the protagonists
> of the repressive status quo".
They're related in the original, so that's no problem. One
could ask why they fragmented the sentence, but basically
they've got it right: Marcuse is pointing out that historically,
tolerance played a liberating role.
> Granted the latter stuff
> about there being a repressive status quo sounds like
> Marxist nonsense in the first place, but, heck, for
> all we know here, Marcuse could be talking not about
> Western liberal democracy, but communist China, in
> which case "repressive status quo" is apt.
He's speaking historically. As I read him, "the repressive
status quo" is a reference to feudalism. The concept of
tolerance wasn't some impartial thing -- it was a weapon against
the domination of Church and Throne.
K&S:
>> For Marcuse,
>> tolerance was moral and real only when harnessed to the cause
>> of "liberation."
Mike:
> This whole sentence is Cors and Silvergate's interpretation
> of Marcuse. Should one trust them in this or no?
As far as you can throw them. But that doesn't mean they're
wrong.
Noel and K&S:
>> [... Therefore Marcuse advocated] "the
>> withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups
>> and movements which promote aggressive policies [...] or
>> which oppose the extension of public services."
Mike:
> Again, at first glance this whole sentence looks like
> a damning quote from Marcuse. But, it isn't. The only
> part from Marcuse is "the withdrawal of toleration of
> speech and assembly from groups and movements which
> promote aggressive policies [...] or which oppose the
> extension of public services." Is Marcuse *for* or
> *against* this withdrawal? We don't know without
> Cors and Silvergate's assertion that he is for it.
It's a gedankenexperiment, as I was explaining to Gerry. M
does indeed suggest it, as K&S say. (Apparently Noel wasn't
satisfied, and decided to substitute "advocated.") But he
doesn't offer it as a practical suggestion -- something Kors and
Silverglate don't even hint at. He observes that it's an
impractical idea -- it makes a premise of the conditions it aims
to achieve.
> And what has been deleted in the [...]?
In K&S, nothing, as you must know -- they provide the whole
list. Noel left off armament, chauvinism, and discrimination
on the grounds of race and religion. K&D also include Marcuse's
examples of "public services" -- social security and medical
care.
> In other words, Noel, I would take a passage
> like what you quote from Cors and Silvergate
> as a *provisional* take or interpretation
> of Marcuse. It is evidence perhaps for what
> you are saying---that Marcuse wishes to
> withdraw free speech---but only of a very
> tentative kind (we have to assume Cors and
> Silvergate are good readers and fair and
> accurate reporters of what they read). I
> might value it as part of a triangulation on
> Marcuse---it creates an expectation about
> I would find by reading Marcuse, and helps me
> to judge whether reading Marcuse is something
> I want to do, but I think I would not use
> it in the midst of a polemic as "this is
> what Marcuse thinks" since that is so
> contingent on Cors and Silvergate.
That's Noel's SOP -- don't tell me you're just now noticing.
I wouldn't suggest you put Marcuse at the top of your reading
list. He can be great, but he can also be pretty dull I'd vote
for Adorno instead.
> Moggin's quote from _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_
> gives us more of a complete assertion from Marcuse
> than any fragment in the Cors and Silvergate passage.
It was better before Noel cut out the middle of it, I think.
> I personally find it objectionable, because of
> the linking of tolerance with "progress in liberation".
I'm sure that's the least you would object to if you looked
at the essay. But do you disagree with Marcuse when he says
that the link existed at a certain point in history? Maybe I've
got this all wrong. I thought liberals were _proud_ that
liberalism was related to "progress in liberation." (It's right
there in the name.) So I'm surprised you object.
> I believe Rights to be inalienable, Creator-endowed,
> an expression of a fundamental fact of human nature,
> namely Free Will and the individual sovereignty that
> this implies, and that the linking of Rights to any
> _telos_ of progress or good means that a door has
> just been opened for government to assume the power
> to violate those Rights if ever and whenever that
> _telos_ has not been empirically realized. > Or when
> the political faction in support of a different _telos_
> comes to power. In this sense, I *assume* that when
> human beings speak freely that they *will* choose to
> speak wrongly, hurtfully, untruthfully and so on, at least
> some of the time. And that the reason for free speech
> isn't our faith that right and healing amd truth will
> win out over the others in the end, but because right
> speech or wrong speech, speakers or listeners, the human
> condition is such that the choice is ours individually
> and not ours communally.
I've been meaning to ask: how does your assertion that
Puss in Boots
Much deleted.
[...]
Mike:
> >[7] Again, at first glance this whole sentence looks like
> > a damning quote from Marcuse. But, it isn't. The only
> > part from Marcuse is "the withdrawal of toleration of
> > speech and assembly from groups and movements which
> > promote aggressive policies [...] or which oppose the
> > extension of public services." Is Marcuse *for* or
> > *against* this withdrawal? We don't know without
> > Cors and Silvergate's assertion that he is for it.
> > And what has been deleted in the [...]?
Noel:
> Given that Marcuse titled the whole shebank "Repressive Tolerance,"
> any reader who had not completely taken leave of his senses would
> suspect that he was agin' it.
Marcuse is sure enough against repression, including
repressive tolerance -- something that must have slipped by you
and your senses when you claimed repressive tolerance was
Marcuse's own doctrine. (For anybody still confused about this,
it's the target of his critique.)
> Mike, you're practicing mogginism:
> tangled, convoluted, and contradictory argument from unreasoning
> hostility.
That doesn't sound like me to me. It's also not much like
Mike, at least in this instance. Evidence?
Mike:
> > [I wouldn't buy this] as "this is
> > what Marcuse thinks" since that is so
> > contingent on Cors and Silvergate. [...]
Noel:
> Marcuse is not necessarily the basis for repressive campus speech
> codes (I've already said so), but if Marcuse did not believe that
> freedom of speech was "Repressive Tolerance," and if the selections
> from his own words do not amply illustrate that he so believed at the
> time he wrote that article, produce your own selections from the
> article to support your position.
I already did. You thought I was quoting some other essay,
apparently because you hadn't read the one you're trying to
criticize. I explained that you were mistaken and you vamoosed.
Mike:
> >[8] Moggin's quote from _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_
> > gives us more of a complete assertion from Marcuse
> > than any fragment in the Cors and Silvergate passage. [...]
Noel:
> Again, I already recognized that the two articles are contradictory:
> thus, that Marcuse is inconsistent.
[...]
We're talking about a single article here: the one called
"Repressive Tolerance," a critique of tolerance in its
repressive mode. The content of the essay contradicts what you
claim about it -- that much is plain. Whether Marcuse
contradicts himself is another question. I have a feeling that
dialectical thinking won't be easy for you to grasp.
-- Moggin
Jim Gunson
Herb Smits <herb...@faeton.com> wrote:
> Moggin wrote:
>
> "Simple -- I _am_ discussing "Repressive Tolerance." All my
> quotes come right from it. But you don't recognize them: you
> think I'm discussing some "relatively unknown publication." Get
> hip -- I'm talking about the same essay you're trying to
> criticize. You might want to read it, just to save yourself any
> further embarrassment."
>
> claimed that Catch 22 took place in Korea and sternly corrected someone
> else who had said it was World War II. Moggin, don't even argue with
> this poseur. He's a propagandist without the knowledge or the critical
> acumen to back up his pretentious and vague claims. It is patent that he
> doesn't know anything about Marcuse - except perhaps some bits he got
> second-hand. Marcuse's books can be had for a dime at the charity store;
> Noel Smith should avail himself of the bargain and, as collateral
> reading, pick up some Freud and Marx.
>
> Herb Smits
> New York City
>
That's not bad, but to my mind not as bilious as the following (for which
I beg Silke's pardon)
A while back wein...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) wrote:
> Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,sci.skeptic,talk.origins,rec.arts.books
> Subject: Re: What is Deconstruction (was: Re: Why Ross is a fraud (was: My
> Letter to the New York Times))
> Followup-To: alt.postmodern,sci.skeptic,talk.origins,rec.arts.books
> Date: 22 Jun 1996 18:03:40 GMT
> Organization: University of Pennsylvania
> Lines: 56
> Message-Id: <4qhchs$n...@netnews.upenn.edu>
> References: <Dt9v8...@eskimo.com> <4qbd01$h...@panix2.panix.com>
> <JMC.96Jun2109
> 15...@Steam.stanford.edu> <4qekei$r...@netnews.upenn.edu>
> <JMC.96Jun21110442@Steam
> .stanford.edu> <DtEuK...@eskimo.com>
> Nntp-Posting-Host: mail1.sas.upenn.edu
>
>
> Noel Smith (nsm...@eskimo.com) wrote:
> : Last year "Peter Kurth" posted Caroline Moore's hostile summary of
> : deconstruction:
>
> Noel, we already know _you_ have nothing new to say -- but it's truly
> impolite to repost reams of reams of old stuff that hasn't improved one
> little bit ever since its first posting, and that, moreover, has been
> thoroughly debated. If you had a gram of honesty and thirst for knowledge
> in you, you'd deal with the objections raised, not merely repeat something
> that appeals to you because it seems dimly intelligible to your
> unexercised brain. I know you are counting on the fact that people are to
> tired to repeat themselves over and over again (you have a clear
> advantage there, my boy) and that everybody will just let it pass --
> you're probably right, too -- but you know what that makes you, I hope
> against hope.
>
> Silke
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Noel Smith
>Tuesday, the 16th of February, 1999
>Noel and moggin, I am stepping into the middle
>of this, having read none of the foregoing, but
>I am doing so in order to try and make a gentle
>point to you, Noel.
In this, a second response to a Morris article I responded to a day or
so ago, I address an entirely different aspect of his post: his
objection to my critique of original sources (Plato, Nietzsche and--to
pass from the sublime to the ridiculous--Marcuse) by reference to
secondary sources--to what scholars such as Popper, Bloom, Frenzel,
Comte-Sponville, Kors & Silverglate, etc. have found contradictory or
extreme or untenable or illiberal in them (an objection Weineck
expressed more succinctly by ordering: "Read the book").
Mike:
>Noel writes:
> Marcuse makes quite a different argument in
> "Repressive Tolerance." [1] In the November
> '98 issue of Reason, Alan Kors and Harvey
> Silverglate's article "Codes of Silence" [...]
>OK, Noel: I've inserted 8 footnotes after specific sentences
>where I wish to respond.
>[1] *You* haven't shown this out of Marcuse. Maybe
> Cors and Silvergate are being fair to Marcuse,
> maybe they aren't (I believe as you do that
> they probably are, but without Marcuse on the table
> in front of us, we cannot say that they are).
[...]
> Are Cors and Silvergate being fair to Marcuse?
> Why do they keep quoting Marcuse so fragmentarily?
[...]
Several points here. First, no one is going to contest the proposition
that some scholarly analyses of source works may be unfair, biased,
erroneous, or even deliberately misleading; or that they may be, as
you imply, taking quoted selections out of context. The corrective to
this is not difficult to understand: Offer a sound analysis showing
where the cited critique is unsound; and show, by presenting the
"fragments" in context, that the quoted excerpts were, as presented,
misleading.
Second, what is the point of scholarly analysis, informed criticism,
or even the passionate denunciation, if one cannot benefit from the
learning, intelligence, and insight of those who may have been
fortunate enought to have spent years developing an understanding of a
source one wishes to know about?
Third, may there not be a danger in reading the original writings of
great, or at least enormously influential, thinkers such as Plato,
Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, precisely _because_ they are held in such high
regard, because one may read them uncritically, and suppress doctrines
or passages which stir misgivings, so that one may be both reluctant
to contend with giants, and afraid to question received opinion, where
such opinion may appear to be entirely adulatory?
Fourth, to object to the critique of the influential--of those under
whose spell current intellectual fashion lies--on the sole ground that
one does not like the method, is essentially irrelevant and, in and of
itself, not substantive. As we understand from the ad hominem fallacy,
which substitutes an attack on the presenter of the argument for a
response to the argument itself, the proper response to argument is
argument and not something else.
Fifth, as Popper says in the introduction to _The Open Society And Its
Enemies_, great minds may make great errors. The lay reader may sense
that something is amiss, but above average erudition and critical
acuity may be needed to explain the nature of the errors, and to place
them in their intellectual context. Again, this is in part the mission
of the scholar and critic.
Sixth, that same lay reader may well be motivated, where a given
critique or analysis does not ring true, to proceed to delve into the
source with an active and burning interest, far greater than would
likely be present had he or she encountered the source cold.
-*--
My objection to the method of my undergraduate philosophy professors
is that they presented philosophy without adequate context, and in
consequence it was, at that time, rather boring--as if the whole
business consisted either of Plato, or footnotes to Plato. I would not
have foretold that now, when I don't have to, I study the same
thinkers and doctrines with the intensity of interest associated with
debate on political or social issues. (Indeed, it may be that
philosophy, unrecognized, drives social debate, and politics. One need
only observe the relationship of the philosophy of Marx to the Soviet
Union and, via the Cold War, to our lives in the last few decades; and
the proposition that the United States is the product of Enlightenment
political philosophy deserves close attention.)
For example, if we learned that Nietzsche considered democracy to be
slave morality, we did not ask even the most elementary questions: Is
that right? and if so, on what basis?; If wrong, what caused Nietzsche
to err? (it seemed that we should not presume to know better than the
great thinkers we studied); What should we do if Nietzsche was right
since, if he was, our political system was in error?; and Does
philosophy have primacy over politics and morals and ethics?--can
liberal ethical propositions, and political democracy, be
intellectualized away by one explosive line in Nietzsche?
And of course, we were not told that Nietzsche also wrote Become hard
and show no mercy, for evil is man's best force; and wrote, One Jew
more or less, what does it matter?; and found something "festive" in
cruelty; and praised the magic power of extremes. Instead we were left
with an impression which hung in the air, that Nietzsche had
"diagnosed" a "sick" society--ours--and that we were not only advanced
but courageous to realize this and to look down on the herd of lesser
spirits who in their ignorance farmed our food and maintained our
highways. It would have been beneath us to ask how a Nietzschean
solution--a Nietzschean society based on heroic vitalism,
anti-conceptualism, rejection of institutions, scorn of all social
obligation, defiant immoralism, and recognizing only the obligation to
give free untrammeled rein to the will to power--how such a society
could work.
This scorn, one might have learned (but our philosophy professors did
not tell us), could be traced all the way back to Plato's and
Aristotle's scorn for the banausic, and to related beliefs by those
present at the beginning of the intellectual tradition: that common
men have a base nature, and should not interbreed with the educated
and the higher sort; that slaves have no reason, and women only a
little of it; that each type of person should know his place and in
particular that it was just that a slave should slave, given that a
slave is such because he has a slave nature.
Why is it that the Plato scholar, the Nietzsche scholar, etc., seem
not to know their authors better than most, but only seem to regard
their authors with uncritical adulation, deflecting the most pointed
and specific criticism--citation of unmistakably damning direct
quotes--not by counter-quote or counter-argument, but by asserting the
essentially unverifiable proposition that if one had read _all_ of
Plato, Nietzsche, etc., one would see that he didn't really mean what
he said?
And why is it that if one responds reasonably, that Popper has indeed
read all of Plato, or close enough, and Bloom has indeed read all of
Nietzsche--or close enough--and have drawn attention to large and
fateful errors at the core of their thought, that the aficionado of
Plato or Nietzsche responds, as Mike does above, by switching ground,
that is, by alleging that the learned critic is not being "fair,"--or
that again, one can only be sure that the critique is fair by--you
guessed it--reading all the stuff?
-*--
Perhaps it is not my method--reading world-class critics in the
liberal, humanist, tradition--but Mike's method of plowing through the
original works with adulatory dedication--that leads to lack of
perspective, to uncritical veneration, to a hermeneutic of defensive
reinterpretation. Perhaps Mike's method leads to overcommitment and
defensiveness, not depth of knowledge.
At any rate, it often seems that scholars--perhaps they are only
intellectualists--fail to see the forest for the trees. It appears
that they fail to understand that what we call intellectual is not
monolithic.
The intellectual heritage includes two very different things: content,
and method. In respect to method--Mary Lefkowitz's "conceptual
vocabulary and formal argument" in part--the intellectual heritage
fully deserves our high regard. There is nothing else like it; it is,
for richness and breadth and profundity of thought, the only game in
town.
But in respect to content--and here again my philosophy professors
failed to notice--the intellectual heritage is split right down the
middle, from the very beginning, between the open, liberal,
rationalist, Socratic wing; and the line of the would-be
philosopher-kings, who from the parable of the cave with its
trans-earthly realm of utterly perfect ideas on down to the present
with its "theory," have practiced argument from the invisible; and
have celebrated interpreters who somehow can know by direct intuition
what lesser mortals cannot.
Those who object to the oracular style of the latter--of the
intellectual as seer-into-the-Mystery, because they sense that it is
both authoritarian and, as Frederick Crews noted, aprioristic--are
typically accused of being anti-intellectual, when most often it is
merely that they favor intellectuality's embattled liberal wing.
In closing, I suspect that when Mike objects to my critique of
illiberal thinkers such as Plato and Nietzsche (and Marcuse) via the
method of presenting the analyses of Popper, Bloom, Frenzel and other
scholars, his ground is not the claimed objection to my method, but
his unreasoned conviction that such thinkers (Bloom, who was rather on
both sides of the issue, called them "intellectually overpowering")
are Seers, whose testimony as to the Beyond has a special status. It
appears that the reasons he gives are not the reasons he has.
Michael S. Morris
I wrote:
Noel and moggin, I am stepping into the middle
of this, having read none of the foregoing, but
I am doing so in order to try and make a gentle
point to you, Noel.
Noel writes:
In this, a second response to a Morris
article I responded to a day or so ago,
I address an entirely different aspect
of his post: his objection to my critique
of original sources (Plato, Nietzsche and--to
pass from the sublime to the ridiculous--Marcuse)
by reference to secondary sources--to what scholars
such as Popper, Bloom, Frenzel, Comte-Sponville,
Kors & Silverglate, etc. have found contradictory or
extreme or untenable or illiberal in them (an
objection Weineck expressed more succinctly
by ordering: "Read the book").
I find this an interesting subject, and,
in a sense, am probably going to be your
most sympathetic reader around this point.
Nevertheless, I think there is a distinction
between using secondary sources for insight,
expansion, debate, interpretation, as well
as introducing oneself to the primary texts
in the first place (finding out that one
does or does not want desire to go and
read something) and using secondary sources
as the indisputable last word on the subject,
no reference to the original text necessary,
thank you. This is especially the case when it
becomes glaringly apparent that you are clueless
of the original text---I think you owe an
apology to someone for your use of "one Jew
more or less". Not to me, because I don't ask
for apologies, but to someone.
Noel wrote:
Marcuse makes quite a different argument in
"Repressive Tolerance." [1] In the November
'98 issue of Reason, Alan Kors and Harvey
Silverglate's article "Codes of Silence" [...]
I responded:
OK, Noel: I've inserted 8 footnotes after
specific sentences where I wish to respond.
[1] *You* haven't shown this out of Marcuse. Maybe
[K]ors and Silvergate are being fair to Marcuse,
maybe they aren't (I believe as you do that
they probably are, but without Marcuse on the table
in front of us, we cannot say that they are).
[...]
Are [K]ors and Silvergate being fair to Marcuse?
Why do they keep quoting Marcuse so fragmentarily?
[...]
Noel says:
Several points here. First, no one is
going to contest the proposition that
some scholarly analyses of source works
may be unfair, biased, erroneous, or even
deliberately misleading; or that they may
be, as you imply, taking quoted selections
out of context.
Two points: First, besides all of the
other reasons for the inadequacy of using
secondary sources to try and *impeach* the
primary source author of something, we also
have to allow for the possibility that the
the secondary author is brilliant, insightful,
correct, etc., *but* only presents us with
one interpretation. Second, the problem I
was addressing is *not* so much Kors and
Silvergate---since I haven't read them and am
frankly uninterested in reading them, nor Marcuse.
How well they represent Marcuse, are fair to
Marcuse is a different question. The real question
is how *your* use of Kors and Silvergate gets at
Marcuse at all.
The one I do not trust is you, Noel. Not because
your motives are wrong (though I suspect your
liberalism of being progressive and unabashedly
corporatist---recognizing no limit to the power of
government to be exercised for ordering society for
"the public good", and I do think that this is
real bad, because you do not acknowledge the practical
fact that corrupt people *always* take over
the exercise of such power). But, even though
I see your heart as being in the right place,
what I don't trust is *you* to read a text
and then reoprt on that text to me in such
a way that *I* may learn something true about
that text. This is because you have
now reported on multiple texts which I *have*
read---Nietzsche, the Bible, Plato, Aristotle,
Jefferson, the Federalist---and to my mind, you
get them all consistently wrong. If I had
not read them myself, I would have gotten a false
impression of them from you. The "one Jew more or
less" is a classic case in point. In the mouth
of an anti-Semite, it means something
nakedly horrible. In Nietzsche's pen, it is an
*imagination*---history or fiction, I'm not sure
which to call it---of something Pontius Pilate
would have thought. In part it is to shake
N.'s Victorian readers into recognizing themselves
---or something they admire---in Pilate.
Noel:
The corrective to this is not difficult to
understand: Offer a sound analysis showing
where the cited critique is unsound; and show,
by presenting the "fragments" in context, that
the quoted excerpts were, as presented,
misleading.
No, Noel, the burden of proof is not
on me. In the case of Nietzsche, I've read
the text, I can see how out of context
your quote really is. But writing a response
like this to you, Noel, takes me hours---I
do not write quickly, and whenever I "try to get
it out" quickly and skimp on editing, I end up
with scads of typos, missing words, spelling errors
(like the "C" in Cors). Also, I read, and perhaps
a lot (though shamefully little in the last few months---
for which I plead exhaustion from moving in the
middle of winter), but I have not read Kors and
Silvergate's article, and not a word of Marcuse,
and I'm not necessarily interested in diverting my
stacks and stacks of reading in such a direction.
But, I do happen to read you, and I see you are
not just reporting on Kors and Silvergate, but
on Marcuse---trying to use Kors and Silvergate
to impeach Marcuse of being anti-free-speech.
My point is that I even *believe going in* what
you are contending is probably right, still, what
you report does not impeach Marcuse.
Noel:
Second, what is the point of scholarly
analysis, informed criticism, or even the
passionate denunciation, if one cannot benefit
from the learning, intelligence, and insight
of those who may have been fortunate enought
to have spent years developing an understanding
of a source one wishes to know about?
Yeah, but my objection is that you are not *using*
this criticism *in order to know about* a source.
I use secondary sources for that purpose, especially
to whet my appetite for the primary sources---what
I have called the "web of recommendations". I also
use secondary sources to help me interpret or respond
to primary texts. This is all to increase my knowledge
of the primary text *and* of its various interpretations.
But it is not to impeach the primary text of something
where I haven't read it. There is a distinction between
the private use I make of secondary sources and the
public use that you are making of them.
Noel:
Third, may there not be a danger in reading
the original writings of great, or at least
enormously influential, thinkers such as Plato,
Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, precisely _because_ they
are held in such high regard, because one may read
them uncritically, and suppress doctrines or
passages which stir misgivings, so that one may
be both reluctant to contend with giants, and
afraid to question received opinion, where
such opinion may appear to be entirely adulatory?
Two points: First, I am probably the most
sympathetic person you will find to this
point. I see it as the essential issue
between Reformation and Counter-Reformation:
"read the text for myself" v. "submit the
text to the authority of a canonical
interpretation". I see both sides of this
great argument as nearly equipotently convincing.
The Catholic side is basically that if you
do *not* submit to a central authority, then
what will happen is a mutiplicity of sects and
interpretations, most of them wrong, and leading
to war, and doubt, and nihilistic terror.
I think there is no doubt that this *does*
happen. The Protestant side is "Hier steh' ich,
ich kann nichts anders."---i.e. I read the damn thing
for myself, and when what I read and think is
different from what you say, then I trust myself.
My lineage is finally Protestant, and I finally
have to go to the text itself, and refuse to have
it interpreted for me. But I recognize both sides
of this question.
Your last sentence I find subversive of
my expectations, since I see *you* who spend
so much time with secondary texts, and therefore
*you* as the one who is choosing *received opinion*
about the primary texts, rather than questioning
the texts themselves. If the great primary texts
in question were simple and clear, it would make
sense what you say about being bowled over by the
great writers. But they are great in part because
they aren't simple. The great books, remember in my
opinion, are those texts that are the most complex
thinking platforms. They are not at all, as you have
seemed to say in the past, texts we are meant to
simply agree with, so much as texts we are meant to
think about. That said, I perfectly well agree that
some secondary scholar will have probably thought
more and better about a text than I, general reader
as I am with limited time to spare from the mundane
burdens of life. So, I do see a benefit to me in some
secondary scholarship (besides the fact that some
secondary scholarship, such as Popper's _The Open
Society and Its Enemies_ is primary text in its own
right).
Noel:
Fourth, to object to the critique of the influential--
of those under whose spell current intellectual fashion
lies--on the sole ground that one does not like the
method, is essentially irrelevant and, in and of
itself, not substantive.
I disagree entirely. As I keep saying, and have detailed
for you time and time again, I think there is a serious
argument that liberalism can have with Nietzsche. I think
that liberalism wins that argument because Nietzsche
doesn't really understand liberalism---his critique of
liberalism doesn't really apply. But, if you insist
on painting Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi, you will
continue to be a laughing stock to those who have
actually read him and know why this is wrong, *and*
you will miss the real, substantive argument.
Noel:
As we understand from the ad hominem fallacy,
which substitutes an attack on the presenter
of the argument for a response to the argument
itself, the proper response to argument is
argument and not something else.
The ad hominem fallacy, by the way, is vastly
overrated as a fallacy. In a logically perfect
world, it would be perfectly fallacious. However,
we speak and write out of a web of assumptions---
in classical rhetoric these were called "enthymemes"---
and this web of assumptions is rooted in personal
experience. For this reason, the *person* doing the
speaking matters to our evaluation of the thing
spoken. For this reason, classical rhetorical
mauals recommend to a speaker as *relevant* to
present his credentials at the beginning. For this
reason, if Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and
George Washington pledge their lives and sacred
honour, it means something solemn to those who read
their words. And for this reason, if Bill Clinton
tells us he wants to build a bridge to the 21st century,
we laugh his words in derision. The person, the man
in "ad hominem", *does* matter to how we evaluate
his argument and his speech.
Noel:
Fifth, as Popper says in the introduction to
_The Open Society And Its Enemies_, great minds
may make great errors.
But, I 100% agree with this. The point about going
to the primary sources is *not* so that we can be
raptured away in agreement with everything they
say. It is rather so that we may *know what it is
they say*.
Noel:
The lay reader may sense that something is amiss,
but above average erudition and critical acuity
may be needed to explain the nature of the errors,
and to place them in their intellectual context.
Again, this is in part the mission of the scholar
and critic.
But, it is only the mission of the scholar and critic
of a primary text *after* we have first ascertained
what the text does say. The diversity of biblical
interpretation or Plato interpretation should
alert you to the fact that this first step is
not a closed affair.
Noel:
Sixth, that same lay reader may well be
motivated, where a given critique or
analysis does not ring true, to proceed
to delve into the source with an active
and burning interest, far greater than would
likely be present had he or she encountered
the source cold.
I 100% agree. I certainly do *not* say to you,
Noel: Don't read secondary sources. In fact, the
secondary sources are useful precisely because
they may lead to the primary texts with a commitment
going in---a commitment which will help you to engage
the text. I don't even say to you: Don't say provoking
things about Nietzsche until you have read him, because
it seems to me that provoking moggin and Silke and Jeff
about Nietzsche in order to see how it is they respond
*is* enlightening and useful even before one has read
Nietzsche. But, nevertheless, it is crystal clear
to this reader of Nietzsche at least that he ain't a
proto-Nazi, that his attack on liberalism comes out of
the issue of the nature of reason itself and the
opposing claims of reason and psychology for
priority, and that the dismissal of Nietzsche as
a simple immoralist is utterly inadequate.
**********************
I'm tired writing at the moment, and it's 1:00
and I'm hypoglycemic and need lunch. I won't
take the time to go back and edit what I just
wrote, so my apologies for all that's wrong there.
I wish to be able to respond to everything you write,
Noel, and have various responses hanging around
half-composed. And maybe I can do some more on this post
later, but of course, I owe Claudia a careful
look at the numbers I provoked her for, and I owe
Mozart's "Requiem" and Poulenc's "Stabat Mater"
a great deal of attention this weekend---last
Tuesday night's rehearsal did not inspire confidence,
and we are with Maestro Leppard every night next
week starting Monday.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
William Grosso
Mike Morris wrote:
> ... I mean, I'm perfectly
> absolutist about free speech, and yet I could imagine
> myself writing exactly the same sentence as something
> I intend to dismiss and not getting around to dismissing
> it until 90 pages later.
>
In fact, most of us watching this probably would have
a hard time imagining you doing so in under 90 pages.
:-)
--A
Michael S. Morris
I wrote:
[1] *You* haven't shown this out of Marcuse. Maybe
[K]ors and Silvergate are being fair to Marcuse,
maybe they aren't (I believe as you do that
they probably are, but without Marcuse on
the table in front of us, we cannot say that they
are).
This was responding to Noel's:
The holders of power, Marcuse argued,
maintained their control by keeping
the population "manipulated and indoctrinated,"
so that ordinary people "parrot, as their own,
the opinion of their masters."
Noel says:
First, to quote Mike Morris before
he became so strident about certain
extreme ideological positions,
I'm not sure which positions you mean, Noel.
You seem to think me Libertarian, I guess.
Instead, I think me Liberal---committed to
*limits* on government, not to no government
whatsoever. The reason I end up talking
"stridently" about limits rather in discussing
what positive powers or positive laws I would
like to see government have, *is that no one else
seems to think in terms of there even being any
limits*---and you have said lately comes close
to acknowledging *limits*. The First Amendment
does, after all, say "Congress shall make no
law [...] abridging the freedom of speech". It
doesn't say "Congress shall kinda sorta respect
free speech in those glorious few cases where speech
shall enlighten and no one gets too offended."
Noel:
I don't have a lot invested in this,
i.e., I don't particularly care about
such a small player as Marcuse,
Good, because *I* am much more concerned
about the fact that on the one hand you
sound critical of Marcuse and on the other
you turn right around and argue for reasons
for free speech which play right into Marcuse's
hand.
Noel:
except as a possible symptom or example
of a much larger intellectual issue, which
one might describe as the bifurcation of the
intellectual tradition into open and closed,
or liberal and conservative, wings from its
very inception. (Plato and Aristotle, the
scholastics of the middle ages who were under
their sway, Nietzsche, Heidegger, de Man,
and Derrida represent the latter; Socrates,
Yeshua, the Enlightenment, Kant, and Popper
represent the former.)
I am baffled by such a reading of the history
of Western philosophy. If you make such a dichotomy
in the first place, why would you put Socrates
on the "open" side of it. He was scornful of democracy
at every step (see I.F. Stone's _The Trial of Socrates_).
Aristotle at least sounds the note of justice as a
restraint on the ruler. The scholastics under the
sway of Aristotle would certainly have to include
Aquinas, yet Aquinas argues the progressive
(as opposed to libertarian) doctrine that you
commit murder if a man is starving and you do
not give him food, which you can give him. Jesus
counsels obedience to Caesar and the acceptance by
the slave of his lot in life. Kant was an Aristotelian.
Nietzsche is almost the antithesis of Aristotle
incarnate. Enlightenment political philosophy comes
from Locke, who also was Aristotelian. Your
system makes zero sense in terms of anyone I have
read. I haven't read Derrida or De Man, so I can't
comment there. Should I trust you that you have
somehow classified those two correctly?
Noel:
Anyway, Marcuse's own words above, unless
[K]ors et. al. have taken him completely out
of context,
Are you using Kors and Silvergate to triangulate
yourself into an introduction to Marcuse, or
are you using Kors and Silvergate to impeach
Marcuse of something. If the former, then use
them so, by all means. If the latter, then it
is up to *you* to support the charge you are
making.
Noel:
do express a most anti-liberal skepticism
("parrot," "masters") toward speech by the
people.
*If* Marcuse was even talking about "the people".
We don't know from the way the quote runs. Suppose
Marcuse had *really* said "Some thinkers believe
speech shouldn't be free, not even speech by the
common people themselves. This is because the
people only parrot, as their own, the opinion
of their masters." It would then be clear, wouldn't it,
that Marcuse was *attributing* such an idea
---that the people parrot the opinion of their masters---
to other thinkers. We couldn't say either that
Marcuse believes that the people do this or that
he doesn't. It depends on what Marcuse later says
about these thinkers. It depends on the *context*.
It depends upon the good sense and reportage of
Kors and Silvergate, and it depends on how
well *you* have edited them in your report to us.
Now, I have no particular reason to distrust
Kors or Silvergate, but, looking at what you
have done with "one Jew more or less", I have
*every* reason suspect that *you* probably
haven't read the original, don't know the
context, and hence are an unreliable reporter of
the issues.
Noel:
You seem to be arguing from possibility,
that is, implying that possibility is proof.
Now, you are being very daft, Noel. Nowhere
did I say anything about *proving* that K
& S or you have gotten Marcuse wrong. In fact,
I believe I explicitly qualified my remarks
by saying that this wasn't what I was doing.
*All* I was doing is saying that what *you*
present as evidence isn't evidence, doesn't
convince of what you claim for it, because
it is so context-less.
Noel:
Militating against your strained argument
is the context in which Marcuse stood
(and which he helped establish), a context
wherein refugees from Hitler Germany somehow
managed to find the hospitality of their
nation of refuge as sinister as the repression
from which they fled. [Wolin's quote deleted]
As I believe I told you---I understand this
to be the case, and I roughly agree with
you. Nevertheless, *you* were trying to
impeach Marcuse of something, and *I*
was arguing not that he isn't guilty
of biting the hand that fed him, or of being
a commie, or of being utterly clueless in
his critique of capitalist liberal democracy,
but that *you* were being a poor prosecutor
of Marcuse.
I wrote:
[2] Note how much of this sentence is [K]ors'
and Silvergate's opinion about what Marcuse
is saying, and how the actual quotes from
Marcuse are meaningless fragments unless
we trust [K]ors and Silvergate represent Marcuse
fairly. [...]
This was in response to Noel, who had written:
[2] In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
guaranty of political rights and liberties" is
actually "repressive." [... Marcuse argued]
"they would have to get information slanted
in the opposite direction, [which] cannot be
accomplished within the established framework
of abstract tolerance and spurious objectivity."
Noel says:
Apparently you cannot recognize such language
as "the indiscriminate guaranty of political
rights and liberties"
Yes, I can perfectly well read the code, thank
you, Noel.
Noel:
and "they would have to get information
slanted in the opposite direction, [which]
cannot be accomplished within the established
framework of abstract tolerance and spurious
objectivity" as expressive of illiberal prejudice
toward the open society.
Yes, I can read the expression perfectly. What I
do *not* know, however, is: Is this Marcuse's own
opinion, or something he is attributing to others?
Or is it something he adopts for the sake of argument,
and then develops a contradiction by the end of the essay
or book in order to reject it. I mean, I'm perfectly
absolutist about free speech, and yet I could imagine
myself writing exactly the same sentence as something
I intend to dismiss and not getting around to dismissing
it until 90 pages later.
Noel:
The quotes are not "meaningless fragments" to a
reasonable observer, and your insinuation that
[K}ors and Silvergate misrepresent Marcuse by
quoting does them injustice.
Have we decided that Cors is "Kors" by now?
Was the "C" misspelling my error?
In any event, yes, Noel, the quotes remain
fragments, and, depending on what words go
around them, might mean totally different
things. For instance, consider:
a) The indiscriminate guaranty of
political rights and liberties is
actually repressive.
b) It has been argued that the
indiscriminate guaranty of
political rights and liberties
is actually repressive.
c) A skeptic about rights
might think otherwise: The indiscriminate
quaranty of political rights and
liberties is actually repressive.
d) It may be that the indiscriminate
guaranty of political rights and
liberties is actually repressive,
but I say that to grant to *government*
the power to infringe such rights and
liberties is far more repressive.
Author a) makes the simple declarative
assertion in such a way that makes me suspect
him of wanting to do away with rights and liberties
in order to give more power to what he thinks
of as beneficent government. Author b) probably
disagrees with the proposition entirely.
Author c) may be agreeing with his putative skeptic
or he might be setting up an argument in which he
disagrees with him. From that little bit, we don't know
which side he's on. Author d) may or may not
believe the assertion at all, but he finds it
irrelevant to his main point.
From what I've seen that you, Noel, do with
Nietzsche, and Plato, and the Bible and myself
for that matter, I am very skeptical that when
*you* tell me that Marcuse believes
In such circumstances, "the indiscriminate
guaranty of political rights and liberties" is
actually "repressive,"
that Marcuse is really author a) and not author b)
or c) or d). Note I am *not* insinuating anything.
I am not saying that I believe Marcuse to be author
b) or c) or d). But I am saying that, given what you
have just done with Nietzsche's "one Jew more or less",
I don't trust *you* to have judged correctly.
Noel:
In the interest of brevity, I omit [3] and [4],
which look like more of the same Fear, Uncertainty,
and Doubt (FUD) spin of the first two.
Brevity is fine---you are right in the sense
that my objection to what you have written
*as an impeachment of Marcuse* is the same here as
before---you provide only sentence fragments,
never enough of a quote to really see Marcuse
complete a thought. Always it's *you*
putting words in Marcuse's mouth, or Kors
and Silvergate doing that. I doubt that this
works. I am uncertain of the result, and I
fear what you do with it from there (DUF).
I wrote:
[5] [...] for all we know here,
Marcuse could be talking not about
Western liberal democracy, but
communist China, in which case
"repressive status quo" is apt.
Noel:
More argument from possibility.
My point exactly. It was within your power
to give enough context to shut off this
possibility. I don't understand why you, or
Kors and Silvergate, did not.
I wrote:
[6] This whole sentence is Cors
and Silvergate's interpretation
of Marcuse. Should one trust them
in this or no?
Noel:
More FUD.
More DUF.
Noel:
Rhetorical question is not sufficient
argument here.
It's not a rhetorical question, Noel.
I am not implying that the answer to
my question is that Kors and Silvergate
are being deceptive.. I'm asking a real question, i.e.,
should one trust a secondary source claiming
to represent to one what a political opponent
says?
Noel:
If [K] & S are untrustworthy, it should be
easy for Mike Morris, internationally recognized
physicist, to develop and present the position.
That you instead substitute shady rhetorical
device suggests to me that you're blowin' smoke.
Bullshit. I told you I had not read either Kors
and Silvergate or Marcuse. I told you that I was
concerned about coming along to this thread,
and seeing *you* make a claim about a primary source,
and then watching you use selective quoting
from a secondary source once again to support
your original claim. I told you, I was responding,
not as someone who is interested in Herbert Marcuse,
or Kors and Silvergate, but as a reader of Noel
Smith, interested in the fact that I read Noel Smith,
and that the evidence he provides in support of
his claim is uniformly unconvincing of his claim.
I told you your claim may be perfectly right, and
*still* the problem is that you haven't quoted anybody
well enough to support your claim. (I note in passing
that this is almost precisely my complaint with
Dinesh D'Souza in his book _Illiberal Education_---I
am inclined to agree with the guy politically,
and yet everything in that book that is a juicy
charge about the crazy ideas academics have or
the crazy things they do is unquoted and for all I
know may be D'Souza's construction and D'Souza's
alarmism, and every quote in it supposedly in
support of D'Souza's contention that academics are
up to crazy stuff (and I always read all the footnotes),
just doesn't support the construction he gives
it. It doesn't deny his construction either, that's true,
but he's a journalist and he ought to have a better
sense of the evidence needed for a logical construction
of an argument than that.) Going into what Marcuse
actually does say, or what Kors and Silvergate actually
do say is a task for moggin, and I see he's already done
that admirably well. *My* criticism is of you, Noel,
and your habit of quoting in fragments. For just once,
I would like you to quote a full paragraph of some author
you would like to impeach on some point and argue
through the whole of the paragraph both what it is he is
saying and why it is you think him wrong. I mean,
with plenty of authors, a full paragraph isn't enough,
because in political philosophy whole chapters of books
can be avenues explored only in order to be rejected later.
But a paragraph would at least be better than sentence
fragments, strung together on words that impute
meanings to them for us. Especially when your whole point
is to accuse Nietzsche or Marcuse of something bad.
Look at the "one Jew more or less" and how wrong
you got that. You presented it as though it were
a type a) statement---Nietzsche thinks one Jew more
or less doesn't matter. I.e. Nietzsche is an
anti-Semite. Turns out Nietzsche is *imagining*
Pontius Pilate as thinking that. How could you
be so wrong about such a thing? I can't believe
you would read the passage in question and extract
so much out of context yourself. That seems to me
to be terribly dishonest, and I don't believe
it of you. But this suggests you get it second- or
third-hand from some secondary or tertiary source,
and then there well could be dishonesty on that source's
part, or a little bit of misreading on both your parts
and we get something Nietzsche attributes to Pontius
Pilate turned into Nietzsche's own anti-Semitism.
I wrote:
[7] Again, at first glance this whole sentence looks like
a damning quote from Marcuse. But, it isn't. The only
part from Marcuse is "the withdrawal of toleration of
speech and assembly from groups and movements which
promote aggressive policies [...] or which oppose the
extension of public services." Is Marcuse *for* or
*against* this withdrawal? We don't know without
[K]ors and Silvergate's assertion that he is for it.
And what has been deleted in the [...]?
Noel:
Given that Marcuse titled the whole shebank
"Repressive Tolerance," any reader who had not
completely taken leave of his senses would
suspect that he was agin' it.
Noel, whoa there. Think *very* logically
for a moment. I asked: Is Marcuse for or
against this withdrawal? What is my antecedent?
In other words, what I asked was: Is Marcuse
for or against the withdrawal of toleration?
Now, you tell me that any sensible reader is
going to say Marcuse was against the withdrawal
of toleration. In other words, Marcuse was
for toleration. Unless you mean that repressive
tolerance being the antecedent in your sentence,
Marcuse was against it, which makes more sense.
By the way, are you for or against tolerance?
Personally I'm in favour of the government
not being granted the power to punish speech.
In other words, I'm in favour of the *legal*
tolerance of speech no matter how "repressive"
that speech may be, no matter how "repressive"
tolerance of that speech may be claimed to be
out of Marxist doctrine.
Noel:
Mike, you're practicing mogginism:
tangled, convoluted, and contradictory
argument from unreasoning hostility.
I don't think there's much hostility at all,
Noel. But my post was consistent and straightforward.
I argued not that you were wrong about Marcuse,
but that you failed to convince that you were
right about him, which is what always happens
when you selectively quote from secondary sources
in order to impeach what a primary author says.
Please, Noel, understand this point. To repeat
and repeat: It is not that your thesis is
wrong, it is that the evidence is not sufficient.
I wrote:
[I wouldn't buy this] as "this is
what Marcuse thinks" since that is so
contingent on [K]ors and Silvergate. [...]
Noel:
Marcuse is not necessarily the basis for
repressive campus speech codes (I've already
said so), but if Marcuse did not believe that
freedom of speech was "Repressive Tolerance,"
and if the selections from his own words do
not amply illustrate that he so believed at the
time he wrote that article, produce your own
selections from the article to support your
position. Without them, skepticism is merely
an attitude, not a substantive position.
Again, the burden of proof here is not on me.
*You* were the one making a claim. I came along,
not even disagreeing with claim, but saying that
your quotes were an inadequate support for your
claim.
I wrote:
[8] Moggin's quote from _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_
gives us more of a complete assertion from Marcuse
than any fragment in the [K]ors and Silvergate passage. [...]
Noel:
Again, I already recognized that the two
articles are contradictory: thus, that
Marcuse is inconsistent.
Again, my point is not to his inconsistency,
except to note in general that authors and
people to write and say inconsistent things,
and that if we believe in the *development
of argument*---in speech and writing as deliberation
and as encompassing the possibility of reasoned
persuasion and the changing of one's mind---
then we are going to have to learn to look
at speech, and in particular, political speech
as not a collection of particulate obiter dicta,
summarizable in quotable fragments, but a coherently
reasoned whole. And it may be that *no* secondary
source, no *summary* becomes an adequate take
on a primary text.
Noel:
I don't find this surprising, given the poor
quality of his reasoning generally, his hostility
to the democratic disposition, his biting the
hand that feeds him when he turned on the nation
which granted him asylum, and his failure to
notice the difference between Nazism and democratic
society.
This kind of accusation would have weight if I
could trust you to have read Marcuse *before* you
would say any such thing. The problem is, given your
track record, I don't trust you to have read Marcuse
first.
Noel:
Your claim that _A Critique of Pure Tolerance_
represents the real Marcuse is insupportable for
two reasons.
Please read what it is I said. It was *not* that
Moggin's quote represents "the real Marcuse"
better. I said that Moggin's quote was a whole
or complete assertion from Marcuse, and that you
had not given us even one whole or complete assertion.
[two reasons deleted because they are arguing
against something I didn't maintain]
I wrote:
I personally find it objectionable, because of
the linking of tolerance with "progress in liberation".
I believe Rights to be inalienable, Creator-endowed, [...]
Noel:
As I write in my concurrent "Darkness at Noon"
post, you, as "an approximate atheist," have
no right to form argument-from-the-supernatural.
You do not understand how I understand the
phrase. I *have* said this before: I understand
the Declaration's phrase to mean that Rights
are a precondition on government, that no
majority, or even supermajority, howsomever
democratically constituted may vote them
away. I understand them to be theoretically
based on Natural Law. I have faith in Natural
Law. Meaning that it seems to me as though
(though I cannot prove it, which is why I
call it faith) absolute right and wrong,
irrespective of culture, constrains the human
heart at all times and places. I believe,
as Jefferson says in one of his letters,
and as Locke develops in the _Second Treatise
on Government_, that political Rights rest on
Natural Law. But, I do not believe that the
existence of Natural Law necessitates there being
a Lawgiver. In any event, that is my own cosmological
and metaphysical concern. My point is that Rights,
nevertheless flow from something that is not
the good wishes of a democratic majority of
my fellow citizens, that Rights are a *precondition*
on government being allowed in the first place
to exercise the powers that I have surrendered to
it.
Noel:
From the secular, rational
perspective, there is no standard of evidence concerning a "creator,"
and "creator" is therefore an empty term (or whatever the phrase is)
in an argument. The basis for your personal rhetorical use of the
rights doctrine appears to be the purest metaphysical idealism: As
such, your use of "Rights" to formulate ostensibly intellectual
justification of injustice is based on propositions which are
inherently not falsifiable, and which therefore cannot in themselves
be valid truth-claims.
Well, I have an hour's drive to get home now,
and I am expected. So, maybe more later.
I most emphatically disagree with the
direction you are heading right now. Science
can answer scientific questions. It cannot
determine what is right and what is wrong.
Falsifiability cannot cover all possible judgments,
all possible truth-claims. We cannot live
as human beings without making judgments
that are not scientific judgments. And you know
perfectly well that the attempt to make all
judgments "scientific"---to judge scientifically
that which is not scientifically judgeable---is the
root error of Marxism.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Richard Harter
>
>Mike Morris wrote:
>
>> ... I mean, I'm perfectly
>> absolutist about free speech, and yet I could imagine
>> myself writing exactly the same sentence as something
>> I intend to dismiss and not getting around to dismissing
>> it until 90 pages later.
>>
>
>In fact, most of us watching this probably would have
>a hard time imagining you doing so in under 90 pages.
I have this picture of a philosopher advancing a thesis in his youth
that he intends to refute in a later work. He spends his entire life
elaborating the thesis to be refuted and never quite gets around to
writing the refutation.
On his death bed he refutes it in his last words with one brilliant
insightful sentence. Alas, he doesn't quite get to finish the
sentence.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
Microsoft announced today that the release of Windows 2000
has slipped and will be released in the first quarter of 1901.
William Grosso
Richard Harter wrote:
>
> William Grosso <gro...@smi.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> >Mike Morris wrote:
> >
> >> ... I mean, I'm perfectly
> >> absolutist about free speech, and yet I could imagine
> >> myself writing exactly the same sentence as something
> >> I intend to dismiss and not getting around to dismissing
> >> it until 90 pages later.
> >
> >In fact, most of us watching this probably would have
> >a hard time imagining you doing so in under 90 pages.
>
> I have this picture of a philosopher advancing a thesis in his youth
> that he intends to refute in a later work. He spends his entire life
> elaborating the thesis to be refuted and never quite gets around to
> writing the refutation.
>
> On his death bed he refutes it in his last words with one brilliant
> insightful sentence. Alas, he doesn't quite get to finish the
> sentence.
>
But the nurse, who used to be one of his star pupils until discovering
her bent for nurturing behavior, realizes what he is trying to say and
decides that she has an obligation to tell the world.
Alas, she decides to do so on _Politically Incorrect_ and is
thoroughly refuted by Gallagher (who smahes a pumpkin with a
sledgehammer to illustrate his point). The professor's reputation
as a scholar of the first rank is forever destroyed and the
student, distraught at her failure, decides to commit suicide.
--A
Puss in Boots
I'd say is Marcuse's main theme in "Repressive Tolerance."
It's in _Witness Against the Beast_, E.P. Thompson's book about
Blake. Thompson isn't talking about Marcuse at all -- he's
concerned with Blake and his relation to some of the Dissenting
sects, especially the Muggletonians. But along the way he
desribes the view that:
...in most societies we can observe an intellectual as
well as an institutional hegemony, or dominant discourse,
which imposes a structure of ideas and beliefs -- deep
assumptions as to social proprieties and economic process
and as to the legitimacy of relations of property and
power, a general 'common sense' as to what is possible
and what is not, a limited horizon of moral norms and
practical possibilities beyond which all must be
blasphemous, seditious, insane or apocalyptic fanstasy --
a structure which serves to consolidate the existent
social order, enforce its priorities, and which is
itself enforced by rewards and penalties, by notions of
'reputability,' and (in Blake's time) by liberal
patronage, or its absence...
(_Witness Against the Beast_ 108-9.)
That's exactly Marcuse's perspective, it seems to me; when
he talks about "repressive tolerance," that's what he's
talking about. Still, Ambrose Bierce puts the notion best, and
much better than either of our Marxists. From the _Devil's
Dictionary_:
Lewis Mammel
> That's exactly Marcuse's perspective, it seems to me; when
> he talks about "repressive tolerance," that's what he's
> talking about. Still, Ambrose Bierce puts the notion best, and
> much better than either of our Marxists. From the _Devil's
> Dictionary_:
That's an interesting comparison, but Bierce is expressing
how we all chafe under the restrictions of idiotic rules and
fashions, as we perceive them. This seems to me significantly
different from the seamless ( and hence unperceived ) confinement
implied by the Marcusian view.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Dylan Bryan Dolman
> Richard Harter wrote:
> > I have this picture of a philosopher advancing a thesis in his youth
> > that he intends to refute in a later work. He spends his entire life
> > elaborating the thesis to be refuted and never quite gets around to
> > writing the refutation.
> >
> > On his death bed he refutes it in his last words with one brilliant
> > insightful sentence. Alas, he doesn't quite get to finish the
> > sentence.
>
> But the nurse, who used to be one of his star pupils until discovering
> her bent for nurturing behavior, realizes what he is trying to say and
> decides that she has an obligation to tell the world.
>
> Alas, she decides to do so on _Politically Incorrect_ and is
> thoroughly refuted by Gallagher (who smahes a pumpkin with a
> sledgehammer to illustrate his point). The professor's reputation
> as a scholar of the first rank is forever destroyed and the
> student, distraught at her failure, decides to commit suicide.
...by sticking a hollowed-out pumpkin on her head and lying in wait for
Gallagher. But instead a group of schoolchildren arrives in the pumpkin
patch and attempts to make a jack-o-lantern of her, thus saving her life
but unfortunately also blinding her with a kitchen knife before noticing
that their pumpkin has a lady sticking out of it. Dowered with second
sight as recompense for her earthly vision, she goes about the world
preaching the precise opposite of all her dreams of disaster, knowing that
she is certain to be disbelieved and hoping to guide straying humanity by
reverse psychology.
Alas, all her prophecies are delusory gifts of the devil, so that by
contradicting them she is preaching the truth without knowing it, thus
driving her contrarian public ever deeper into error. Civilization
collapses. After decades of ever pettier atrocities and genocides, the few
remaining bands of humanity gather together in small communal farms, where
peace and brotherhood reign. Into one of these the ancient seeress
stumbles one day, now vowed to silence. The townsfolk lead her to a seat
at the hearth and place before her a dish of their local specialty:
pumpkin mash. Unseeing, she raises a spoonful to her mouth.
Dylan
=dbd=
Puss in Boots
[...]
>> That's exactly Marcuse's perspective, it seems to me; when
>> he talks about "repressive tolerance," that's what he's
>> talking about. Still, Ambrose Bierce puts the notion best, and
>> much better than either of our Marxists. From the _Devil's
>> Dictionary_:
Lewis Mammel:
> That's an interesting comparison, but Bierce is expressing
> how we all chafe under the restrictions of idiotic rules and
> fashions, as we perceive them. This seems to me significantly
> different from the seamless ( and hence unperceived ) confinement
> implied by the Marcusian view.
I have a different perception. Bierce doesn't say that we
all live unhappily beneath the rule of idiocy -- his thought
is that idiots are "a large and powerful tribe" with a dominant
influence on human affairs. So there's alot of 'em, maybe a
majority. Marcuse, for his part, doesn't claim that repressive
tolerance is perfectly seamless -- just that it's thorough
enough to make its opponents an embattled and largely powerless
minority.
-- Moggin
Lewis Mammel
> The ad hominem fallacy, by the way, is vastly
> overrated as a fallacy. In a logically perfect
> world, it would be perfectly fallacious. However,
> we speak and write out of a web of assumptions---
> in classical rhetoric these were called "enthymemes"---
> and this web of assumptions is rooted in personal
> experience. For this reason, the *person* doing the
> speaking matters to our evaluation of the thing
> spoken. For this reason, classical rhetorical
> mauals recommend to a speaker as *relevant* to
> present his credentials at the beginning. For this
> reason, if Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and
> George Washington pledge their lives and sacred
> honour, it means something solemn to those who read
> their words. And for this reason, if Bill Clinton
> tells us he wants to build a bridge to the 21st century,
> we laugh his words in derision. The person, the man
> in "ad hominem", *does* matter to how we evaluate
> his argument and his speech.
Just as an aside, and a point of etymology, or rhetorical
terminolgy, but the man in "ad hominem" is the one to whom
the argument is being addressed, the audience - not the
opponent. When I say, "He doesn't know what he's talking about."
I am attempting to sway you by getting you to reject HIS
arguments on prejudicial grounds. It is an ad hominem appeal,
just as is "don't be a loser," or "you'll be rich". The
so-called "ad hominem attack" is a vulgar misconstrual of the
term, as I point out to Jorn Barger recently, and many times
in the past. You could look it up.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Noel Smith
>Friday, the 12th of March, 1999
[...]
>Noel writes:
> In this, a second response to a Morris
> article I responded to a day or so ago,
> I address an entirely different aspect
> of his post: his objection to my critique
> of original sources (Plato, Nietzsche and--to
> pass from the sublime to the ridiculous--Marcuse)
> by reference to secondary sources--to what scholars
> such as Popper, Bloom, Frenzel, Comte-Sponville,
> Kors & Silverglate, etc. have found contradictory or
> extreme or untenable or illiberal in them (an
> objection Weineck expressed more succinctly
> by ordering: "Read the book").
>
>I find this an interesting subject, and,
>in a sense, am probably going to be your
>most sympathetic reader around this point.
>Nevertheless, I think there is a distinction
>between using secondary sources for insight,
[...]
>and using secondary sources
>as the indisputable last word on the subject,
>no reference to the original text necessary, [...]
Not my position. As stated below, the critic may arouse interest in
what the original says by pointing to what may be found there; and
where what the critic says does not ring true, one is compelled to
check the original. For example, when I read the following in John
Murray Cuddihy's _The Ordeal of Civility_:
Humanity in the form of fraternity invariably appears
historically among persecuted peoples and enslaved groups;
This kind of humanity is the great privilege of pariah
peoples;... The privilege is dearly bought; it is often
accompanied by so radical a loss of the world ... that in
extreme cases, in which pariahdom has persisted for cen-
turies, we can speak of real worldlessness. And worldlessness,
alas, is always a form of barbarism.
In this as it were organically evolved humanity it is as if
under the pressure of persecution the persecuted have moved
so closely together that the interspace which we have called
world...has simply disappeared.
-Hannah, Arendt, "On Humanity in Dark Times"
--I collected and read a number of her works.
One reason I have not responded to implicit questions concerning how
much Plato or Nietzsche I have read is that, like questions concerning
my income, weight, sexual orientation, SAT scores or graduate degrees,
it is none of your damn business. That said, you might understand my
interest in secondary sources which deconstruct the received
opinion--the opinion of academic conformists such as yourself, Inman,
Weineck, moggin et. al.--is that as an undergraduate I minored in
philosophy (not, as I have said, that it is any of your business), was
fed the same guff you believe, and gradually I, unlike, apparently,
you, came to realize that something was amiss.
Like Nietzsche, I realize that something is wrong with the standard
opinions concerning things. Unlike you, it is clear to me that
Nietzsche's method of arriving at conclusions is hopelessly flawed
from end to end--from his denial of basic human obligation as a member
of society to his rejection of fact and reason.
Thus, the critics appeal to me because they unmask what academic
conventionalists such as you and the rest of the adherents of
Continental intellectual illiberalism have missed. Were Popper's
wholesale assault on "the spell of Plato" wrongly argued, he would
still have provoked me to realize what must be clear to anyone who
values evidential reasoning, that Plato's ontology and epistemology
are hopelessly flawed, and that the whole of his thought is
contaminated by his fundamental error, and by a corruption of thought
attendant on his ideological defense of slaveholding practices in
which he was complicit (correct me if Plato did *not* believe that a
slave has no reason, and women vary little of it--an example of
corrupt, aprioristic special pleading if there ever was one).
(The flaw in Plato's ontology--that the real is supernatural, and
can't be verified or falsified by observations, or by analysis of
cases--is that it is by definition pure theory, and as such the source
down the ages of the theorist's estrangement from reality.)
(The flaw in Plato's epistemology is that, according to his teachings,
we know reality because a privileged knower ((Bloom's revealing term))
who has the capability which ordinary people, and certainly the
despised slaves-and-women, do not have, of directly apprehending that
reality through the intuition, unmediated by the senses or by
experience. The "philosopher-king," having sole power to reveal
reality to the hoi polloi, must inherently become authoritarian. As I
have said elsewhere, your support of Plato and Nietzsche, where you
deny the clear and evident meaning of what they said, makes no sense
because it is not substantive, and leads me to conclude that the
reasons you give are not the reasons you have, and I conclude that the
real ground of your stubborn and ungrounded apologetics is that you
believe they had direct access to the highest things ((again, Bloom's
revealing term)), and that I, as an ordinary human who must challenge
them on the grounds of evidence and sense and reason, simply *cannot*
say anything which would have any bearing on the revealed truth they
bring.)
[I realize that the above sentence is a horror--like you, I am
critically short of time to revise and correct.]
>Noel says:
> Several points here. First, no one is
> going to contest the proposition that
> some scholarly analyses of source works
> may be unfair, biased, erroneous, or even
> deliberately misleading; or that they may
> be, as you imply, taking quoted selections
> out of context.
>Two points: First, besides all of the
>other reasons for the inadequacy of using
>secondary sources to try and *impeach* the
>primary source author of something, we also
>have to allow for the possibility that the
>the secondary author is brilliant, insightful,
>correct, etc., *but* only presents us with
>one interpretation. [....]
But like you, I once believed in the standard interpretation. Where we
differ is that I came to realize that something was rotten in Denmark,
and have seized on interpretations having greater intellectual
probity, precisely because I am less credulous and more skeptical than
you. It is significant that a whole cohort--the academic
left--essentially shares your opinion concerning Plato and Nietzsche,
that you are part of what must be a secure and comforting academic
tribalism or--to use a word you will hate--collectivism. I hold that
not to think independently is in a very real sense not to exist; and
certainly to be a slavish adherent of the conventional wisdom because
one is afraid to appear an outsider is a price too high to pay.
>The one I do not trust is you, Noel.
Ad hominem.
> Not because
>your motives are wrong (though I suspect your
>liberalism of being progressive and unabashedly
>corporatist---recognizing no limit to the power of
>government to be exercised for ordering society for
>"the public good", [...]
I am neither a corporatist nor a socialist, and if you were a more
perceptive analyst of your opponents you would realize this.
>The "one Jew more or
>less" is a classic case in point. In the mouth
>of an anti-Semite, it means something
>nakedly horrible. In Nietzsche's pen, it is an
>*imagination*---history or fiction, I'm not sure
>which to call it---of something Pontius Pilate
>would have thought. [...]
Read the book. Nietzsche expressed the above as part of an
interpretation in which he proclaimed that the one good line in the
New Testament is Pilate's response to Yeshua: "What is truth?" N.
imputed the above blatantly anti-semitic sentiment to Pilate with
unmistakable--indeed with "festive"--approval. If you really
understood and thought about N. you would realize that his thinking is
thoroughly hierarchical, (that Uebermensch thing, among others) about
who is superior, who inferior; that he was clearly eugenicist, that he
writes of the _racial_ contamination of blond Aryan thought with Xian
"slave morality," which he clearly states began first with "Judah."
Those who claim that N. was not anti-semitic are either being
disingenuous, or ignorant of N's writings, or lack the intellectual
perspicuity to comprehend what he wrote.
>Noel:
> The corrective to this is not difficult to
> understand: Offer a sound analysis showing
> where the cited critique is unsound; and show,
> by presenting the "fragments" in context, that
> the quoted excerpts were, as presented,
> misleading.
>No, Noel, the burden of proof is not
>on me. In the case of Nietzsche, I've read
>the text, I can see how out of context
>your quote really is. [...]
I just demolished this non-argument above. It is _your_
unsubstantiated claims which reveal ignorance of the hierarchical,
eugenicist, racialist tenor of Nietzsche's thought.
>But, nevertheless, it is crystal clear
>to this reader of Nietzsche at least that he ain't a
>proto-Nazi, that his attack on liberalism comes out of
>the issue of the nature of reason itself
As Popper says in _The Open Society and its Enemies_, the argument for
reason is not grounded in reason, and that therefore the commitment to
reasoned argument is a moral commitment.
> and the
>opposing claims of reason and psychology for
>priority,
Mixing apples and oranges. Reason is an indispensable (sp?) part of
the methodology for determining what is factually true (knowledge of
real physical systems, which Plato dismissed as necessarily mere
"opinion"). Psychology--if I choose to be generous and include it
among those things which inspire, which feed the spirit and make hope
possible--is deeply important. But to imagine that reason and
psychology make opposing claims is to fail to understand that they
belong to completely separate, radically incommensurable, conceptual
realms and universes of discourse. It is categorical mistakes of this
sort which invalidate N's claim to intellectual probity; and the fact
that Nietzscheans are blind to such fundamental, wholesale errors
suggests to me that impaired intellectual capacity is a pre-requisite
of the Nietzschean.
>and that the dismissal of Nietzsche as
>a simple immoralist is utterly inadequate.
1. Nietzsche proudly proclaimed that he was an immoralist.
2. His rejection of the moral commitment to reasoned argument
represented a betrayal--a _moral_ betrayal--of the intellectual ethic.
j...@my-dejanews.com
You're confusing Mike's point. Without reference to the original,
you have no means of judging whether the criticism "rings true" or not,
because you have no metric with which to evaluate whether the criticism
reflects the kind of interpretation you would develop from the original
-- even leaving out the question of whether your reading of the
original would be compelling.
Jeff Inman
Puss in Boots
[...]
> One reason I have not responded to implicit questions concerning how
> much Plato or Nietzsche I have read is that, like questions concerning
> my income, weight, sexual orientation, SAT scores or graduate degrees,
> it is none of your damn business.
There's not much of a question -- when you can't recognize
quates from a short essay you're trying to criticize, it's
pretty obvious you haven't read the thing. That's exactly what
happened when you attacked Marcuse. And when you assign the
closing passage of Barthes' _Mythologies_ to Foucault, that's a
strong indication you're talking thru your hat.
See, it's not about your background; not as far as I'm
concerned, anyhow. I'm not interested in your credentials; all
I care about is what you have to say. If you can talk
intelligently about, e.g., Nietzsche or Marcuse without reading
them, more power to you -- but that's a big challenge, and
you've proved you're not up to it.
That's why I keep suggesting you take the easy way out and
read the people you're trying to criticize. It's not a
requirement -- just good, practical advice. Think of it as the
lazy man's approach to understanding. You can try to deduce
what Nietzsche thought from what various neo-cons say about him,
or you can take a short-cut and read some of his books.
[...]
Noel to Mike:
> Thus, the critics appeal to me because they unmask what academic
> conventionalists such as you and the rest of the adherents of
> Continental intellectual illiberalism have missed.
You're claiming Mike Morris is an adherent of "Continental
intellectual illiberalism? _MIke_?
[...]
Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net>:
>> The "one Jew more or
>> less" is a classic case in point. In the mouth
>> of an anti-Semite, it means something
>> nakedly horrible. In Nietzsche's pen, it is an
>> *imagination*---history or fiction, I'm not sure
>> which to call it---of something Pontius Pilate
>> would have thought. [...]
Noel:
> Read the book. Nietzsche expressed the above as part of an
> interpretation in which he proclaimed that the one good line in the
> New Testament is Pilate's response to Yeshua: "What is truth?"
Right. Nietzsche calls "What is truth?" the only valuable
expression in the NT. He likes it because it takes an
interest in, y'know, truth: something that he finds lacking in
Christianity.
.
> N imputed the above blatantly anti-semitic sentiment to Pilate with
> unmistakable--indeed with "festive"--approval.
N is sympathetic to Pilate, the "_one_ solitary figure one
is obliged to respect" in the NT. And since "one Jew more or
less" is a thought that Nietzsche credits to Pilate, it's got a
specific meaning. The "one Jew" is somebody you may have
heard about: Jesus. Nietzsche thinks Christianity deserves as
much scorn and as little importance as Pilate gave Christ.
Here's the relevant part of the passage. N has been going
after the New Testament and the "first Christians" (not that
he likes the later Christians better than the early ones) -- he
wraps up:
Do I still have to add that in the entire New Testament
there is only _one_ solitary figure one is obliged to
respect? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take a Jewish
affair _seriously_ -- he cannot persuade himself to do
that. One Jew more or less -- what does it matter?... The
noble scorn of a Roman before whom an impudent misuse of
the word 'truth' was carried on has enriched the New
Testament with the only expression _which possesses value_
-- which is its criticism, its _annhililation_, even:
'What is truth?'...
(_The Anti-Christ_ 46)
[...]
> Those who claim that N. was not anti-semitic are either being
> disingenuous, or ignorant of N's writings, or lack the intellectual
> perspicuity to comprehend what he wrote.
Or they know Nietzsche condemned anti-semitism and praised
the Jewish people, both in the strongest possible terms --
they may also know that there's a distinction between criticism
of the Judeo-Christian tradition and anti-semitism.
Noel:
>> The corrective to this is not difficult to
>> understand: Offer a sound analysis showing
>> where the cited critique is unsound; and show,
>> by presenting the "fragments" in context, that
>> the quoted excerpts were, as presented,
>> misleading.
Done it twice now.
Mike:
> >No, Noel, the burden of proof is not
> >on me. In the case of Nietzsche, I've read
> >the text, I can see how out of context
> >your quote really is. [...]
Noel:
> I just demolished this non-argument above.
No, you didn't. Mike was right: you quoted "one Jew more
or less" completely out of context. I don't know if it was
ignorance, malice, or both, but that's what you did. Placed in
context it has a very different meaning, as I've showed.
[...]
> [Nietzsche's] rejection of the moral commitment to reasoned argument
> represented a betrayal--a _moral_ betrayal--of the intellectual ethic.
Nietzsche: coined "intellectual conscience."
Noel: needs one.
-- Moggin
Noel Smith
>noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith):
>[...]
Maybe I'll respond to your comments in future. Just thought I'd let
you know that, in your gleeful tracking of my errors, you may have
missed one that was looking you right in the face. In the article you
responded to was the following (omitted in your response):
Were Popper's wholesale assault on "the spell of Plato"
wrongly argued, he would still have provoked me to realize
what must be clear to anyone who values evidential reasoning,
that Plato's ontology and epistemology are hopelessly flawed,
and that the whole of his thought is contaminated by his
fundamental error, and by a corruption of thought attendant
on his ideological defense of slaveholding practices in which
he was complicit (correct me if Plato did *not* believe that
a slave has no reason, and women vary little of it--an
example of corrupt, aprioristic special pleading if there
ever was one).
The source of my above attribution to Plato, Vol. II of Popper's _The
Open Society and its Enemies_, was on loan at the time I wrote the
above. Here's what Popper actually wrote:
Aristotle's thought is entirely dominated by Plato's. [...]
He endorsed, and systematized, Plato's naturalistic theory
of slavery: 'Some men are by nature free, and others slaves;
and for the latter, slavery is fitting as well as just. . .
A man who is by nature not his own, but another's, is by
nature a slave. . . [...] The slave is totally devoid of
any faculty of reasoning', while free women have just
a very little of it.
So the quote is from Aristotle (the Poetics), Popper claiming that the
sentiments are Plato's. There is no doubt that Plato believed in the
reactionary theory of place: that the place of a slave is to slave,
just as the place of the natural rulers is to rule. ("Place" underlies
some of the responses to my criticism of Nietzsche in this forum: that
the place of someone who is not a "Nietzsche scholar" is to shut up
about him.)
And as long as I'm publishing retractions (or at least
reconsiderations)--I once told Gordon Fitch that I believed Aristotle
accepted slavery because slavery was part of the spirit of the times,
and the concept of human equality had not yet arisen. But clearly an
uneasy conscience underlies Aristotle's rationalization that slavery
is justified because slaves have a slave nature.
Moreover, according to Popper, "We owe to Aristotle's criticisms and
denunciations most of our knowledge of the Athenian movement against
slavery. By arguing against the fighters for freedom, he preserved
some of their utterances." Furthermore, among Socrates' generation
(Antisthenes, Lycophron, Democritus _et al._) were some who clearly
proposed that all men are created equal.
I believe it was Jeff Inman who asked if I wanted someone who endorsed
slavery (Aristotle) on my side. But the matter of intellectual
allegiances is not a war of cults of personality. Aristotle's core
intellectual concepts, such as entelechy, are concepts of change and
of the sort of "piecemeal" development and progress Popper praises.
His was the first major voice to oppose the absolutist, utopian,
totalitarian aspect of Plato's ontology and epistemology: Aristotle
rejected the Platonist dogma that the observable is not real and the
real is not observable. (Much as I value Popper's thought, he wrongly
promotes the impression that Aristotle was a somewhat unoriginal
imitator of Plato, rather than one of his first and most powerful
critics. As I note elsewhere, Aristotle so opposed Plato's teaching
that art was a copy at second remove of reality, that he was moved to
create the first esthetic theory, which accorded art its own
conceptual realm.)
>-- Moggin
noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith)
j...@my-dejanews.com
> Maybe I'll respond to your comments in future. Just thought I'd let
> you know that, in your gleeful tracking of my errors, you may have
> missed one that was looking you right in the face. In the article you
> responded to was the following (omitted in your response):
>
> Were Popper's wholesale assault on "the spell of Plato"
> wrongly argued, he would still have provoked me to realize
> what must be clear to anyone who values evidential reasoning,
> that Plato's ontology and epistemology are hopelessly flawed,
> and that the whole of his thought is contaminated by his
> fundamental error, and by a corruption of thought attendant
> on his ideological defense of slaveholding practices in which
> he was complicit (correct me if Plato did *not* believe that
> a slave has no reason, and women vary little of it--an
> example of corrupt, aprioristic special pleading if there
> ever was one).
>
> The source of my above attribution to Plato, Vol. II of Popper's _The
> Open Society and its Enemies_, was on loan at the time I wrote the
> above. Here's what Popper actually wrote:
>
> Aristotle's thought is entirely dominated by Plato's. [...]
> He endorsed, and systematized, Plato's naturalistic theory
> of slavery: 'Some men are by nature free, and others slaves;
> and for the latter, slavery is fitting as well as just. . .
> A man who is by nature not his own, but another's, is by
> nature a slave. . . [...] The slave is totally devoid of
> any faculty of reasoning', while free women have just
> a very little of it.
>
> So the quote is from Aristotle (the Poetics), Popper claiming that the
> sentiments are Plato's. There is no doubt that Plato believed in the
> reactionary theory of place: that the place of a slave is to slave,
> just as the place of the natural rulers is to rule. ("Place" underlies
> some of the responses to my criticism of Nietzsche in this forum: that
> the place of someone who is not a "Nietzsche scholar" is to shut up
> about him.)
The slave boy of the _Meno_ seems perfectly capable of reason. In
fact, the whole point of using him as an example seems to me be to
illustrate that the capacity for reason is universal, and can be found
where there has been no "cultural" training. Of course, an advocacy
of slavery in your opponent would not in itself qualify as an argument
against him, unless you had some logical grounds for rejecting slavery,
which I am fairly certain you don't. But the ethical problem clearly
bothers you too deeply to allow you the luxury of understanding the
philosophers you need to criticize. The concept of "slavery" in Plato,
or Nietzsche, for that matter, is beyond your ability to consider very
well. However, I don't think I have told you to shut up. I have merely
told you that I think you are a very poor reader, despite your ability to
cook up intricate sentences, and that your deep abiding hatred represents
a handicap in understanding the authors you criticize so fervently.
I assume that you hate your father.
> And as long as I'm publishing retractions (or at least
> reconsiderations)--I once told Gordon Fitch that I believed Aristotle
> accepted slavery because slavery was part of the spirit of the times,
> and the concept of human equality had not yet arisen. But clearly an
> uneasy conscience underlies Aristotle's rationalization that slavery
> is justified because slaves have a slave nature.
>
> Moreover, according to Popper, "We owe to Aristotle's criticisms and
> denunciations most of our knowledge of the Athenian movement against
> slavery. By arguing against the fighters for freedom, he preserved
> some of their utterances." Furthermore, among Socrates' generation
> (Antisthenes, Lycophron, Democritus _et al._) were some who clearly
> proposed that all men are created equal.
It is a lovely concept indeed. I wonder if it's true? Meanwhile,
I think you should count Socrates among its adherents, in some
ways, as indicated for example in the slave boy, whom he elevates,
and Antinus, whom he humiliates. Or could it be that he is ironic
somehow? There's the business in the _Republic_ where he expresses
an interesting idea about a natural tendency for pure democracy to
disintegrate, ultimately yeilding tyranny. Kind of reminds me of
some of the things in Tecqueville, or Nietzsche, for that matter;
interesting to think about, and valuable tools for insight.
> I believe it was Jeff Inman who asked if I wanted someone who endorsed
> slavery (Aristotle) on my side. But the matter of intellectual
> allegiances is not a war of cults of personality. Aristotle's core
> intellectual concepts, such as entelechy, are concepts of change and
> of the sort of "piecemeal" development and progress Popper praises.
He's also into dichotomies, which would no doubt appeal to a dogmatist
like you.
> His was the first major voice to oppose the absolutist, utopian,
> totalitarian aspect of Plato's ontology and epistemology: Aristotle
> rejected the Platonist dogma that the observable is not real and the
> real is not observable.
I'll bet that that Platonist dogma really must've made you mad.
And those philsopher king bastards! Who the hell do they think
they are, having a thoughtful moment in the garden while slaves
suffer in the fields! This alone should be enough to relieve
us from the burden of bothering with any more of that Plato crap.
> (Much as I value Popper's thought, he wrongly
> promotes the impression that Aristotle was a somewhat unoriginal
> imitator of Plato, rather than one of his first and most powerful
> critics. As I note elsewhere, Aristotle so opposed Plato's teaching
> that art was a copy at second remove of reality, that he was moved to
> create the first esthetic theory, which accorded art its own
> conceptual realm.)
I take it you agree with him that a story must start at the beginning
and end at the end?
David O'Bedlam
[...]
> ("Place" underlies some of the responses to my criticism of
> Nietzsche in this forum: that the place of someone who is not
> a "Nietzsche scholar" is to shut up about him.)
Maybe so from some people. I think, however, that there's nothing
more boring than a blowhard with "credentials". (But as one might
point out that _I'm_ a blowhard _without_ "credentials", one might
do well to avoid genuflecting before _my_ pixels either.)
Caveat lector.
TheDavid
--
"While there is no good reason to face the universe sober,
nevertheless, The Death Squids are coming."
T.H. Chance
Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
> In rec.arts.books j...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> : noel...@worldnet.att.net (Noel Smith) wrote [to Moggin]:
> [...]
> :>
> :> So the quote is from Aristotle (the Poetics), Popper claiming that the
> :> sentiments are Plato's. There is no doubt that Plato believed in the
> :> reactionary theory of place: that the place of a slave is to slave,
> :> just as the place of the natural rulers is to rule. ("Place" underlies
> :> some of the responses to my criticism of Nietzsche in this forum: that
> :> the place of someone who is not a "Nietzsche scholar" is to shut up
> :> about him.)
>
> : The slave boy of the _Meno_ seems perfectly capable of reason. In
> : fact, the whole point of using him as an example seems to me be to
> : illustrate that the capacity for reason is universal, and can be found
> : where there has been no "cultural" training.
>
> It's a bit tricky to use "reason" here since Meno's slave is meant to
> demonstrate that learning is remembrance and that all we can learn are the
> things we already know (whether this argument is meant to be taken
> seriously is, of course, a different question, and quite debated). What's
> interesting to me, right now, is that Meno's paradox crops up again in the
> geneticist nature/nurture debate where some hard-core biologists are
> arguing along the lines that the limits of our knowledge are indeed
> inscribed and determined from the beginning and that knowledge of anything
> else is impossible. If Noel actually read science and philosophy, he could
> reflect on this.
It is a bit tricky to use '"cultural" training', too. The slave boy knows,
that is, speaks Greek, the one thing Socrates requires before he can
conduct the demonstration. Does knowledge of a language give one
"cultural" training?
regards,
thc
T.H. Chance
Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
> :> : The slave boy of the _Meno_ seems perfectly capable of reason. In
> :> : fact, the whole point of using him as an example seems to me be to
> :> : illustrate that the capacity for reason is universal, and can be found
> :> : where there has been no "cultural" training.
> :>
> :> It's a bit tricky to use "reason" here since Meno's slave is meant to
> :> demonstrate that learning is remembrance and that all we can learn are the
> :> things we already know (whether this argument is meant to be taken
> :> seriously is, of course, a different question, and quite debated). What's
> :> interesting to me, right now, is that Meno's paradox crops up again in the
> :> geneticist nature/nurture debate where some hard-core biologists are
> :> arguing along the lines that the limits of our knowledge are indeed
> :> inscribed and determined from the beginning and that knowledge of anything
> :> else is impossible. If Noel actually read science and philosophy, he could
> :> reflect on this.
>
> : It is a bit tricky to use '"cultural" training', too. The slave boy knows,
> : that is, speaks Greek, the one thing Socrates requires before he can
> : conduct the demonstration. Does knowledge of a language give one
> : "cultural" training?
>
> I know, I always loved that little modification there. Highly suggestive.
> How do you read it?
I don't have any special reading of this line, Silke, save perhaps to note
that in this respect the slave boy differs from Mr. Smith.
Richard Crew
[a propos of Plato's _Meno_]
: It is a bit tricky to use '"cultural" training', too. The slave boy knows,
: that is, speaks Greek, the one thing Socrates requires before he can
: conduct the demonstration. Does knowledge of a language give one
: "cultural" training?
Obviously it does in one sense, since a language is, so to speak, an
artifact of a particular culture.
Nonetheless, we don't hesitate to translate the problem (and its solution)
that Socrates proposes to the boy -- to find a square whose size is twice
that of a given one -- into another language. So is the geometric issue
here independent of culture?
--Rich
--
Better to toss a stone at random, then a word.
-Porphyry