Don't ask a philosopher about the meaning of life:

"I rather doubt that life has a meaning. If I thought perhaps it did, and I wanted to find out what its meaning is, I don't imagine I'd ask someone whose credentials consist of a PhD in philosophy." - Jerry Fodor

The answer to philosophical problems are not in philosophical thought --

"The sickness of a time is cured by an alteration in the mode of life of human beings; and it was possible for sickness of philosophical problems to get cured only through a changed mode of thought, not through a medicine invented by an individual." - Wittgenstein

I think that Witt's reasoning is along the following lines.

Philosophical questions are never solved by individual philosophers proposing solutions. Philosophical problems simply tend to disappear, change, or are simply forgotten when for what-ever reason (epochal change, scientific development, historical movement) people change their mode of thinking. When this happens philosophical problems suddenly change, they are not solved. Basically, like so much of Witt.'s aphorism, this statement represents a tendency toward anti-philosophy.

Jerry Monaco

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Tags: anti-philosophy, gossip, philosophy, philosophy as gossip, quotes

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Anti-philosophy, Self-Contradiction, and Gossip	May. 27th, 2007 @ 02:06 pm

anti_philosophy

yofaceizscrumpy comments on the whole idea of the anti-philosophical project:

self -contradiction
yofaceizscrumpy
2006-10-15 08:57 pm
Sorry for interrupting you this evening, but it seems like your community is a walking contradiction.

As any sophistica can see from dictionary.com, "the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct" is the definition of philosophy. To be anti-philosophy is a totality that claims truth.

I kindly request that you disband your entire community this instant.

Anti-philosophy is simply an attitude or approach of skepticism to the possibility of most or all philosophical projects as philosophers themselves define their projects.

There is a simple reason to take an attitude of "anti-philosophy." All great philosophers, from the very beginning of the conversation that we call "philosophy", have been in some sense anti-philosophers, rejecting the very idea that any kind of philosophy is possible or that all previous "philosophy" was philosophy at all. Whether Plato or Rousseau or Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, or even such an infamia as Heidegger, (and many more) the first original steps in their philosophical work was to question whether philosophy, or at least systematic knowledge as assumed by philosophy, is possible at all. Is it possible to "know" (or describe or find a method to produce) the structure of "reality," the conditions of knowledge, the foundation of "being" or "thought," or the grand historical movements of "spirit" or the inherent logics of "Mind", in the way that philosophers claim, or are the very claims a form of self-deception?

Further, any advance in "knowledge" (science, theoretical thinking, mathematics) has represented both a break from philosophical rumination and a crisis of philosophy. Every scientific advance has represented a reconception of philosophy because previous philosophy is found to be limited and unfounded... And yet rarely do the professional advocates of the philosophical project look at itself with humility. The whole dung-shifting machine just rolls along as if all previous speculation had not been thrown onto the heap. All philosophy, like all religion, becomes an illustration of shifting into the "holes" left by science and literature, a "God" of the gaps approach... where there is no "science" it is there philosophy shall fill in the gaps. And finally any "advance" in "experiential understanding" has been pre-philosophical and has largely involved the kind of experience we get from the visual arts, poetry, drama, novels, etc. In fact, basically, what we call philosophy has nothing to do with wisdom or knowledge... Philosophical practice is basically a parasite on the arts, out of which the discipline of philosophy grew, during the historical period when arts separated from religious ritual... And philosophical practice is also parasitic on science, from which philosophy reacts by constantly redacting itself and reforming itself as commentary on scientific practice.

To the extent that you can say that an "attitude" or "approach" is philosophical, only to that extent can you say that "anti-philosophy" is a philosophy, and thus represents a contradiction, or perhaps a systematic paradox. But this in-itself represents the kind of imperialism of knowledge that philosophy has been accused of by every great philosopher who started his/her philosophical career as an anti-philosopher. Philosophy seeks to dominate all forms of knowledge, seeks to be a term that is everywhere and nowhere. In this way it is a lot like the word "language" or "ideology". Everything becomes a "language" and thus every aspect of mind or communicative experience is filed under the category of language, thus we get "the language of music" and "the language of architecture", etc., etc. The same occurs with the term ideology.... Among some "thinkers", even some anti-philosophers, all thought becomes an example of ideology and thought-itself is not possible without "ideology". You can parade out as many dictionary definitions of philosophy that you like to prove that an "anti-philosophical" attitude is self-contradictory, but it doesn't negate the fact that the definitions themselves are self-contradictory, assuming that all thought is philosophical and that philosophy is both everything and nothing.

This is the way that many use the term "philosophy". Philosophy is not only some kind of "systematic thought" obtaining to wisdom, knowledge, and understanding of the world, but also something that we "have" implicitly, simply because we think at all. Thus it is impossible to be an anti-philosopher because by definition all systematic thought of any sort is philosophical, and if the thought is not systematic, then the implications of thinking, is itself philosophical. Thus the reasoning goes, "To think 'anti-philosophically' is an example of philosophical thinking." But this is like the Cretan who says all "Cretans are liars", the very fact of making the statement I am "anti-philosophical" is either paradox or contradiction. Well the former rather than the latter. Yet the possibility exists that it is neither. It is simply a double-bind statement created by the systematic gossip of philosophers themselves, those engaged in the intellectual circulation of gossip to the extent that they have imposed a dictionary definition that is totalistic and intellectually imperialistic. But let me suggest that like most double bind situations, this situation was produced by a category mistake or a problem of logical typing. It is possible to be "anti-thinking" in certain situations. If I am a baseball batter, I am not thinking at every moment about how to swing the bat. If my baseball coach tells me that you have to get "beyond thought" and "just swing" wjem you are in the batter's box, I know that he is saying that "conscious" thinking is harmful to my batting average in this situation. But to define his "anti-thinking" statement as also a "thought" and thus self-contradictory is a form of sophistry, the same kind of sophistry that practically all philosophers engage in at one time or another. They, the self-described lovers of wisdom, the philosophers, have propounded their definitions through intellectual gossip, so that you are a philosopher whether you know it or not and no matter what you do or think getting beyond philosophy is impossible.

But lets be real. A "Philosopher" is a professional category in our modern society. Propounding philosophy is what those rarefied "professionals" do. But before "philosophy" was a profession it was a denotation of a systematic orientation to life that was "positioned" outside of organized (western) religion. Philosophers were not so much anti-religious as un-religious. Philosophy had an historical beginning and it has historical limitations. It was born when literature began to separate itself from religion and it began to attenuate when science began to separate itself from both religion and philosophy. Philosophy as an historical practice has always shaded into literature and myth on one side and science and mathematics on the other. Philosophy is not "strictly" bounded or limited by these other experiential practices and ways of producing understanding, but philosophical practitioners have always ignored the fact that they are simply continuers of these other projects. At its best philosophical practice provides abstraction and meta-comment on literature and science. At its worse philosophical practioners pimp off of literature and science while at the same time pretending to dominate both of those practices and proclaiming the originality of their discipline. An anti-philosophical point-of-view is simply a point-of-view that recognizes the historical limitations of philosophy and hopes for the further attenuation of philosophy in the future. But let me emphasize, that It is only the arrogant imperialism of some philosophers that necessitate anti-philosophy. To the extent that any other field -- religion or even physics or biology -- exhibits this sort of arrogant yearning to dominate other fields, then they too should be called to task.

Then what is left of philosophy? Mostly gossip. The true subject of philosophy has always been gossip in one form or another. It is gossip taken to a higher level -- the gossip of complex society commenting on the fact that face-to-face society, where gossip truly matters, is no longer possible. Philosophy is essentially meta-gossip, on the form and function of complex structures of growing human society.

There is no "contradiction" in being an anti-philosophy philosopher: if you believe that philosophy is parasitic meta-gossip, then your function is to reveal how philosophy works as a form of meta-gossip. Yet we assume that this practice of critique of philosophy that I am calling "anti-philosophy", is also a form of meta-gossip. The snake eats its tail.

Jerry Monaco
New York City
27 May 2007
(reedited 28 May 2007)

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Tags: anti-philosophy, anti-theory, atheism, chomsky, common sense, creativity, fiction, folk psychology, gossip, ideology, limitationism, limits of knowledge, methodological naturalism, philosophy, philosophy as gossip, superstition

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Wittgenstein's 'cancerous growth': An Incident in the Philosophy of Mathematics:	Mar. 8th, 2006 @ 11:08 am

Wittgenstein's Fright at Cultish Mathematicians:
An Incident in the History of the Philosophy of Mathematics or
What did Wittgenstein mean by Cantor's theories being a "cancerous growth" on mathematics?

A question asked;

When commenting on Cantor's ideas of uncountable sets and different levels of infinity, Wittgenstein called it a "cancerous growth on the body of mathematics". Cantor's (and others such as Dedekind) ideas have since provided the basis for much of the development of mathematics thereafter. What could have led Wittgenstein to make such a remark? What did he mean by it?

The hard part in answering this question is trying to explain the pure mathematics in everyday language so that a common reader will know what was at issue between Wittgenstein and those, such as Bertrand Russell, who thought that Cantor, Weirstrass and Dedekind provided a solution to metaphysical problems of the foundations of mathematics. If I get the basic statement of the background wrong please correct me. Still I think it is necessary to state the problem in everyday language because one must have a clear view of how much Cantor's discovery went against common sense. If the reader can understand this she will also be able to understand why so many philosophers and mathematicians thought that Cantor's theories of the infinite did not say anything that made sense. But more important for this note the reader will be able to see how Wittgenstein's view differed from the other condemnations of Cantor's line of thinking.

Cantor considered the problems of infinite sets. The common logic since Aristotle had been that the infinite was not actual but only potential.. But against common logic Cantor showed that there are sets larger than the infinite sets of natural numbers. He showed specifically that no infinite set could have as many elements as all possible subsets of that infinite set. This led to a revolution in how we conceived of set theory and of the infinite. The infinite could no longer be considered an anomaly. In other words their were different "kinds" of infinite sets. (Oh mathematicians forgive my simplicity!) What Cantor was able to show was that infinity was "actual" not just an unimaginably large number, not just "potential". He showed there are infintie sets that are larger than other sets that are also infinite. The best example is the set of all natural numbers versus the set of all irrational numbers. Both sets are infinite sets. But the set of all irrational numbers is "larger," or contains more members, than the set of all natural numbers. (Forgive me. I have merely stated the same notion in a number of ways while avoiding technical language. I did this in the hopes that non-mathematical readers will get my drift. Possibly I'm just furthering your confusion. Also for those of you who may belong to the school of mathematical realists forgive me for stating all of this as if it were just another kind of reality.)

When a mathematician comes to such conclusions philosophers sneeze. Why? Because to decide that the infinite set of irrational numbers is larger than the infinite set of natural numbers is to indirectly decide questions posed at the origins of Aristotle's metaphysics, i.e. the metaphysical status of the infinite. Philosophers of Mathematics recognized this if no one else did. Russell accepted the mathematics but spent much time trying to ground the insight into his own formal logic.

Wittgenstein rejected Cantor but he was not the only one.. Ponicare said, "There is no actual infinity; Cantorians forgot that and fell into contradictions. Later generations will regard Mengenlehre as a disease from which one has recovered " Brouwer said that: Cantor's theory was "a pathological incident in the history of mathematics from which future generations will be horrified." Another quote in my notebook is from Wittgenstein. "Cantor's argument has no deductive content at all.' Yet I would distinguish this reaction from Ponicare and Brouwer. I take Wittgenstein to mean that he would not argue with the mathematics but would just proclaim it all irrelevant to any philosophical or logical view.

I think most of these reactions were simply a matter of an inability to reconceive ancient notions. But many mathematicians seized on Cantor's theory. Some philosophers were horrified. It didn't seem gentlemanly that these theories were being used as solutions to ancient problems philosophy. Also, the mathematicians who ceased on Cantor's theories treated them as if they were the second coming of the Pythagorean theorem or a new discovery of Pi. Cantor's theories made much of what was said previously in the philosophy of mathematics hard to justify. There were philosophers who were simply exasperated. Why don't mathematicians stop this nonsense, leave us alone, and get back to their equations? What I wonder is, if there were many mathematicians with a philosophical bent who were discouraged by the narrowness of the philosophers. This is an historical determination that is hard to make. No one can ever know what was lost by way of dogmatism.

Wittgenstein was one of those who looked at all of this as an attempt to establish a New Pythagorean Cult around pure mathematics and formal logic. But even though I reject his view I think it should be fully understood. At base Wittgenstein had interesting reasons, that I think can't be easily countered, unless one is a thorrough going rationalist or believes in a pragmatic realism that states in the long run we just work and see what works. (I am somewhere within those choices.)

Wittgenstein's view of mathematics was unique and I doubt one could find more than two people who would have agreed with him in 1932. But I don't think he cared much about who agreed with him, except for Turing. When he was giving a course on these subjects it seems that the only person he cared to 'make see' his point of view was Turing, who would argue with W all the way. Wittgenstein thought that "belief" in mathematics was a kind of religion among intellectuals. He would throw out what must have seemed like Delphic statements at the time such as:

"There is no religious denomination in which the misuse of metaphysical expressions has been responsible for so much sin as it has in mathematics."

"I shall try again and again to show that what is called a mathematical discovery had much better be called a mathematical invention."

The quote about "cancerous growth" is not referring directly to Cantor but rather to Russell's discussion of Cantor, Weirstrass and Dedekind.. Russell believed that pure mathematics had laid the foundations which could ground mathematics in formal logic. For Wittgenstein, these mathematicians' solutions to problems of the infinitesimal, the infinite and continuity and Russell's acceptance of these solutions as great achievements of mathematical logic had "deformed the thinking of mathematicians and philosophers." But Wittgenstein's position was not the same as other philosophers and mathematicians who criticized Cantor, et. al. He did not question the mathematics of the solutions or criticize their premises, he questioned whether these solutions were solutions to mathematical problems at all. More precisely he re-categorized the solutions to another context outside of mathematics and tried to demonstrate that the new context where these solutions must be discussed could be either accepted or rejected without effecting mathematics or logic at all.

Wittgenstein's reference to the 'cancerous growth' on mathematics encapsulates two related notions: In his view mathematicians had grafted onto mathematics the following: (1) the idea that mathematics somehow gave answers to what Wittgenstein believed were metaphysical questions and (2) the idea that when doing certain kinds of 'pure mathematics' what you were doing had some connection to that other kind of game called 'formal logic.'

It was these metaphysical 'answers' and the development of a formal logic that were the 'cancerous growth'. Cantor (and the way others developed Cantor) was just an example of this 'cancerous growth.' To the extent that I understand the issues here I think that Wittgenstein was being dogmatic. To the extent that I understand W'ittgenstein's concern I think he was trying to get the best mathematicians (mainly Turing, who he much admired) to see how both mathematics and formal logic had no real 'foundation' but could be restated in ways that were not 'elegant'. These 'non-elegant' restatements would be equally 'true' in that they would come to the same conclusion without flaws but would seem absurd. I think Wittgenstein was saying that sometimes the elegance of the solution tricks us into accepting it as fundamental or correct.

If I remember, correctly some of what Wittgenstein wrote in his notebooks on these subjects was recently published (4 years ago?). It seems to me that much of Wittgenstein's rhetoric seems to come from the fact that he simply could not get Turing to see that his (Wittgenstein's) picture of mathematics was one possible view of the cathedral. He just thought that all mathematicians were misled on the "reality" of Cantor's proofs and then compounded it all by developing false notions about proclaiming that here - at last -- was the foundation of mathematics.

Of course I may be too hard on Wittgenstein here. There was something in his whole notion about how the "game" of mathematics should be played in order to make sense in the world that also led him to reject Godel's theorem. Who knows maybe in the end we will find that the way Wittgenstein viewed the "game" of mathematics was a sort of anti-foundational foundationalism. I trust I am being appropriately obscure!

Again these are very complicated questions and unfortunately unlike during the 80 years between 1860 and 1940 we don't seem to have great mathematicians who are interesting philosophers and great philosophers who are good mathematicians. The other possibility is that I don't know what I am talking about. It has been a long time since I studied these topics, a long time since those courses where very smart and inarticulate professors tried to explain to me (a very dumb but articulate student) the elegance of pure math. At the time I agreed with Wittgenstein on at least one point. The elegance seemed purely imaginary.

Jerry Monaco
New York City
9 March 2006 (originally written - 5 Feb 2005)
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Tags: anti-theory, bertrand russell, limitationism, limits of knowledge, paradox, philosophy, philosophy as gossip, wittgenstein

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The Break Between Sartre and Camus: Gossip, Invective, and the Meaning of History	Dec. 18th, 2005 @ 12:53 pm

A young friend who is writing a paper on existentiallism asked me to explain the Sartre and Camus break-up to her. So I did. This is material that has been covered so often that I don't know if I have offered anything knew. Never-the-less I decided to post it here for those who might be interested. As an aside, it might be interesting to write an essay taking off from this about the whole notion of "choosing" with "in" history. This idea about history seems to me especially religious... as if history was a kind of god.

The Break Between Sartre and Camus: Gossip, Invective, and the Meaning of History. : A Question from a Young Friend

Your question: "Why did Sartre and Camus argue and split (or, as you put it. "have a falling out")?"

Someday I would like to write an essay about intellectual fame and literary gossip and its meaning for philosophical issues... I think the "true meaning" of the "split" between Sartre and Camus, tells us more about the subject of the "literary star system" and the "ghost of gossip" that haunts every petty bourgeois intellectual enterprise than it tells us about the important historical issues behind the parting of ways . But some other time.

Basically the feud between Sartre and Camus was about each individual's relation to resistance and violence, history and action. Sartre and Camus argued over some of the following issues -- political commitment, the nature of history, the relation of the "writer" to the struggles of the oppressed, the nature of violence and terrorism, the role of the individual, etc. All of this was in the context of the growing anti-colonial movements, especially movements against French Imperialism in Africa and Indochina and the postwar influence of Stalinism over the European working class and these same anti-colonialist movements. Sartre's emphasis was on opposing oppression in France and opposing French imperialism. Camus' emphasis was on opposing the tyranny of Stalinism and similar totalitarian tyrannies and would not support an anti-imperialist movement that would simply lead to another form of oppression. For Sartre, Camus' moral position provided backhanded political support for imperial oppression. For Camus, Sartre's political position provided moral cover for Stalinist domination. From this distance we can see that they were both correct and both fundamentally confused.

These I believe are the important issues in a nutshell. Readers can stop here if they feel no need to learn more about the interesting gossip or the entangled history.

Like all else in the literary world the break between Sartre and Camus began as a feud over a bad book review, the book we know in English as Albert Camus' "The Rebel." In 1951 Camus published "L'Homme revolte". In 1952, soon after the publication, France was deep within one of its periodic political crises, involving Indochina, Algeria and national strikes. In the mean time the only writers with moral credit among the French working and middle classes were the intellectuals who had in one way or another participated in the fight against the Nazis. In this respect Sartre and Camus were the pre-eminent literary stars of the post-war era. They were often paired together as representing a style of revolt among the rising young intellectuals. The radical youth of the era grabbed at existentialism as representing their moral disgust at the hypocrisy of a bourgeoisie that so easily collaborated with Nazi occupation and representing their need for freedom of thought against the stultification of a mechanical Marxism as represented by the PCF.

It was in this situation that Francois Jensen wrote a scathing review of Camus' book in Sartre's journal "Les Temps Moderns." Camus in response wrote to Sartre accusing him of making a personal attack in order to gain political points with his leftist friends. Sartre wrote back accusing Camus of betraying the cause of the oppressed in order to advance his career as the popular writer of petty bourgeois angst. Well, all of this is the usual literary gossip, and the Parisian literary culture can be especially vicious, probably because French "intellectuals" are not only "writers," "philosophers," and "artists" but are also caught in the frenzy of fame that elevates the writer to the equivalent of a rock star. It's hard to imagine now but "Paris Intellectual Culture" once held an analogous place in French Society that "Hollywood Star Culture" holds in the U.S. This meant that the friendship between Sartre and Camus was broken in public and the events were played out in the newspapers and broadcast from the lecture halls, in a way that is hard to imagine for a present day American. It would be as if some imagined feud between Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish were to be covered by the New York Times, the Daily News, and the Fox News channel. More than anything else this magnified the bitterness of the break. It also tended to obscure the issues behind the break, then and now.

Beneath the posturing, gossip, and frenzy of fame there were actually a few serious philosophical and political questions. And as far as those are concerned it is not easy to say who was more wrong-headed Camus or Sartre. In current intellectual culture, with its automatic bourgeois self-satisfaction (which parades as democratic righteousness while obliterating democracy everywhere) it is usually Camus who is given the last word. Many U.S. writers today (especially those around the oddly jesuitical "New Republic" magazine) would turn him into Saint Camus. Yet when I was coming to awareness intellectually in the 1970s, at a time when U.S. atrocities in the Vietnam war were still obvious to U.S. intellectuals, Sartre was looked upon as the model of the committed intellectual and Camus was considered a naive, if unwitting apologist for imperialism. Much of this is simply the clouded sensorium that is the politics of literary reputation and has more to do with our current ideological battles than with history or moral principle. The issues behind the rise and fall of literary reputation are interesting, but not important for this particular post.

To understand the historical issues that give the little literary feud between Sartre and Camus some historical significance it is necessary to understand what most left-leaning French intellectuals understood in the postwar years. They all knew that the French "bourgeoisie" had quickly given in to the Fascists, and collaborated with German occupation. Most believed this was because the bourgeoisie feared the communists more than the fascists. They all believed that in the countries occupied by the Germans it was the communists and the socialists who organized the underground resistance to the Fascists. In short the Stalinist Communist parties emerged from World War II with moral credit for their resistance to the Nazis and the ruling classes of France and Italy were largely discredited. For independent intellectuals, such as Sartre and Camus, who opposed the Nazi occupation with varying degrees of risk to their own lives, the significant question was, what attitude should be taken to the PCF, the French Communist Party. The best known of this group of independent intellectuals, beside Camus and Sartre, were Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Raymond Aron. But there were others who would make their reputations much later such as Cornelius Castoriadis and the intellectuals around a little known but very interesting group called "Socialisme ou Barberie". I mention this group because it was one of the few left intellectual formations that offered commentary on these issues that more than holds up today.

The first break between Camus and Raymond Aron on one side and Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on the other took place over how to characterize the Stalinist party and what attitude to take toward the newly reconstructing "bourgeois" parties. Basically, Sartre believed (at least up until 1956 and the Hungarian Workers Rebellion against the Stalinist Communist Party) that the Communists were an oppressive party but were the only game going and represented the interests of the oppressed. Camus believed that all political parties were basically oppressive and that the leaders of these parties cynically claimed to represent the interests of the oppressed in order to become oppressors themselves. (I am highly oversimplifying.)

But being writers and intellectuals who were also French, Sartre and Camus were bound to create a theory of their disagreement that would bring it back to fundamental philosophical differences with world historical import.

For Camus, individual rebellion, the ability of the individual to say "No" to the oppressive regime was the highest value. (I suppose one could make Antigone the great patron saint of this attitude.) But the history of the previous 200 years seemed to Camus to call into question the very basis of "rebellion" as a collective act of liberation -- of revolution. Collective rebellion, would simply result in organized murder and, therefore, even though the individual "Rebel" should be honored for his act of resistance -- that act of resistance being the basis for asserting human dignity -- revolution itself would fail to constitute justice. For Camus, all collective action could only constitute more injustice. If Camus was willing to take collective action against the Nazis it was only because Nazi injustice was all invasive and total. This meant that any kind of rebellion at all was a Pascallian wager that had to be accepted. In fact for Camus, the Nazis proved his point about the futility of collective rebellion, since the Nazis were simply one more example of that futility. All revolution led to greater terror, even when it was a reaction to the terror of the status quo.

Camus' solution to this "paradox" between individual rebellion, which establishes the basis for human dignity, and collective rebellion, which creates the basis for increasing repression, was the solution Sartre regarded as typical of the petty-bourgeois writer. Camus believed that one should essentially "privatize" rebellion, make rebellion into a moral standard of ones own life that could be expressed in the ethics of one's art. Rebellion in Camus' view could not establish a world of justice, but when the rebellion of the individual is turned into the directed energy of human art, it can create a universe of meaning.

Sartre believed that the only way to resist oppression was to make a moral choice. So far he agreed with Camus. Sartre also believed that collective rebellion would inevitably lead to violence. But far from shrinking from this violence Sartre tended to think that collective violence was one of the motors of history and the only choice to make was on which side of history the individual would choose to fight. For Sartre and Camus the choice was moral, as well as political. But for Sartre the choice of rebellion was also the choice of history. It sounded to Sartre like a betrayal of the values of the Resistance to Nazi occupation to say that collective rebellion only leads to more violence. Later it would sound like a betrayal of the liberation movement of the anti-French Algerians, to say to them that they should not rebel collectively. For Sartre it was merely a choice between supporting the violence and terrorism of the Algerian rebels against the French oppressors or supporting the violence and atrocities of the French colonialists against the Algerian people. To say that one should retreat into one's own art was simply to make a choice by default, it was to engage in an act of bad faith by pretending not to choose. For Sartre personal retreat into art was merely another way of supporting the violence of the status quo.

If one remembers that, at this time (1952), France was actively trying to recover its empire in Indochina and Africa, and that Sartre was actively opposing French colonialism, whereas Camus believed that the anti-colonialists had no "moral legitimacy", then one can get a sense of what the feud was "really" about from Sartre's point of view. If one remembers that Sartre was trying to "existentialize" Marxism and therefore not offering very acute criticism of the "political acts" of the Stalinists, then one can get a sense of what the feud was "really" about from Camus' point of view. For both writers the basic principle was "how" to oppose oppression. For Camus "collective resistance" to oppression only leads to more oppression. For Sartre Camus' "quietism" could only lead to the triumph of the oppressors. Camus believed that Sartre had become an ideologue giving cover to Stalinist domination, while he, Camus, was the advocate of individual human dignity. Sartre believed, that Camus was an apologist for French Imperialism, while he, Sartre was simply choosing to be "in" history and Camus was choosing in "bad faith. "

The question of who was "correct" in this argument is not the correct question. The question is how can we come to an historical understanding of the moral issues presented by Camus and how can we come to a moral understanding of the historical issues presented by Sartre. In many ways, in 1952, each represented the missing center in each other's thought. Camus' refusal to see that any fight for the oppressed could be meaningful, and Sartre's refusal to see that his uncritical support of the "resistance" of the oppressed could lead to a glorification of violence, seems to me to dance around the same basic absence in the world view of each philosopher.

-------------
Quotes from Sartre and Camus:
I offer below a few enjoyable quotes from Sartre's "Reply to Camus", which in French reads with the voyeuristic thrill of observing a distant intimacy, like hearing your best friends breaking up in the next room. Sartre constantly addresses Camus as "you, you, you,..." as if it were his version of "J'Accuse." These quotes are "fun" and the reader will get a good flavor of Sartre's side of the argument.

Sartre's "Reply to Albert Camus" is a polemic worth reading if only for its rhetoric of energizing invective.

Sartre tells us that Camus is claiming to be tired of the fight. Sartre replies:

"[I]f I were tired it seems to me that I would feel some shame in saying so There are so many who are wearier. If we are tired, Camus, then let us rest, since we have the means to do so. But let us not hope to shake the world by having it examine our fatigue."

"[T]he only way of helping the enslaved out there is to take sides with those who are here."

Sartre speaks of Camus' relation to history and to Camus secondary relation to his own personality "outside of history", as if Sartre could perform an existential psychoanalysis on Camus, in a way he would later write about Baudelaire, Jean Genet, and Flaubert.

"Your personality, alive and authentic as long as it was nourished by the event, became a mirage. In 1944, it was the future. In 1952, it is the past, and what seems to you the most intolerable injustice, is that all this is inflicted upon you from the outside, and without your having changed. ... Only memories are left for you, and a language which grows more and more abstract. Only half of you lives among us, and you are tempted to withdraw from us altogether, to retreat into some solitude where you can again find the drama which should have been that of man, and which is not even your own any more...."

Sartre continues:

"Just like the little girl who tries the water with her toe, while asking, "Is it hot?" you view history with distrust, you dabble a toe which you pull out very quickly and you ask, "Has it a meaning?" ... And I suppose that if I believed, with you, that History is a pool of filth and blood, I would do as you and look twice before diving in. But suppose that I am in it already, suppose that, from my point of view, even your sulking is proof of your historicity. Suppose one were to reply to you, like Marx,: "History does nothing... It is real and living man who does everything. History is only the activity of man pursuing his own ends.... It is only within historical action that the understanding of history is given. Does history have a meaning? Has it an objective? For me, these are questions which have no meaning. Because History, apart from the man who makes it, is only an abstract and static concept, of which it can neither be said that it has an objective, nor that it has not. And the problem is not to know its objective but to give it one."

With this invective, Sartre could carry the reader with him. What is not remembered about Sartre is that he was one of the great polemicists of our time and wrote best when he was personally angry. Thus the young intellectuals of the time were more likely to read Sartre's side of this argument rather than Camus' side. It was only later, when reacting against Sartre's supposed "communism," his commitment to fighting for the oppressed even if the oppressed used violence, that Camus' clear eyed anti-Stalinism was used as a bludgeon against Sartre's wrestle with the French Communist Party. Sartre could be naive. He could cheer any and all anti-colonial movements on the one hand and cheer Israel as an exemplar of overcoming oppression on the other. But simple ignorance of the history of the time usually prevents most people from understanding the "argument" between Sartre and Camus.

In the end, when Camus died, Sartre showed his grudging, and admiring respect for Camus. The following is a quote from the obituary Sartre wrote for Camus:

"He [Camus] represented in this century, and against History, the present heir of that long line of moralists whose works perhaps constitute what is most original in French letters. His stubborn humanism, narrow and pure, austere and sensual, waged a dubious battle against events of these times. But inversely, through the obstinacy of his refusals, he reaffirmed the existence of moral fact within the heart of our era and against the Machiavellians, against the golden calf of realism."

Some quotes from Albert Camus

"By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more."

"A free press can of course be good or bad, but most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad"

"The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily."

"A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world."

"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."

"Stupidity has a knack of getting its way."

Jerry Monaco
New York City
19 December 2005

This post has been carnivalized! Check out the Philosophy Carnival @ Rad Geek - Philosophy Carvival #24. He reviews the posts thoroughly. I nominate Rad Geek as the best carnival blurb writer!

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Academic Reproduction of Hierarchy: Continental & Anglo-American Philosophy; Politics of Division	Mar. 17th, 2005 @ 09:03 am

A question asked at real_philosophy by fortunate_son
There was a question posed about analytical and continental philosophy and someone asked "does it have to be either or?". I found this funny because in the philosophy club that we have at my school, we were discussing the similarities and differences as well as pros and cons between the two. However, I didn't think about the either/or question until now. So before I go into what I think, what does everyone else think? Can you have your cake and eat it too? Can you do both continental and analytic philosophy

I would like to point you to two specific books. The first is by Gregory McCulloch who wrote a book explaining Sartre's early phenomenological philosophy in terms of analytic philosophy. It is a book that throws light on the notions of phenomenology and the notions of analytic philosophy, showing how they can 'understand' each other and how they can each compliment each other, perhaps showing the weaknesses in each 'world view.' The book is Using Sartre: An Analytical Introduction to Early Sartrean Themes by Gregory McCulloch and is well worth looking at as an answer to your question. The second book is by Arthur C. Danto and is called Nietzsche as Philosopher. Among other things, this book argues, that Nietzsche can be interpreted as an original analytic thinker in his attempts to understand 'meaning' and 'language'. Danto points out that many of Nietzsche's notion on language prefigure Wittgenstein and Austin. At some future point I intend to give detailed reviews of both these books.

I always thought that the division between 'continental' and analytic philosophy was a product of academic positioning and the reproduction of hierarchy within university 'departments.' I also think that insisting upon these divisions within philosophy is a little like insisting that you can't be a mathematician and a poet at the same time. Of course you can. The hard question in this case would be is there a poetics of mathematics? (We do know that there is a sort of mathematics of poetry as there is a sort of mathematics of music.) Of course nobody would insist that mathematicians and poets exist in the same academic department. But also nobody would insist that those who study romanitic poetry should reside in separate departments from those who study metaphysical poetry. Unfortunately this is the situation with many philosophy departments.

In many old U.S. philosophy departments if one wanted to do 'phenomenology' one could only do work in the humanities department or in a divinity school connected to the university. If one wanted to do analytic philosophy one could go to select schools whose philosophy departments mostly specialized in analytic philosophy or if one wanted to study pragmatism or if your philosophy derived from Kantian notions then you would have to select a certain university's philosophy department where those particular philosophies were studied. Most of this is simply a matter of the politics of academic hierarchy and has nothing to do with 'learning' or 'creativity' or contributing new ideas. The fact is that there are very few standards outside of science and mathematics with which to judge academic work. Thus the standards we use in areas such as literature and philosophy are either absurdly quantitative (the "publish or perish" standard, the "citation-count" standard) or completely a matter of personal relations, connections, or the circulation of good and bad 'gossip', especially such notions as 'fame,' 'celebration,' and 'renown.' Thus professors within academic departments must try to reproduce themselves and their ideas in order to make their way up the academic hierarchy. The ideal here is to create a graduate student who will promote and extend your own ideas giving you as much credit as possible. From the graduate student's point of view the ideal is to win over her advisor or other professors without becoming a clone of anyone of those professors. The tug of war in such cases tends to produce, within the humanities, certain well defined 'schools', 'departments', and world-views that look completely artificial to those of us outside the territorial fights that have produced these schools. Often those schools are 'defined' or recognized by such notions as 'style' of thought or collegiality that are purely 'cultural' and not at all philosophical. Of course these are all only general tendencies that are structured into the university system in much the same way that 'rate of profit' is structured into the corporate system. Each individual will have his or her own more or less alienated experience of these tendencies.

One may object that this answer to your question is going off onto a personal theme that is not what your question is about. I accept that. But my answer to your question is, "Yes, it would be very worth while and easy to combine many of the themes of 'analytical philosophy' and 'phenomenology' (just to name the main contenders in the 'continental' and 'Anglo-American' split)." The immediate question is then, why does the split exist in the first place and why was the split so obvious in the United States through most of the 1970's -1990's? The split was obvious in the fact that practically all 'continental philosophy' was done outside of philosophy departments through most of the 80's. This was harmful to philosophy in general because many themes of cross fertilization were missed. It was harmful to the literature departments in particular where continental philosophy found refuge because it led to a decline in the actual appreciation of good literature and the rise of impossible literary 'theories.' Yet, in spite of the intellectual harm the split continued for a long period of time. Why? A lot of the explanation has to do with history and the two events of European nation-state sponsored mass slaughter that we call World Wars One and Two. But I think the other explanation has to do with the politics of philosophical gossip and hierarchy that I mention here.

One may also object that my example of a mathematician who is also a poet is not an apt analogy. A rigorous analytic philosopher may think that the best analogy would be between an astrophysicist and an astrologer because these two fields are mutually exclusive. A good phenomenologist may think that a better analogy is between a physicist who only studies one small aspect of electro-magnetism all his life and a physicist who studies among other things cosmology and the origins and basis of the universe. I think that both analogies would be wrong and mine is the more correct one. The fact is that the phenomenologist is usually only writing about things that we can only speculate about and he is writing almost in the style of a novelist. To the extent that my representative phenomenologist plays fast and loose with history or ignores the latest discoveries in science that may refute his speculations then the phenomenologist is acting in the way of an astrologer, but other wise he may provide insight that is a bit more than intuitive. On the other hand it is simply untrue that 'anglo-american' philosophy in general and analytical philosophy in particular is very narrow and does not deal with everyday experience. What is the base in the mutual misperceptions between the Anglo-American philosophers and the continentals is actually a misconception of the range of philosophy. It has only been very recently that philosophy has separated from science on one hand and literature on the other. In fact philosophy must be the blend between the two and sometimes the dividing line between the two. But those philosophers who bend toward the natural sciences, mathematics and logic tend to be of one kind and school and those who bend toward literature tend to be of another kind and school. Personally what I care about is clear writing, the fire of ideas expressed creatively, and rational thinking that can account for the non-rational and sometimes even the irrational.

The idea of 'translating' continental philosophy into themes and ideas that at first sight do not seem compatible is a very good one. For example I have always thought that the notion of 'dialectics' in Hegel's "Science of Logic" is a groping idea for computational notions of 'recursiveness' and positive and negative feedback. A cautious approach of rewriting some of Hegel's ideas into terms familiar to cognitive science, would seem to me something that might be interesting. Something very similar might be done with Husserl. Also, another example, might be how Wittgenstein's notion of 'language games' is very similar to many notions derived from post-structuralism (though I find most pomo thinking an exercise in obscure and bad writing). Another example is Lewis' notions of 'counterfactuals' and how they dovetail with some continental contrasts between 'nomos' and 'narrative', even though the former is supposed to be a structural explanation of 'reality' and the latter is more a psychological explanation of how we see and develop the world. I am not saying that these ideas are the same but rather that they contribute to and help complete each other in ways that might be insightful if pursued with a bit of humility and without any notion that there can be a 'theory' that offers both description and explanation of phenomena in any deep sense as in the natural sciences.

To this end I think the line of thinking that your question suggests may produce fruitful results.

Jerry Monaco
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» PHILOSOPHY IS GOSSIP: AN HISTORICAL THESIS: Distinctions, Digressions on a Line of Thought

PHILOSOPHY IS GOSSIP: AN HISTORICAL THESIS -
Some methodological points, distinctions and digressions on a line of thought: #2
by Jerry Monaco

I will boil down my argument to four points: 1. Gossip is essential to the transmission and reproduction of philosophical arguments. 2. There is a kind of gossip that is specific to philosophical friendship and enmity, to the way philosophies reproduce alliances and oppositions. 3. A philosophy of gossip would be a (very) modest but interesting addition to an historical view of philosophy. 4. A clear view of the gossip of philosophy may help us to understand some sociological reasons why 'philosophy' is no longer the province of public intellectuals.

(#1 is located in a previous post along with the full comments of my correspondents at This link for Shandean Postscripts to Politics & Culture:)

In partial reply to Vernach & cuthbertscoast

cuthbertscoast wrote:
'This view would be more convincing if the gossip-process described were *specific* to philosophy. '

Vernach wrote:
'I don't know how familiar you are with Sociology, but that was the subject i was referring to most when I made the post. I'm a supporter of the sociological perspective of interactionism; therefore I believe that human interaction (including gossip) has a part in producing qutie a bit (but not all) of the products of many human cultures , philosophy being one of them.'

Mode of Transmission & Production of Philosophy: Gossip

If one begins to look at philosophy from the point of view of a mode of transmission and production through gossip, certain processes in the history of philosophy that have been previously ignored as trivial, become interesting. For instance the formation of 'schools of thought', the splits within those schools, how those schools of thought propagated themselves, differentiated themselves and reproduced themselves, how they lived and died, etc. become the focus of the transmission and propagation of philosophical argument. All of this is brought to the forefront and revealed anew from the askew view of gossip as mode of transmission of philosophy.

Further, by freeing our selves from the text based analysis of philosophical transmission and focusing on a mostly (though not exclusively) oral practice, one begins to see with new eyes, how arguments themselves are evaluated and transmitted, why certain notions and concepts become 'talisman'-like transmitters and badges of schools of thought, why certain ideas are reduced to easily circulated viruses or 'memes', etc. If we place all of this in intimate relation with the circulation of gossip philosophy looks more like a semiautonomous social practice than a simple production of ideas and ideologies. Finally, from the point of view of transmission of gossip we might be better able to explain why some arguments and ideas fail to find a fertile population for propagation. Such failure of ideas can be looked upon as both the failure of friendship and the failure of its opposite, to produce gossip. The notion I would like to push is that friendship, enmity, and the gossip that goes with it are crucial to understanding strictly philosophical arguments better than they are to understanding scientific arguments or mathematical arguments. (In another post I will provide some counter examples in science, mathematics and politics using Cicero, Cantor, and Bayes.)

Let me concede that my playful thesis will not be worth the candle unless friendship, enmity and the transmission of philosophical arguments through gossip are a factor in forming the very structure of philosophical arguments.

What you should notice right away is that this is not a sociological project nor is it a postmodern argument though I admit that there is a little of both in it. But as cuthbertscoast recognized there is also a bit of Wittgenstein in it and a large dose of my engagement with the history and philosophy of scientific theories.

A Moderate Anti-Sociology: “Contra-Vernach”

Traditional Sociological Concerns
I think social structure, city-state politics, and nation-state politics are very important to the matters I am referring to when I talk about gossip as a transmission of philosophy. Certain social relations are better than others in providing the social oxygen for gossip to flourish and philosophy to be transmitted in a way that is not wholly formal. For example, in my historical comparison of Northern Italian city-states from 1200-1600, the cities that relied most on political gossip for transmission of 'news' were also the cities where the new philosophy of humanism thrived. On one level this may simply be a classic example of how correlation says nothing about cause. But I think a detailed study of the collectors and writers we know as humanists will show that gossip was necessary to their project. The case of ancient Athens is singular because we have no real base of comparison with other Greek city-states. But given what we know about the other city-states and what people said at the time, Athens was something like the epitome of a polis that relied upon gossip for news. The fact that democratic Athens was a super incubator of gossip was appalling to the anti-democrats in Ancient Greece. I believe that 'political' gossip in a broad sense (which is mostly a male intellectual imitation of domestic gossip) is one of the best seedbeds for philosophy.

Philosophy and the ‘Ideological’ Sciences
I would just like Vernach to know that this is how I relate my thoughts to traditional sociological concerns. But I would also like Vernach to know that my concerns are in some respects 'anti-sociological'. I basically agree with him that sociology is a cousin of philosophy. But I would push Vernach’s view even further. Sociology is merely an ideological 'science'.

From this point of view it is interesting to ask why law, sociology, political science, economics, and psychology are no longer considered philosophical disciplines. (Notice that ‘law’ was historically the first among these to differentiate from philosophical discipline and practice.) My preliminary answer is simplistic. The support for most of sociology and much of psychology are variations of market research and public relations research. In fact the origins of the public relations industry in the U.S. is directly connected with the origins of modern sociology, political science and psychology as separate disciplines. Before market research and the public relations industry, philosophy used to serve some of the functions now served by the ideological ‘sciences.’ Now philosophy is no longer needed to serve those functions. Personally, I would be much happier if sociology came under the overtly ideological discipline of what we call philosophy. It would at least be truth in advertising. But then there are of course good sociological reasons why sociology, psychology, economics, and political science are independent of philosophy. These disciplines are useful training grounds for future administrators and they help to articulate the interests of the dominant (state and corporate) administrative elites and the ruling classes. They also form the background for corporate and political research into the ‘behavior’ of the population as a whole, etc. This is precisely some of the work that philosophy used to do in less complex societies. The paradox is that if these disciplines were conceptually folded into what we think of as philosophy, and literally folded into philosophy departments, they would probably become more rigorous because they would be under constant epistemological attack from within. In fact they would become so rigorous as to suffer philosophical paralysis, thus not serving their allotted function of helping to understand and control the population. I would consider such a result a net benefit.

As you can see what seems to be a contribution to 'anti-philosophy' is in background an attempt to see why philosophies 'live'.

Gossip in Philosophy Compared to Hierarchy in Law
Now what do these points have to do with gossip in philosophy? One reason why gossip is crucial in philosophy is for the same reason why such extreme measures are taken in law school today to guarantee ranking and hierarchy on every level. (The amount of econometrics used to judge law school rankings exceeds every other discipline. The fight for hierarchical placement among law school students and professors is mind-boggling to observe. The attention paid to all of this by the major law firms is puzzling but also functional.) When the teaching of philosophy functioned something like the teaching of law does now gossip was the only way that a philosophical notion could be judged over a long period of time. There are no big advertisement campaigns for a philosophical notion, only word of mouth and what could be built through friendship and enmity.

Gossip as Overdetermination or Underdetermination in the Appearance and Disappearance of Philosophical Argument
I would also distinguish my views from Vernach’s sociological generalizations about gossip. My point is that the way ‘gossip’ works as transmission of friendship and enmity in philosophy is essential to the survival and disappearance of philosophical arguments and that it often either overdetermines or underdetermines those arguments. Friendship and enmity is essential to understanding philosophical arguments but gossip as a means of transmission is essential to understanding the shaping, reshaping, and propagation of those arguments across societies and over historical time.

I will seek to show by examples in a later post how philosophical gossip is different from the way gossip works in politics or science or in domestic relationships. I concede that gossip has much to do with everyday life and is often a kind of cement or division in philosophical relationships. For instance one thing I would like to show through using my peculiar notion of gossip is that gossip often establishes the rules for a kind of Wittgensteinian language-game of schools of philosophy. I hesitate to use Wittgenstein’s notions directly because they are both contentious and ahistorical. I only use the notion here to show how my notion of philosophical gossip is distinguished from sociological notions of gossip. Gossip in philosophy is inextricable from the use and survival of arguments.. Another way that gossip in philosophy is different from sociological notions of gossip is that it establishes the grounds for the survival of philosophical arguments. This is not the only way gossip transmits philosophy but it is one way that philosophical gossip differs from gossip in everyday life. I would also like to distinguish my idea from a notion of an ‘anthropology of philosophers.’ Though I think that such an accusation would come closer to what I am trying to show, I don’t think that the intellectual culture of philosophy is very easy to pin down simply because philosophical traditions are so obviously historical in a way that crosses cultures.

My peculiar definition of gossip
Of course my thesis may simply be trivially true. In other words if my counterfactual about gossip and philosophy was stated 'if no gossip then no philosophy,' I think this would be a triviality. As both cuthbertscoast and Vernach noticed this counterfactual could also be stated 'if no gossip then no human communication within society.' Such a statement or restatement is not a counterfactual that is meant to bring one to see that philosophy is causally dependent on gossip, in the manner of counterfactuals as presented by David Lewis. If my statement merely took the everyday definition of gossip then I think it would be a trivial statement. This is because gossip is not so much in anyway a cause of human communication within a society, but rather that there is no way to communicate in a society over long periods of time without also communicating everyday-over-the-fence gossip. In this case ‘gossip’ would not be distinct from philosophy in the way that saying ‘Hello’ would not be distinct from saying ‘Hello’ loudly. These would not be distinct ‘events’ or historical facets, just different aspects of the same event. Only if there is something distinct about how gossip organizes philosophy and philosophical alliances and oppositions, and only if there is something between gossip in the context of philosophy and gossip in everyday life will my thesis be ‘non-trivial.’

As I wish to make clear, I am employing a peculiar definition of gossip as a means of circulation, organization, and reproduction of arguments within a context of philosophical alliances and oppositions, of philosophical friendships and enmities. The reason I use the word 'gossip' at all is partially for the sake of provocation, partially so I can see philosophical history in a new way, and partially because I have an affinity for everyday language. One could possibly talk in Bourdieu's terms about language, symbolic power, the circulation of cultural capital, but one can't accept his technical terms without accepting what I consider his absurd theories on language, derived from Saussure thrice removed. Therefore I prefer my peculiar definition of gossip as an attempt at a conceptual tool to other terms that may seem more appropriate.

Jerry Monaco
New York City
11 Feb. 2005
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» Philosophy is Gossip Beneath the Rose #2

Gossip that dares not speak its name: Gossip in the transmission and production of philosophy
by Jerry Monaco

My correspondent writes: '[G]ood philosophers are machine-like in their ability to arrange and illustrate arguments in a thorough, logical progression.'

We, who read philosophers, are talking to the dead in order to discredit their ideas. It is as if we need to kill the dead all over again so that our own ideas can live and shine new. But this is a useless task. The dead will stay dead. They can only die once. What the living philosopher desires to kill is the living ideas of the dead philosopher. A bit macabre, yes? I believe in the Oedipus Complex to the extent that I believe in the 'Lucifer Complex' (via Milton) or the 'Prometheus Complex' (via Shelley) or the 'Galileo Complex' (via Brecht), but one can't help but see that there is something Oedipal in all of this.

How can I express my shock and amusement at such notions about the 'machine-like' logical progression of philosophical arguments? This reminds me of the Olympian way in which judges talk of the law. The law is inviolable. And so is this kind of philosophy. If you think that philosophy is only about good arguments you haven't dipped into the professional journals of late. Or perhaps you are too close to the academy to see that such statements as the above are a product of unself-conscious ideology.

(It is not ideology I am afraid of, it is unself-conscious ideology.I know the word 'ideology' in our culture is a term of abuse, but we are all ideological in one way or another, it is just that the best philosophers make their ideology as explicit as possible. See Balibar's Spinoza and Politics. This parenthetical remark is only here so that readers may realize I am not using the word 'ideology' to abuse anyone as most United Statsians would assume. I am using the word to try to 'turn you around', to remove your eyes from the shadows on the cave wall, so you can see how deep your ideology goes. So deep that it is part of your very self. This is where 'Plato's Problem' merges with 'Orwell's Problem.' See Socrates method in the first book of Plato's Republic.)

I should like to expand this line of thought, not let it go. So I will state the various aspects of my thesis with less prettiness.

Gossip is essential to the transmission and production of philosophy. Philosophical relationships, and the gossip that surrounds them, among contemporaries and across the generations, should be essential to our historical understanding of how philosophical ideas differentiate. Philosophers come to understand philosophy not only as a collection of ideas and positions but as a form of gossip about relationships between philosophers. Out of this we should be able to develop an historical view of the displacement of gossip within philosophy. This will lead me to a speculative philosophy of gossip. I do not believe that this is a great undertaking but it might actually say more about history and philosophy than, say, a philosophy of humor.

The overdetermining work of gossip is not only true of the homosocial tug-of-war, between Wittgenstein and Turing, but I do think the relationship between W and T is emblematic of how the gossip of philosophy mutates into an unconscious philosophy of gossip. I have read a dozen or more commentaries on Wittgenstein's weird, but not-easily dismissed notions about the relation between 'pure mathematics' to 'mathematics,' and every single one has at least mentioned the Turing/Wittgenstein entanglement. Why? The answer is that the commentators, without willing to admit it, think that this gossip is important, somehow or someway. This is simply gossip that dares not speak its name. I think that this gossip is not only important but is essential to the production and transmission of philosophical thought and practice. (At the moment, I do not wish to psychoanalyze the reactions of philosophers but they often react to such notions as if the thought is not merely ridiculous, but somehow frightening.)

Our own creation of arguments and our own understanding of philosophy cannot be separated from gossip about relationships. This process has only been increased and intensified by the professionalization of philosophy by the corporate university system. This is because among professional philosophers it would be embarrassing to display 'gossip' as part of their practice of philosophy. So they don't refer to it, even, when it is obvious, such as in the relationship between Athenian democracy and philosophy. If Athens is not an example of the production and transmission of philosophy through gossip I don't know what is. Other intellectual cultures where the transmission and production of philosophy through gossip should be obvious are late Enlightenment France, the Wiemar Republic and the former Hapsburg states between the WWI and WWII, and post-war France (1945-1975).

I could go into a detailed analysis of each of these periods - Socrates and Athens; Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot in the Late Enlightenment; Sartre and Camus, etc. But for a moment think of those logical 'machines' who deployed arguments as if unfolding mathematical proofs, the men of the 'Vienna Circle'.

It is impossible to understand the origins of their arguments and not know that they were motivated not only by the arguments themselves but by the intensely felt absence from the circle of Wittgenstein and the willful expulsion from their minds of both Freud and radical Social Democracy. A list of Vienna Circle preoccupations will do for now: These include, the circulation of gossip about Wittgenstein, Freud, and various social democrats on the fringes of the Vienna Circle; the drive to turn thought into a burning flame of fame where each in competition with the other could make his name (just like bad boy Freud); the combination of a fervent smashing of metaphysical idols (esp. Heidegger) with obvious petty bourgeois resentment; the attraction to and repulsion from Nietzsche. This list will do for now. The fact is that Gossip, to some extent drove them to produce and differentiate their thought. This is not a judgment on the Vienna Circle's arguments, only an observation of their history. Why resist?

The very fact that gossip is now underground among the professional philosophers makes gossip insidious instead of at times delightful and at other times infuriating. Philosophy is just a small town. That small town existed on and off for 2300 years across history and within a few limited geographic areas. To ignore gossip in a small town is to ignore a good part of how the town thinks about itself.

Admittedly, the mode and means of gossip has changed in the last 200 years and now we must contend with the fact of the star-system, and celebrity culture, along with its oppressive elitism. In my mind the fact of the star-system within philosophy is all the more reason to move from the gossip of philosophy to the philosophy of gossip.

The historical fact is that 'gossip,' can be seen as the unabashed immutable background 'noise' to philosophical thinking and writing. I say 'unabashed' because philosophers did not even see the need to hide their use of gossip and their delight in gossip from the time of Plato until the rise of German Idealism. The personal relationships from which gossip emerged, and the role of gossip in the transmission and production of philosophy was probably so obvious to such writers that no one would consider it as a separate social phenomena that needed to be noted.

It was only with the rise of German Idealism, and the professionalization of philosophy in the university system, that gossip became a dirty little secret, as if gossip was the equivalent of sexual relations among the Victorians, something that must be kept hidden. Coincidentally, it was also soon after this period that philosophers on the edges of the Academy -- Nietzsche, Kierkegaard -- developed what might be seen as a philosophy of gossip. I simply seek to make this philosophy of gossip explicit. If you wish to ignore these obvious points in the history of philosophy you will miss much of what philosophy is about. And you will also miss a good bit of the entertainment of philosophy.

(For instance, there is nothing more amusing than Nietzsche writing about Socrates' ugliness. Nietzsche, of course, develops philosophical points about Socrates from his ugliness. But you might ask yourself, how and why did we know about Socrates' ugliness in the first place. Once you follow that question where it will take you, you will see that Nietzsche was not anomolous in using this little bit of gossip as part of philosophical speculation. In fact Nietzsche was just turning the fact of Socrates ugliness around upon all the philosophers who thought that was a point in Socrates favor. But what is this but a form of gossip? Or think of the Oedipal interpretations of the relationships between Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. What is this but gossip parading as insight. Maybe it is also insight. I don't know. You tell me. By the way, you shouldn't be such a stick-in-the mud about these things.)

Many philosophers and writers have written implicitly about what I am explicitly calling gossip. One cannot read Plato and Aristotle without realizing how much they were influenced by low down and dirty gossip, and how much they transformed this gossip into the content of their philosophy. Their views on friendship and on ethics in general, are partially a reaction to an atmosphere of philosophical gossip. (Another example is Cicero. I do not think of Cicero as much of a philosopher, and I think any decent populare should best oppose him as a politician, but one cannot read his essay on friendship, and all the commentaries to this essay on friendship, without realizing how much of all of this was the epitome of gossip. In this case, philosophy is gossip by other means and gossip is simply politics.)

Of course the importance of gossip is easier to see in philosophies that emerge out of the intense intellectual cultures of the city-state. Like the Greek city-state, the philosophers historically located in the Northern Italian city-states (Beccaria, Machiavelli, etc.) are also easily read through the eyeglases of gossip and their reaction to gossip old and new.

This phenomena of the relationship between intellectual production, gossip and the city-state should be looked into with a better historical and philosophical eye than my limited resources are able to bring to the subject. A major part of what later came to be known as humanism was simply a collection of gossip about the Greeks and Romans and the circulation of gossip about other collectors of gossip. Only those who felt Christian pangs of guilt were embarrassed about this obsession. 'Antiquarians' of all sorts were largely responsible for the collection and transmission of ancient philosophy to modern times. One of the major interests of many of those antiquarian collectors was little tid-bits of gossip.

It is only with the professionalization of philosophy that gossip became a guilty secret, something hidden in the articles, and whispered in the backrooms of the little boys that do philosophy. One of the nicer things, about recent times is that more and more women also do philosophy, and perhaps everyday experiences such as how gossip is central to philosophy will come to the fore in the near future. The feminization of philosophy on this level will be welcome. But unfortunately I think that the material culture of professionalism will in the long run defeat this breath of fresh air in philosophy.

Now days, it might be 'cute' and pomo for a philosopher to be obsessed with the actors and actresses on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or with Martha Stewart, but no one, absolutely no one, should admit, that such interests may actually be expressive of the line of their arguments and the direction of their thoughts. And if you, philosopher, happen to admit to your guilty secret of an obsession with Martha Stewart, how impolite would it be to admit that your interest in the Sartre/Camus dispute may not be much different and in fact that the substance and gossip surrounding this dispute are not just entangled with each other, but are displaced overdeterminations of how the dispute developed in history and of our changing views of the dispute. Of course the same can be said for Plato's obsession with and invention of Socrates for that matter.

Philosophers are not supposed to care about the star-system and celebrity culture and get all excited about meeting 'famous' people, at least not in relation to their professional lives. And if they do care about the star-culture they are not supposed to care about the circulation of gossip and how that influences the production of philosophy. But the star-system and celebrity culture are now more influential on philosophy than ever before, simply because it has become an essential part of the structure of wages in and out of the academy. This means more than ever before gossip has become an adjunct to the commodity of the philosopher's labor-power.

I could bring it up to date with Rorty and Stanley Fish if you wish, or Quine and Dennett but I suppose that would be impolite. It is not nice to analyze living or recently dead people as if they had been dead for 200 or 2,000 years.

Yes, I would like to blur the distinctions between philosophy and all other arts, crafts and disciplines. The idea that 'philosophy' is somehow a separate discipline apart from fiction and poetry on the one hand and science and mathematics on the other is simply an unabashed display of the current stupidity of philosophy that thinks its main products are meant for professional journals. The idea that philosophy -- even the most abstract philosophy, even philosophy that is a little too wise -- is something that is academic and professional, unfleshed and unbloodied, lacking sweat and tears, lust and friendship, and lacking all the gossip that adheres to all thought, this view of philosophy is what engaged philosophers must fight against.

I have met people who I would consider good philosophers among illiterate peasants in El Salvador and among teacher-organizers in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. These people I would call philosophers and they would not be shocked by my view that philosophy and gossip are intimates. There were many, also, many famous philosophers who have been explicit about the relationship between gossip and philosophy -- Augustine, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard -- but it is only because these philosophers (though I disagree with their views) were at least honest enough with themselves that they did not scare at the shadows of the 'baser' interests that motivate philosophy.

Jerry Monaco
New York
7 Feb 2005

(note: This was originally a repsonse to a comment on my post from 6 Feb. 2005. I will append the comment to the comment fields of this post.)
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Feb. 8th, 2005 @ 12:36 pm

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» Whispered Beneath the Rose, Philosophy is Gossip: On Gossip and Philosophy

On Gossip and Philosophy: Whispered Beneath the Rose, Philosophy is Gossip A note for From the philosophy of gossip to the gossip of philosophy:
by Jerry Monaco

It occurs to me that there is something that is usually not talked about among philosophers. Beneath the rose the guilty secret of philosophy is gossip. Gossip is something that many philosophers do not make explicit but often talk about and sometimes write about as if they never talk about it. One of the pleasures of philosophy is gossip.

This came home to me once again while writing about the 'serious' subject of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. In the previous entry of my blog Shandean Postscripts to Politics & Culture: - February 5th, 2005 I wrote a little note on Wittgenstein's views on pure mathematics. It was called Wittgenstein's Fright at Cultish Mathematicians. It was about Wittgenstein's olympian dismissal of certain aspects of pure mathematics as games that were not part of what mathematicians do but rather were a 'cancerous growth' on the body of mathematics. Specifically Wittgenstein attacked Bertrand Russell's use of theories of the mathematicians Cantor, Weirestrass and Dedekind. Russell used their mathematics on the infinitesimal, the infinite and continuity to claim that their could be a Foundation of Mathematics. For Wittgenstein all of this was a delusional mind-game.

There is nothing original or even hard in my little note. It doesn't reach the level of a good sophomore's summary of an incident in philosophy. The whole process was just a display of my attempt to educate myself on subjects I obstinately refused to learn during my wasted youth

But what holds the most interest in this philosophical incident has nothing to do with formal logic or pure mathematics. Rather it is Wittgenstein's 'relationship' and intellectual battle with Turing. This relationship is a small aspect of Wittgenstein's views of mathematics yet it is always mentioned by those who write about this subject. Turing was Wittgenstein's student in a class during the 1930s at a time when Turing was emerging as one of the great mathematicians of our time. The arguments between teacher Wittgenstein and student Turing, Wittgenstein's singular passion to get Turing to 'see' how mathematics works according to Wittgensteinian games on the intellectual level and pragmatic adjustments on the practical level, had very little to do with the actual arguments and more to do with a certain kind of experience of living. It was an experience of a failed friendship that could never speak its name. I am not saying that there was anything sexual in their relationship but rather that 'friendship' itself was a forbidden territory between the two and this fact of failure to communicate, both the need for friendship and the necessity of its rejection, was dangerous. It was also a fuel for the intellecual tug of war over mathematics. At this point in philosophical and mathematical history both Wittgenstein's theories and Turing's rejection of those theories were a mirror of the failed and frightening friendship between a fierce and abstract father who wished to bring his son out into the elements, and a lost son who wished never to emerge from the labyrith that his teacher's theories sought to destroy. The reception of the debate between Wittgenstein and Turing has been a mere emblem of the relationship between these two thinkers. The very structrue of the arguments have been misunderstood ever since, to the detriment of the fierce father and the triumph of the tragically lost son, because of the commentators inability to see the logic of the relationship. Most commentators prefer to be lost with Turing or to build an idol out of the head of Wittgenstein. They do not see the actual arguments, because their unadmitted fascination with the gossp of the Oedipal family romance of philosophy has blinded them to what is real.

From the origins of philosophy until today, to some small extent, gossip has driven important aspects of philosophy. There were very few philosophers who were exempt from this (perhaps Kant) and one cannot read about how philosopher's developed their ideas against what they heard 'about' other philosophers without realizing that simple gossip influenced their world views. I am not only talking about the personal relations between philosophers but also the way philosophers talk about themselves and make other philosophers the object of gossip.

This first occurred to me while reading the book "The Frenzy of Renown" but recently while writing about the Sartre/Camus dispute I began to think that most of what we care about in philosophy is a form of gossip. We also care about the 'issues' but some how they are only important when put next to the lived-experience of what philosophers do and how they think about each other. Then later while studying Althusser and the post-structuralists it seemed to me that all that is left of interest in what they have to say is gossip. Now with Wittgenstein and his relation to mathematicians, it occurred to me that in certain intellectual cultures gossip can be a major factor in philosophical contention. But not only is it a factor in how and why philosophers' argue but it is also a factor in how and why they differentiate their arguments. I am sure this was as true of the presocratics and of the post-platonic philosophy in ancient Greece as it was for Wittgenstein or Sartre/Camus.

How one would write an essay on the motivation of gossip in philosophical thought I do not know. If anyone has any thoughts please tell me.

Jerry Monaco
New York City
6 Feb 2005
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Feb. 7th, 2005 @ 02:20 pm

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