Reason & Society

Ludwig Feuerbach 4: Lectures

2012-01-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

Continuing here on Feuerbach's Lectures on the Essence of Religion (1851). While all of Lecture I is available on the Marxists Internet Archive, I have added the second half of this lecture to my own web site:

Lectures on the Essence of Religion #1 (Part II: On Jakob Böhme, Spinoza, and Leibniz)

For Feuerbach, Spinoza

is the only modern philosopher to have provided the first elements of a critique and explanation of religion and theology; the first to have offered a positive opposition to theology; the first to have stated, in terms that have become classical, that the world cannot be regarded as the work or product of a personal being acting in accordance with aims and purposes; the first to have brought out the all-importance of nature for the philosophy of religion.

In contrast, here is how Leibniz is presented:

. . . the first modem German philosopher earned the honour, or dishonour, of having once again tied philosophy to the apron strings of theology. In this respect Leibniz, in his celebrated Theodicy, outdid all others. [. . . . ]Leibniz sat on the fence between the two parties, and for this very reason satisfied neither. He wished to offend no one, to hurt no one's feelings; his philosophy is a philosophy of diplomatic gallantry. Even the monads, the entities of which in his view all sensible beings consist, exert no physical influence on one another, lest any of them suffer injury.

But a man who is determined to offend no-one – even unintentionally – can have no energy, no force; for it is impossible to take a step without trampling on some creature or other, or to drink a sip of water without swallowing a quantity of small organisms. Leibniz is an intermediary between the Middle Ages and modern times; he is, as I have called him, the philosophical Tycho Brahe, but precisely because of his indecision he remains to this day the idol of all those who lack the energy to make up their minds.

I also added to my web site:

Lectures on the Essence of Religion: #2

Spinoza begins with Pierre Bayle, continues on the topic of immortality, and emphasizes the antagonism between religion and philosophy, also in opposition to Hegelianism's pretension to reconcile the two:

The more recent philosophers differ in one striking respect from their predecessors. For the earlier philosophers separated philosophy and religion and even set them in opposition, arguing that religion is grounded on divine wisdom and authority, while philosophy is grounded solely on human wisdom—or, as Spinoza put it, that religion aims solely at the advantage and welfare of man, while philosophy aims at the truth; while the most recent philosophers stand for the identity of philosophy and religion, at least as far as content and substance are concerned. It was this identity that I set out to attack. As early as 1830, when my Thoughts on Death and Immortality appeared, I found myself involved in an argument with a dogmatist of the Hegelian school, who maintained that there is only a formal difference between religion and philosophy, that philosophy merely raised to the level of the concept what religion possessed in the form of images. I replied in the following verse:
Essence itself is form. You therefore destroy the content of
Faith by destroying the image, its own appropriate form
I criticized the Hegelian philosophy for regarding the essential as nonessential and the nonessential as essential in religion. The essence of religion, I declared, is precisely what philosophy regards as mere form.

A work deserving of special mention in this connection is a short pamphlet which appeared in 1839 under the title: On Philosophy and Christianity. Despite all attempts at compromise, I wrote, the difference between religion and philosophy is ineradicable, for philosophy is a matter of thought, of reason, while religion is a matter of emotion and imagination. But religion does not, as Hegel maintains, merely translate speculative ideas into emotionally charged images, but also contains an element that is distinct from thought, and this element is not merely its form but its very essence. This element can in one word be termed sensuousness, for emotion and imagination are also rooted in sensibility.

Ludwig Feuerbach redux

2012-01-25T21:57:00.000-08:00

I have just updated my bibliography of works in the English language:

Ludwig Feuerbach: A Bibliography

Aside from the addition of print works, there are now links to YouTube videos.

Here are a few stray quotes gleaned from the Internet, not yet sourced:

‎"The present age . . . prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence . . . for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane."

‎"'Faith moves mountains!' Certainly! Faith does not solve difficult problems; it only pushes them aside."

‎"The pious one bases faith on human weakness. How weak must be something that is supported by weakness."

And here is a very interesting quote from Feuerbach's Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843), Part II: Critique of Hegel, § 21 (different translation):

‎"The Hegelian philosophy is the last magnificent attempt to restore Christianity, which was lost and wrecked, through philosophy and, indeed, to restore Christianity—as is generally done in the modern era—by identifying it with the negation of Christianity."

Feuerbach constantly highlights the tug of war between philosophy and theology, and which won wins out within the thought of particular philosophers. Here though note also that Feuerbach's remark is applicable to liberal, (partly) demythologized religion.

From a quick scan of Feuerbach's works in English, I've concluded that I first most need to read Lectures on the Essence of Religion (1851).This is a later work than his other noted works on religion and by this time he has revised some earlier views. Also, it seems to be the most general treatment of religion beyond Christianity, with some interesting remarks about philosophers. Lectures I & XXX are available at the Marxists Internet Archive. Both are worth checking out. Lecture I has some interesting commentary on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, for example. I intend to scan Lecture II, which begins with a treatment of Pierre Bayle. Lecture XXX is "Atheism alone a Positive View."

Paul Nizan on humanism & other matters

2012-01-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

Paul Nizan (7 February 1905 – 23 May 1940) was an eminent French writer, an erstwhile Communist, who left the party as a reaction to the Soviet-Nazi pact and died fighting the Germans.

I first became aware of Nizan via his philosophical work The Watchdogs: Philosophers and the Established Order, translated by Paul Fittingoff (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972; original publication, 1960). Here is a relevant excerpt:

The Philosopher's Mission by Paul Nizan / Misio de la Filozofo (my Esperanto translation)

Here Nizan distinguishes between two types of philosophy, which he judges differently. He accepts strictly technical philosophers, particularly in philosophy of science, as they are, making no ideological demands upon them. But those who make broader assertions about human existence have proven themselves philosophically bankrupt, and those bourgeois philosophers are roundly condemned.

Nizan was also a prize-winning novelist. His last novel The Conspiracy, translated by Quintin Hoare, with an Afterword by Jean-Paul Sartre, and Appendix by Walter Benjamin (translated into English for the first time) has just been published in English by Verso.

Translations of some of Nizan's essays can be found at the Marxists Internet Archive.

Now I want to call your attention to Nizan's 1935 essay "On Humanism". The term "humanism" applies to several historical periods and schools of thought, and in even in English one must be attentive to the vagaries of the term. But "humanism" has a special meaning and basis of contention in French intellectual culture, known to Americans only through the unfortunate importation of postmodernism. If one were to think solely of the American humanist movement, Nizan's reference to "humanism" would be meaningless. The French reference to "humanism" reflects a traditionalist bourgeois culture that came under attack from multiple directions in the 20th century. Its attackers and defenders came from both right and left.

To get more of an idea of this background, follow the links on my web page:

Badiou and the Bankruptcy of Fashionable French Philosophy

. . . and on my "Studies in a Dying Culture" blog:

Bergson, apostle of reactionary irrationalism

Descartes' Secret Notebook (3)

2011-10-29T18:03:00.000-07:00

Aczel, Amir D. Descartes' Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. xiv, 273 pp.

Now we come to Chapter 20: Leibniz's Quest for Descartes' Secret. Leibniz was attracted to aspects of Descartes' philosophy but was seriously repelled by it as well. Leibniz was critical of Descartes' principle of doubt, suggesting that degrees of doubt rather than absolute doubt be admitted in specific cases (209).

Some of Leibniz's major interests are outlined. I note a mutual interest with Descartes in Ramón Llull's ars combinatoria (210). After three years in Paris, facing the prospect of being recalled to Hanover, Leibniz urgently pursued his aim of inspecting everything that Descartes ever wrote. On June 1, 1676 he succeeded in gaining permission to view Descartes' hidden manuscripts. Scanning the Preambles, Leibniz, a Rosicrucian, recognized an oblique reference to the Rosicrucians (213). The secret notebook, De solidorum elementis, contained obscure formulas and figures. The geometrical figures were depictions of the five Platonic solids, and a connection to mysticism was evident. Leibniz began to copy the records, recognized what was going on, and added a marginal note (219).

Descartes' notebook disappeared, and Leibniz's papers on this subject remained undetected for two centuries. Several subsequent viewers of these documents failed to crack the code. Finally, in 1987, Peter Costabel published his analysis of Leibniz's copy of Descartes' manuscript (220). Leibniz had discovered that Descartes discovered a formula that generalizes the structural characteristics of the Platonic solids (221).

Chapter 21: Leibniz Breaks Descartes' Code and Solves the Mystery. Kepler had postulated a connection between the five Platonic solids and the spacing of the six known planets. Descartes found a formula for all polyhedra, but because others would connect this with Kepler and Copernicus, and so kept it to himself (225-229). Descartes' formula F + V - E = 2 inaugurates the field of topology. Euler discovered this formula, which was named after him.

Other misfortunes befell Descartes' legacy in the 17th century, when his works were proscribed by the Catholic Church and teaching of Cartesian philosophy banned in France. It wasn't until 1824 that his works were reprinted. Adrien Baillet came close to crediting Descartes' discoveries in his biography, but not being a mathematician, did not understand Leibniz's explanation and omitted publishing the information (230). Leibniz remained obsessed and ambivalent concerning Descartes, praising him while alleging limitations. Leibniz kept in contact with Cartesian scholars (231). Leibniz was at work developing the calculus. Concerned about the priority dispute with Newton, Leibniz would not have wanted to acknowledge an influence from Descartes (234-235).

Aczel adds an epilogue to this story. Descartes is seen as the great forerunner of contemporary astrophysics, heavily dependent on geometry linked to algebraic methods. The Platonic solids are n longer relevant, but . . . but satellite data obtained in 2001 supports the notion that the geometry of the universe as a whole fits the geometry of some of the Platonic solids (238-239). One new model posits the universe as an octahedron folded onto itself. The icosahedron and dodecahedron have also served as models.

It's a somewhat peculiar final tribute to Descartes, and Descartes' whole life story is a somewhat roundabout way of getting to discussing the mysterious notebook, but the story is nonetheless interesting, and, aside from the tribute to the mathematical and scientific geniuses of the early modern world, it reveals even more the peculiarities and complexities of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution.

Descartes' Secret Notebook (2)

2011-10-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

Aczel, Amir D. Descartes' Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. xiv, 273 pp.

Chapter 12 finds Descartes moving to Holland in 1628, meeting and eventually breaking with his friend Isaac Beeckman over claims about what Beeckman taught Descartes.

Descartes worked on his book Le Monde from 1629-1633. Descartes was a Copernican, but cancelled publication in November 1633 upon learning of Galileo's ordeal under the Inquisition. Descartes' situation was probably much safer, but he continued to steer clear of publication, fearing reprisals. Details follow.

Chapter 13 recounts Descartes' secret affair or marriage with a servant woman, Hélène Jans, which produced a daughter Francine. Descartes was devastated when Francine died in 1640 (p. 147).

Chapter 14 is devoted to Descartes' epoch-making 1637 work Discourse on the Method. Descartes' invention of analytical geometry was a revolutionary discovery. Chapter 15 details Descartes' solution to the ancient Greek mystery of doubling a cube—the Delian problem.

Chapter 16 concerns Descartes' friendship with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, hungry for knowledge of metaphysics, physics, and mathematics.

In Chapter 17 we find Descartes embroiled in confrontation with academics in Utrecht, chief among them Gisbert Voetius, who in opposing Cartesianism levelled the dangerous accusation of atheism. Cartesian philosophy was banned from the university. Ultimately, there was a vicious lawsuit which Descartes lost, and he had to issue a letter of apology to avoid imprisonment.

In Chapter 18 we approach the final chapter of Descartes' life, in which he is induced to come to Stockholm by Queen Christina. She lavished honors on him while others in the court were hostile. Tutoring the queen also cramped Descartes' lifestyle. Worse, as we see in Chapter 19, the Swedish climate did him in. He resisted until almost the end the quack cure of bleeding the patient, and then gave in, and then died. His last words were: "Ah, my dear Schluter, this is the time I must leave." (p. 197)

The fate of Descartes' remains is summarized here, but you can also read the whole story in Russell Shorto's Descartes’ Bones. Now we return to the story of what became of Descartes' locked box (202).This box contained copies of various correspondence and responses to critics, but also secret manuscripts—Preambles, Olympica, Democritica, Experimenta, Parnassus—and a notebook containing cryptic mathematical and other symbols. In the final installment, we shall review Leibniz's inspection of Descartes' notebook and the ultimate deciphering of the mysterious text.

Conspiracy thinking – my name in lights

2011-10-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

Note this blog post:

Conspiracy Thinking – Turning Points
Oct. 2, 2011

The blogger reviews some key books on social paranoia, links it to American individualism, and recommends Chip Berlet's Political Research Associates, G. William Domhoff's power structure research, and my The Paranoia Papers: Theory of the (Un)Natural History of Social Paranoia: Selected Bibliography.

Black freethought still on the move

2011-09-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

Here are a few recently accessed links pertaining to African and African-American humanists and atheists:

Why I Am a Philosophic Humanist, Not a Member of Some Religious Group by Leo Igwe

African Philosophy Platform, established by Warren Allen Smith

Under exploration here: "What original ideas concerning idealism, materialism, dualism, naturalism, rationalism, positivism, or otherstances have African philosophers developed?" Site caveat: "Philosophy is a broad subject, so this platform will confine itself to academic, humanistic,and naturalistic philosophy, not to religious and spiritual discussions." This site has not been active since 2009.

The wiki Philosopedia also covers black freethought, summarized under Af - Ah.

In Washington, DC, the Secular Students at Howard University, the under the leadership of Mark Hatcher, is active. Here is a recent article in the student newspaper The Hilltop:

Perspective: Confessions of an Atheist by Dominic Ripoli

My group Black Freethought on Atheist Nexus now has 451 members.

Fan Zhen (450 - 515 AD) revisited

2011-09-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

As I indicated in my previous entry on this Chinese thinker, information in English is rather scarce. In the course of looking up Wang Ch'ung (Wang Chong, 27–c. 100 AD), I came across another link to Fan Zhen on a rather eccentric web site:

Rationalism and materialist philosophy in China: Fan Zhen, Wang Chung

Once again, the Esperanto page, which also has English links, can be found on my site:

Ateisto Fan Ĝen

Descartes' Bones & The Best of All Possible Worlds

2011-08-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

I never got around to continuing my review of Russell Shorto's Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason, nor did I ever get around to reviewing Steven Nadler's The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil. The former has objective content that merits attention regardless of Shorto's spin on the subject suggesting a moral for our time. Shorto is a journalist. Nadler is a serious scholar of Spinoza and of that period. Here is a paragraph I wrote on 21 July 2010:

The last two books I'm reading are about early modern philosophy: Russell Shorto's Descartes’ Bones and Steven Nadler's The Best of All Possible Worlds. The latter is about the theological-metaphysical problematic of Leibniz, Malebranche, and Arnauld. [This] . . . coincidentally dovetails with parts of the former book, which I'm still reading. Nadler refrains from drawing too many conclusions from this material, unlike Shorto, who thinks like a shallow journalist in reading today's conflict between faith and reason into the past. However, one can draw more severe conclusions from Nadler's book, should one choose to adduce the evidence presented therein to condemn Christianity—not just religion in general but Christianity in particular. I will write about this, assuming I can catch up to my proliferating ambitions.

Atheist Viewpoint: Diversity in the Movement

2011-08-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

From American Atheists:

. . . with David Silverman (President of American Atheists), A. J. Johnson (Director of Development), and Ron Barrier. The question of intersectionality or belonging to multiple minorities is discussed as part of the general discussion on the (non-) participation of minorities in the atheist movement. Johnson contributes the notion of social capital and the most of substance on this topic and others. Johnson disagrees with Silverman that diversity including libertarians and other conservatives merits serious consideration. Ron Barrier is accommodating to ideological divergences but Johnson is not having it. I can only hope that the conservative/libertarian element is marginalized in the movement, but I don't believe this any more than Johnson does. Note the closing song "I Ain't Afraid" by Holly Near.

Descartes' Secret Notebook (1)

2011-08-30T06:41:00.000-07:00

"The sciences are now masked; the masks lifted, they appear in all their beauty. To someone who can see the entire chain of the sciences, it would seem no harder to discern them than to do so with the sequence of all the numbers. Strict limits are prescribed for all spirits, and these limits may not be trespassed. If some, by a flaw of spirit, are unable to follow the principles of invention, they may at least appreciate the real value of the sciences, and this should suffice to bring them true judgment on the evaluation of all things."

— Réne Descartes, Preambles

Aczel, Amir D. Descartes' Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. xiv, 273 pp. (The above quote can be found on pp. 38-39.)

While I recommend reading this in hard copy, you have a number of online options at your fingertips. Begin with the Publisher description. You can also read a sample text.You can read the whole book online at scribd.com. And if you have a compelling need to download yourself a pirated copy, you can also download a compressed file from Megaupload.

I've written on this blog before on the burgeoning genre of popularized history of philosophy. Often the ideas themselves are shortchanged, but the biographical narratives are compelling and vividly portray the social contexts of the times. I have been especially rewarded by a complex of books whose narratives (unintentionally) bleed into one another; they could almost be grouped as volumes in a single series:

Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity;

Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World;

Steven Nadler, The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil;

Russell Shorto, Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason.

Aczel's book fits in here, too, especially as it intersects the narratives of Nadler and Shorto. While Descartes' coded secret notebook is ostensibly the subject of this book, it is in actuality a biography of Descartes, with the decoding of the notebook the climax of the tale. There are, of course, other biographies of Descartes. Here is one review:

Serfati, Michel. "Descartes, the Pioneer of the Scientific Revolution" [review of Desmond Clarke, Descartes: A Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2006], Notices of the AMS, vol. 55, no. 1, January 2008, pp. 44-49.

I have not found any awe-inspiring reviews of Aczel, but here are a few:

Book Review – Descartes’s Secret Notebook, 22 April 2009

Star Topology, 13 Jan. 2011

Descartes' Secret Notebook, Steve Zipp, 20 Jan. 2009

One interesting feature of this book is the incorporation of recent discoveries and scholarship concerning Descartes.

Aczel begins with an account of his encounter with Descartes' cryptic manuscript: actually, the original is lost, and Aczel is really looking at the insatiably curious Leibniz' transcription of Descartes' manuscript. Aczel recounts also how he came by the idea of writing this book. Then he tells the story of Leibniz's encounter with Descartes' hidden work. Some quotes from variously titled texts are adduced, along with Descartes' pseudonym Polybius. The encrypted notebook itself consisted of 16 pages, with alchemical and astrological symbols, obscure figures, and puzzling number sequences. Following this teaser, the book traces the entire course of Descartes' life.

Descartes was the progeny of a wealthy family, endowed also with a tremendous curiosity, an ability to master a variety of skills and a wide range of knowledge, with an especial brilliance in mathematics. He was particularly fascinated by Greek mathematics, and by the power and limitations of what the Greeks could construct with straightedge and compass alone. Descartes was also quite the adventurer, joining in several military escapades, apparently motivated by curiosity rather than partisanship, even taking the side of Protestants in some campaigns though he himself was a lifelong Catholic. (Descartes was a confident swordsman who on one occasion fended off a boatload of criminals he had hired who schemed to assault him and steal his money [pp. 93-95]. He also got caught up in a duel over a woman [pp. 123-125].) Because of his extraordinary ability to solve mathematical problems, Descartes befriended a Dutchman whom he met as a soldier, Isaac Beeckman. They shared a considerable range of knowledge. (Note Descartes' letters to Beeckman of March 26 and April 29, 1619 on Ramon Llull, pp. 47-48.) This is where Descartes' curiosity about mystical ideas was aroused.

Chapter 4 recounts the key dreams that inspired Descartes, his notations in the text Olympica, and the possibility of a meeting with Kepler. Chapter 5 concerns the Athenians' obstacle in doubling the size of the Apollo Temple, a mathematical problem that cannot be solved by straightedge and compass alone. The Delian Problem, as it is known, stumped the Greeks. Descartes' meditation on this problem led him to the mathematical revolution he initiated: the unification of geometry and algebra.

Chapter 6 details the key meeting with the mystic-mathematician Johann Faulhaber of Ulm. We also find a confirmation that Descartes planned to write a mathematical treatise under the pseudonym Polybius the Cosmopolitan. In his notebook Descartes used alchemical symbols used by Faulhaber (pp. 74-75). Faulhaber was interested in the Kabbalah as well as in alchemy. Descartes' solved Faulhaber's mathematical problems. While engaged in a military campaign in Prague, Descartes noted in Olympica on 11 November 1620 a great discovery (p. 79).

In the following chapter we are introduced to the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, or the Rosicrucians, who were cosmopolitan philosophical revolutionaries. Descartes was heavily influenced by the Rosicrucians, so much so that he had to publicly deny any such allegiance, whether or not he was covertly a Rosicrucian. (This rumor also disturbed his close friend Mersenne, a Catholic priest albeit more progressive than most.) Descartes was quite interested in occult matters, and the Rosicrucians were also leaders in mathematical and scientific investigation. Faulhaber was a Rosicrucian. Kepler at least had a Rosicrucian assistant, if he was not one himself. Leibniz, who examined Descartes' notebook, was a Rosicrucian.

I am leaving out of account several details of Descartes' life: his bon vivant lifestyle as well as his periodic retreats into solitude—in hiding even—his military adventures, his interests in women, his financial affairs, etc. The most puzzling aspect of Descartes' character is his investment but apparent detachment regarding military affairs. Aczel finally addresses this question at the end of Chapter 11, after detailing Descartes' participation as a scientific observer in the brutal siege of La Rochelle, in which the population was starved out in the course of its military defeat. Descartes had no animosity against the Huguenots, who were crushed by the Catholic power, or against Protestants in general, whom he had fought for. Aczel attempts to explain Descartes by noting that he was trained by the Jesuits and was inducted into and attracted to military order and structure. In the 17th century, war was conducted in a highly and visibly ordered manner. (pp. 129-130)

This might be one of the more telling indications of the contradictions of the birth of modernity. If I believed in the notion of "instrumental reason" as a fundamental explanatory category, here I would find a key target, as I would in the other unresolved dualities of religion and reason, occultism and science, omnipotent mind/immortal soul and mechanical body.

Max Horkheimer, Montaigne, & bourgeois skepticism (2)

2011-08-27T12:59:00.000-07:00

Bildung and Critical Theory facing Post-modernity by Ilan Gur-Ze'ev

The postmodernity part and the conclusions are insufferable ("critical pedagogy" has always struck me as idiotic) but the content concerning the Frankfurt School and Bildung is interesting.

Here's the passage specifically about Montaigne:

A clear manifestation of this optimist-positive utopianism is Horkheimer's "Montaigne and the role of skepticism." From within the Marxist tradition Horkheimer here articulates the importance and weaknesses of modern, bourgeois skepticism, which is a central element of Enlightenment and the project of Bildung. Because the bourgeoisie have the upper hand, claims Horkheimer, the worth of the individual becomes mainly an economic issue and the critical Spirit becomes an individual’s aesthetic pastime. Skepticism, he claims, is targeted at saving the individual. This is its great goal. But Critical Theory, in opposition to this tradition, conceives the individual as basically dependent on social conditions and understands her emancipation as part of the liberation of humanity, coming about within an essential change in the social totality. This new society, according to the early Horkheimer, will actualize Montaigne's quest for the happy realization of the essence of the human.

It's hard to imagine an academic department more worthless than Education, "Critical Pedagogy" included, unless it's Political Science. Anyway, here's another specimen:

Adorno, Horkheimer, Critical Theory and the Possibility of a Non-Repressive Critical Pedagogy by Ilan Gur-Ze’ev

Horkeimer's essay on Montaigne is mentioned here, too. And here at least is a critique of Henry Giroux, his descent into postmodernism, and his misunderstanding of Marcuse (who also comes under fire) and other critical theorists. The author also recapitulates the development of the ideas of Horkheimer and Adorno.

What does all this come to?

Counter-education, if true to itself, cannot be, like Critical Pedagogy wants us to believe, an attempt to implement any “theory”, as sophisticated or good-intentioned as it may be. If true to itself, counter-education must challenge any theoretical, ideological, or political "home", any master signifier, dogma, or ethnocentrism as manifestations of the Same, of the thingness in Being, which human beings are called to guard and transcend (Heidegger 196, 234). Counter-education, in this sense, must be at once Messianic and negative at any cost. This means that it cannot satisfy itself even with identification with the negation of self-evident, with the resistance to the ethnocentrism of the oppressed and cannot identify itself with the “worthier” violences they actualize against their own "internal" and "external" Others.

Ugh! I can't go on.

Max Horkheimer, Montaigne, & bourgeois skepticism (1)

2011-08-26T15:40:00.000-07:00

In re:

Horkheimer, Max. “Montaigne and the Function of Skepticism,” in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, translated by G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer and John Torpey (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993), pp. 265-311. Original publication: “Montaigne und die Funktion der Skepsis,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 7, no. 1 (1938).

There are some choice quotes in this 1938 essay, few of which will be comprehensible out of context. Let me begin with my favorite:

There is no humanism without a clear position toward the historical problems of the epoch; it cannot exist as a mere profession of faith to itself. The humanism of the past consisted in the critique of the hierarchical feudal order, which had become a fetter on the development of humanity. The humanism of the present consists in the critique of the forms of life under which humanity now perishes, and in the effort to transform them in a rational manner. [p. 308]

Though written in 1938, this claim is applicable to today's humanism, which I intend to show has been intellectually stagnant for decades, esp. lacking in profound social, historical, and political analysis. I adduce this quote as an entry into a whole intellectual tradition excluded by the Anglo-American humanist movement.

Here's another interesting quote, the conclusion of the article. It is not readily decipherable out of context, however:

. . . skepticism in its liberal and authoritarian forms constitutes an aspect of the dominant bourgeois type of individual. The reason is that characterological structures are consolidated and transformed not by knowledge and enlightenment but by material conditions. The advances in weapons technology, by means of which entire peoples are held in check by a well-stocked army, are much more decisive for the persistence of skepticism as an anthropological characteristic than the arguments with which the skeptical attitude seeks to rationalize itself. One could counter that insights such as these constitute the very essence of skepticism. To be sure, it is typical of skepticism, as well as of the dominant character as such, to ascribe the vulgar motives—according to which alone the rulers of the world act—not to them and their principle, but to the idea of humanity itself. The difference here is that the critical theory which we espouse, in contrast to skepticism, does not make an antitheoretical absolutism of the insight into the inadequacy of things as they are and the transitoriness of cognition. Instead, even in the face of pessimistic assessments, critical theory is guided by the unswerving interest in a better future. [p. 311]

Now let's skip to what others have to say about Horkheimer's essay.

Young Horkheimer: Critical Theory Before the Dialectic of Enlightenment, And After It by Matthew Sharpe (2007).

For young Horkheimer, the re-emergence of scepticism in the modern age, first in Montaigne (MFS) and later in Hume’s ‘deconstructions’ of personal identity as “fictional” or consciousness as a “theatre” (MFS, Stirk), already reflect the material disempowerment underlying the bourgeois’ paeans to the autonomous “masters and possessors of nature”.

That's it for Montaigne, though the author places this in context of Horkheimer's overall project of the 1930s.
This analysis, however, is all about Montaigne:

Frankfurt School, 1938: Max Horkheimer on Montaigne by Bruce Miller, Old Hickory's Weblog, 29 January 2011.

For some background on Montaigne:

Michel de Montaigne by Marc Foglia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Note Richard H. Popkin on the conservative dimension of skepticism. It was from Popkin's work that I learned of the dual ideological role of skepticism 40 years ago.

Additional references on my web site:

Philip Kitcher: Militant Modern Atheism

2011-08-23T01:16:00.000-07:00

Kitcher, Philip. "Militant Modern Atheism," Journal of Applied Philosophy,Vol. 28, No. 1, 2011.

While defending the "new atheists" on the matter of their objection to superstition, Kitcher is dissatisfied with the belief model of religion, suggesting an orientation model instead and offering a working taxonomy of religious orientations. Here is a key passage:

First, militant modern atheism is entirely correct in its assault on those types of religious life that fit the belief model. On the other hand, all three of the non-secular approaches that accord with the orientation model are defensible. In the case of the mythically self-conscious that is hardly surprising, and the militant modern atheists applaud when tho e who continue to think of themselves as religious firmly reject ‘supernatural’ entities — the militants think, however, that what remains hardly deserves the name of religion. More problematic, at first sight, are the cases of the doctrinally-entangled and the doctrinally-indefinite. I’ll suggest that doctrinal indefiniteness can be a reasonable expression of epistemic modesty, and that even doctrinal entanglement can be justified when it is the only way of preserving, in the sociocultural environment available, a reflectively stable orientation. Militant modern atheism tends to overlook this point because it is in the firm grip of the belief model, and thus assumes — wrongly — that correction of belief about the occupants of the cosmos can automatically be articulated into a satisfying vision of what is valuable in one’s life. Perhaps that is true for the privileged few, but it is not so for the less fortunate many.

I find Kitcher's justification of an orientation model unconvincing and incoherent, though indeed the belief model (which one sees in its most ridiculous incarnation in Sam Harris) is shallow and asociological. Kitcher however does go on to emphasize the inadequacy of religious experiences, however valuable they may be as pure experience, as justifications for beliefs and doctrines.

Kitcher also addresses the inadequacy of Dawkins' & Dennett's speculative evolutionary psychology, which is based on the belief model, or in the case of Dennett an incipient orientation model. Kitcher frames the inadequacy in terms of needs which may be unmet by Dawkins' perspective, given the fact that few can participate in the creative scientific life therein indicated. You can read Kitcher's conclusions for yourself. I find his treatment inadequate, and paradoxically, predicated on the same academic isolation as that of the militant atheists he criticizes: his tolerance is the tolerance of the privileged, and just as apolitical.

Blasphemy Tanka for James Baldwin

2011-08-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

Blasphemy Tanka for James Baldwin

In James Baldwin's tale,
    Go Tell It on the Mountain,
        a note for Jesus:
    ". . . tell that puking bastard to
kiss my big black ass." It's there!

REFERENCE: James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953; New Dell Edition, 1970), p. 163.

— Ralph Dumain, 7 & 11 August 2011

Tribute to Black Women Non-Theists

2011-08-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

Here you go:

A Long Overdue Tribute to Black Women Non-Theists,
By Norm R. Allen Jr.
August 9, 2011,
Black Skeptics Group

Richard Wright's Outsider vs. the priest

2011-08-09T08:14:00.000-07:00

Cross's anxieties now condensed themselves into an attitude of sullenness toward the priest. He disliked most strongly all men of religion because he felt that they could take for granted an interpretation of the world that his sense of life made impossible. The priest was secure and walked the earth with a divine mandate, while Cross's mere breathing was an act of audacity, a confounding wonder at the daily mystery of himself. He felt that the attitude of the priest was predicated upon a scheme of good and evil ordained by a God whom he was constrained out of love and fear to obey; and Cross therefore regarded him as a kind of dressed-up savage intimidated by totems and taboos that differed in kind but not in degree from those of the most primitive of peoples. Cross had to discover what was good or evil through his own actions which were more exacting than the edicts of any God because it was he alone who had to bear the brunt of their consequences with a sense of absoluteness made intolerable by knowing that this life of his was all he had and would ever have. For him there was no grace or mercy if he failed.

SOURCE: Wright, Richard. The Outsider (1953). Restored text: Works. Volume 2. Later Works: Black Boy (American Hunger); The Outsider. New York: Library of America, 1991. (The Library of America; no. 56) Excerpt from Book Two: Dream, p. 494.

UFO (Haiku for Richard Wright)

2011-08-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

"The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowed perceptions,
Are become weak Visions of Time & Space, fix'd into furrows of death;
Till deep dissimulation is the only defence an honest man has left"

— William Blake, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion, 49.23; E198

"Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form."

— Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge, Kreuznach, September 1843

      UFO
(Haiku for Richard Wright)

    by Ralph Dumain

Whirling in the sky,
  the truth is over their heads
    in more ways than one.

  (4 August 2011)

Haiku for Richard Wright

by Ralph Dumain

The Outsider read
summons purple-flowered fields
contrasting the doom.

(Written 11 Feb. 1995)

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

— William Blake, Songs of Experience

The first stanza of this poem prefaces Richard Wright's The Outsider.

Freethought Blogs

2011-07-31T23:19:00.000-07:00

The new multi-blog Freethought Blogs is now operational! (August 1)

The member blogs are:

Is Critique Secular?

2011-07-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, Critical Horizons by Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. (The Townsend Papers in the Humanities; no. 2)

As if Judith Butler weren't already disgusting enough. Anti-imperialism as an absolute for the (pseudo-)left is rotten politics. And of course academic politics is nothing but unscrupulous careerism anyway.

Edis, Taner. Is Critique Secular?, The Secular Outpost (blog), December 6, 2010.

I'm glad to see someone besides myself denounce the intellectual alliance between postmodernist westerners and apologists for Islam.

Gourgouris, Stathis. “De-transcendentalizing the secular,” The Immanent Frame (blog).

Unequivocal defense of secularism and rejection of identity politics, coupled with an interesting analysis of the relation between transcendentalism and theism (Descartes, Kant), but decoupling a necessary relation between secularism and the Christian West.

Mahmood, Saba. “Is critique secular?”, The Immanent Frame (blog).

“This line of thought urges you to choose: either one is against secular values or one is for them.” This is actually the case, though Mahmood denies it. A noxious example of the dishonest Counter-Enlightenment collusion between postmodernism & religion.

Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers. “What the Danish Cartoon Controversy Tells Us About Religion, the Secular, and the Limits of the Law,” Religion Dispatches, January 7, 2010.

Rotten to the core.

Thomassen, Lasse. Review: Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler and Saba Mahmood, Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, Critical Horizons, Vol 12, No 1, 2010, pp. 103-107.

On the Danish cartoons; the book under review is apparently another horrid example of the meeting of postmodernism and religion.

Yager, Colin. “Is Critique Secular? Thoughts on Enchantment and Reflexivity.”

A completely confused mess. Thoughts on Habermas, Taylor, Romanticism, with too much dallying on Byron. Bankrupt.

Chris Hedges vs. Sam Harris

2011-07-31T21:49:00.000-07:00

The Wrong Conclusion
By Eric MacDonald, Choice in Dying (blog), 30 July 2011

John Gray and Steven Pinker are full of crap. And in this case, Chris Hedges.

The Blog : Dear Angry Lunatic: A Response to Chris Hedges : Sam Harris

Hedges is good on the "liberal class" and the fascist threat, a real douchebag on atheism. Harris is politically backward and historically illiterate. This is a reminder that one cannot wholeheartedly belong to any individual social movement at this time. Some are at odds with others; they are all riddled with contradictions.

Marxism & religion: 2 articles

2011-07-31T21:19:00.000-07:00

A key challenge for socialists - Marxists and Religion - yesterday and today
by Gilbert Achcar, International Viewpoint, 15 October 2004.

I mostly agree. I agree esp. with the criticism of alliances between British Trotskyists and Islamists.

Opiate of the People? - Marxism and Religion
By Michael Löwy
International Viewpoint Online magazine, IV368, June 200.

The historical overview is interesting, but I think Löwy is shallow and wrong. I also think Ernst Bloch is wrong. Löwy's treatment of the Frankfurt School is deplorable.

Roland Boer on Terry Eagleton

2011-07-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

Quailing Before the Real: Terry Eagleton on Ethics
[review of Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics]
By Roland Boer, The Hobgoblin, 1 December 2010

Roland Boer makes mincemeat of Eagleton's left Catholicism. I have doubts about Ernst Bloch as well. I will never ever trust the advocates of liberal or left religion.

The Bolsheviks and Islam

2011-07-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

International Socialism: The Bolsheviks and Islam
by Dave Crouch, Issue 110, April 2006

Fascinating historical material, combined with the rotten "anti-imperialist" politics of the British Socialist Workers Party. Assuming for the moment that this account is accurate, we must emphasize that the political model of the early Bolshevik regime is unusable for today's politics. One may marvel at the attempt to finesse the modernization and secularization of a multitude of backward cultures, and marvel still more at the Bolsheviks' notion that they might succeed, that they, combining state power with the concentrated power of reason, could actually leverage an irrational society into a rational one. The British SWP, for all its historical sophistication, would not want to acknowledge this impossibility. The objectivity of Stalinism, not only what it was consciously, consists in the logic of stooping to conquer. Just as it dragged the feudal peasant Russian Empire into the modern world by despotic means, it also adapted and lowered itself to the meanest peasant mentality to make it happen. The Bolsheviks seized a critical historical moment and took a chance on the future. But today's Marxists who look to them for guidance are only fooling themselves.

Dewey & the Dao of Politics

2011-07-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

Sor-hoon Tan, The Dao of Politics: Li (Rituals/Rites) and Laws as Pragmatic Tools of Government, Philosophy East and West - Volume 61, Number 3, July 2011, pp. 468-491.

Combining Dewey & Confucianism: nearly all East-Meets-West literature is trash, as is nearly all contemporary Chinese philosophy in dialogue with the Western. This article appears to be no exception. The lack of intellectual and political principle of these hacks is breathtaking.

Atheism | The Kojo Nnamdi Show

2011-07-31T18:26:00.000-07:00

Atheism | The Kojo Nnamdi Show, July 28, 2011

"In our society, it's taboo to insult Christians, Jews, Muslims or other believers for their faith, but many feel no such compunction about atheists. And a surprising number say they wouldn't vote for an atheist. Negative attitudes toward atheists may be in part the result of misconceptions about atheism and the various philosophies associated with it, like secular humanism and free thinking. We speak to atheists working to raise their profile and create a better understanding about what they do—and don't—believe."

Kudos to Kojo for a fairness uncommon in the mainstream media. All the guests were good, with just one caveat. In this case I especially liked no-nonsense Edwin Kagin, who represented American Atheists and Camp Quest. I dislike the overly diplomatic, weak, and mealy-mouthed tenor of humanists in spots, and worst of all, the demonizing of the New Atheists. There is but so much of the soft and cuddly humanist sales pitch I can take. Note also the Jamaican caller who never had contact with other atheists before.

The New Atheists, Political Narratives, & the Betrayal of the Enlightenment

2011-07-31T18:14:00.000-07:00

The New Atheists, Political Narratives, and the Betrayal of the Enlightenment. The Real Delusion: Part 1
by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard, Dissident Voice, July 27, 2011

I'm in partial agreement, but note my objections. The 'New Atheists' is a journalistic fiction. The campaign against superstition is not a distraction; it's not the case that the New Atheists have distracted us from the real issues, but they have failed to make the unbreakable linkage between irrationalism and the real issues that undergird it. Harris is indeed the worst of the lot.

Malcolm X vs. James Baldwin

2011-07-31T16:45:00.000-07:00

In Part 3 of this three-party discussion James Baldwin offers a superior perspective to that of Malcolm X's Nation of Islam nonsense, and in the process firmly rejects all religion, all theology, all myth, while showing no mercy concerning the moral bankruptcy of American society. How sad that the imbeciles who comment on this and other YouTube videos single out Malcolm X for praise, when Baldwin's world view is so much more sophisticated.

Spinoziana: Berger, Borges, Yovel & Nietzsche

2011-07-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

Bento's Sketchbook by John Berger

This new book from Verso by the venerable John Berger is not to be missed. (I haven't seen it yet, though.) You will find more of interest on the Verso page, including the YouTube video embedded above.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote two poems in homage to Spinoza. (See my web site for more Borges goodies: Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Study Materials on the Web.) There is more than one translation of both poems. You might miss this one otherwise, so here is an out-of-the-way translation for your benefit.

“Spinoza” by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Yirmiyahu Yovel

This translation prefaces Yovel's Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence [v. 2 of 2] (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). While in vol. 1 Yovel seeks out sources of Spinoza's philosophy of immanence in the culture of the Marranos, in vol. 2 he traces various philosophical configurations of the Spinoza's immanentist influence in subsequent thinkers. The chapter comparing Spinoza and Nietzsche is especially revealing, as is Nietzsche's snarky poem, herein translated:

“To Spinoza” by Friedrich Nietzsche

This I think yields another insight into the underlying viciousness of Nietzsche's philosophy. (See my Anti-Nietzsche Bibliography for more.)

Humanistic Judaism: religion or philosophy?

2011-07-31T16:03:00.000-07:00

I always liked the Humanistic Jews—in DC, the Machar people—but this is mealy-mouthed nonsense. Humanistic Judaism is not, as far as I know, traditional Judaism. The latter is unequivocally a religion; the former, I would think, depends on the individual perspective of the participants. But people should be clear about what they're advocating and not engage in mystification. If everybody's Jewish values were Einstein's, we'd now be in a better world, but "Jewish values" are not metaphysically given; they're no more than what you make them, especially when you're selective about the ideas you have extracted from tradition.

Raymond Tallis critiques scientism

2011-07-31T14:55:00.000-07:00

Raymond Tallis - Undiscovered | New Humanist, Volume 126, Issue 4, July/August 2011

"A misreading of science has persuaded us that we are no more than our evolved brains. But, argues Raymond Tallis, a more expansive philosophy of humanity is mounting a fight-back"

This article makes a good start, but it's still a bit fuzzy. It could have been much better; the author could have delved deeper into the ideology of scientism that keeps the atheist/humanist/skeptics movement willfully ignorant of history and society.

Diversifying the Skeptics Movement?

2011-07-31T14:31:00.000-07:00

If this doesn't show up the still uncritical insipidity of the "skeptics" movement, I don't know what does:

The Skeptical Canon by Austin Dacey, July 26, 2011 (CSI)

The one glimmer in this cavalcade of banality is the cryptic reference to Greta Christina's suggestion (not specified in this essay). The best thing that could be done for the so-called skeptics movement would be to boot Jillette, Shermer, Dawkins, and Harris out of it. The increase of "diversity" appears to have done little for actual rethinking of the tacit ideology underlying the whole movement, where the social superstitions that really cause harm—libertarianism for example—are swept under the rug as issues.

Penn Jillette's libertarianism—advocacy of sweatshops & other bullshit!—Michael Shermer's love of Ayn Rand and his pseudoscientific "evolutionary economics", Dawkins' pseudoscientific drivel about "memes" and religion as a virus, Harris' political backwardness and philosophical childishness concerning morality's relation to science—all of this shows up the tacit ideological underpinnings of the so-called skeptics movement. "Diversity" has not changed this ideological culture, or the culture of celebrity, one iota.

Which is the Way to God, Please? Little Piglet Asked

2011-07-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

Wo bitte geht's zu Gott? fragte das kleine Ferkel by Michael Schmidt-Salomon kaj Helge Nyncke is a famous German antireligious children's book.

An English translation of the text is downloadable: Which is the Way to God, Please? Little Piglet Asked (A book for all those who won't let themselves be fooled), translated by Fiona Lorenz.

Click here for (a slideshow of) the illustrations.

Moses Mendelssohn on reason, revelation, miracles & the practice of Judaism

2011-07-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Michael Hecht in her book Doubt: A History (p. 365) adduces this quote; I am quoting a larger chunk:

Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation—no ‘revealed religion’ in the usual sense of that phrase. Revealed religion is one thing, revealed legislation is another. The voice that let itself be heard on Sinai on that great day did not proclaim

‘I am the Eternal, your God, the necessary, independent being, omnipotent and omniscient, that recompenses men in a future life according to their deeds.’

This is the universal religion of mankind, not Judaism; and the universal religion of mankind, without which men are neither virtuous nor capable of happiness, was not to be revealed there. Actually, it couldn’t have been revealed there, for who would have been convinced of these eternal doctrines of salvation by the voice of thunder and the sound of trumpets? Surely not the unthinking animal-man who hadn’t thought his way through to the existence of an invisible being that governs the visible. The miraculous voice wouldn’t have given him any concepts, so it wouldn’t have convinced him—let alone the sophist, whose ears are buzzing with so many doubts and ruminations that he can’t hear the voice of common sense any more. He demands rational proofs, not miracles. And even if the teacher of religion raised from the dust all the dead who ever trod the earth, in order to establish an eternal truth, the sceptic would say:
‘The teacher has awakened many dead, but I don’t know any more about eternal truth than I did before. I do know now that someone can do and say extraordinary things; but there may be several such beings, who aren’t ready to reveal themselves just yet. And all this ·raising-the-dead routine· is so far removed from the infinitely sublime idea of a unique and eternal Deity that rules the entire universe according to its unlimited will, and detects men’s most secret thoughts in order to reward their deeds according to their merits, either here or in the hereafter!
Anyone who didn’t already know this, anyone who wasn’t saturated with these truths that are so indispensable to human happiness, and ·therefore· wasn’t prepared to approach the holy mountain, might have been bowled over by the wonderful manifestations but he couldn’t have learned anything from them. – No! All this was presupposed; perhaps it was taught, explained, and placed beyond all doubt by human reasoning during the days of preparation.

– Jerusalem: or Religious Power and Judaism (1782), edited by Jonathan Bennett

The most remarkable part of this passage is the quote from the hypothetical skeptic. Hecht summarizes other aspects of Mendelssohn's position (pp. 362-366). Mendelssohn severed belief from practice and, as Hecht notes, was convinced that Jewish practices could be adhered to without belief. He proved to be correct within a century and a half. However, if you read further in Jerusalem, you should note that this liberalized and rationalized view of religion remains burdened with a fundamental contradiction. It is quite true that Judaism differs from Christianity in that it is more about behavior than belief or salvation. Furthermore, in today's secular society this is the tacit orientation of most American Jews. However, there is none other than an irrational and authoritarian basis for adherence to the Torah or its "legislation". Hence Mendelssohn, though a hero of the Enlightenment (and specifically the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment), is at best a liberal figure, and not as radical as his contemporary Salomon Maimon, not to mention Spinoza. (See also my post on Maimon in my Esperanto blog: Salomon Maimon: filozofo & obstina judo.) Hecht is not concerned with this contradiction, though; she concludes with an apparently laudatory reference to Mendelssohn's pluralism.

Re-thinking reason in the service of postmodern irrationalism

2011-07-16T08:36:00.000-07:00

Re-thinking Reason: New Perspectives in Critical Thinking, edited by Kerry S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. xviii, 265 pp. (SUNY series, Teacher Empowerment and School Reform)

Table of Contents:
Introduction : beyond logicism in critical thinking / Kerry S. Walters
Teaching two kinds of thinking by teaching writing / Peter Elbow
On critical thinking and connected knowing / Blythe McVicker Clinchy
Educating for empathy, reason, and imagination / Delores Gallo
Critical thinking, rationality, and the vulcanization of students / Kerry S. Walters
Toward a gender-sensitive ideal of critical thinking : a feminist poetic / Anne M. Phelan and James W. Garrison
Critical thinking and the "trivial pursuit" theory of knowledge / John E. McPeck
Why two heads are better than one : philosophical and pedagogical implications of a social view of critical thinking / Connie Missimer
Community and neutrality in critical thought : a nonobjective view on the conduct and teaching of critical thinking / Karl Hostetler
Critical thinking and feminism / Karen J. Warren
Teaching critical thinking in the strong sense : a focus on self-deception, world views, and a dialectical mode of analysis / Richard W. Paul
Toward a pedagogy of critical thinking / Henry A. Giroux
Teaching intellectual autonomy : the failure of the critical thinking movement / Laura Duhan Kaplan
Critical thinking beyond reasoning : restoring virtue to thought / Thomas H. Warren
Is critical thinking a technique, or a means of enlightenment? / Lenore Langsdorf.

This annotation is compiled from comments written on 28 Jan. 2005, 4 Feb. 2005, and 29 Aug. 2006:

The premise of this book is to challenge prevalent assumptions of the 'critical thinking' literature, i.e. that limiting critical thinking to an expose of logical fallacies and to concentrate exclusively on the formal aspects of rational thinking just won't do the job. All this is true, and several of the essays provide more comprehensive models of reasoning, all except the feminist essays (and the postmodernist ones—usually the same), all of which are garbage. We can find similar things going in feminist philosophy of science, similarly trashy.

I have a strong aversion to the use of feelgood language as a tool of manipulation, which this book seems to represent: keywords like "empathy", "gender", "feminism", "community", "nonobjective", "sensitive," "empowerment" are red flags. What is most alarming and depressing here, if my hunch proves to be correct, is a move not beyond formalism, but beneath it, i.e. towards an illiberal irrationalism in the guise of emancipation. This is just the worst of the mentality that came out of the self-indulgent childishness of the '60s, which at least was sufficiently undertheorized at the time not to yield the monstrous intellectual constructs whose institutionalization began in the '70s and exploded into pop culture in the '80s. It is truly mind-boggling and distressing how this poison has insinuated itself into the commonsense of liberal and radical intellectuals. Some of them seem to be amnesiac about their own history. (Once again my trademark slogan for explaining our current state: “It's the '70s, stupid!”)

The move beyond formalism seems to be a pretext to retool critical thinking in an irrationalist format exploiting the obscurantist comfort language of communitarianism and feminism. What could serve as a more fitting example of the counteracting of the expansion of social vocabulary by philosophical contraction?

As a counterweight, consult the essays of Karl Maton, who has analyzed the logic of knower vs. knowledge modes of legitimation, characterizing the new knower mode as the inverted correlate of the divine right of kings. I'll add that the proliferation of identities coincides, curiously, with the eclipse of the individual.

References:

“Popes, Kings & Cultural Studies: Placing the commitment to non-disciplinarity in historical context” by Karl Maton

“Historical Amnesia” by Karl Maton & Rob Moore

Feminist 'logic'

2011-07-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

Nye, Andrea. Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic. New York: Routledge, 1990. (Thinking Gender Series)

Representing Reason: Feminist Theory and Formal Logic, edited by Rachel Joffe Falmagne and Marjorie Hass. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.

Here is the publisher's description:
Philosophy's traditional "man of reason"—independent, neutral, unemotional—is an illusion. That's because the "man of reason" ignores one very important thing—the woman.

As feminist philosophy grew in the 1980s and '90s, it became clear that the attributes philosophical tradition wrote off as "womanly" are in fact part of human nature. No longer can philosophy maintain the dichotomy between the rational man and the emotional woman, but must now examine a more complex human being, able to reason and feel. Yet feminist philosophy also makes it clear that men and women theorize the world in different ways, from different perspectives. Representing Reasons: Feminist Theory and Formal Logic collects new and old essays that shed light on the underexplored intersection of logic and feminism.

The papers in this collection cross over many of the traditional divides between continental and analytic philosophy, between philosophical reflection and empirical investigation, and between empirical investigations with an individual or societal grain of analysis. This is possible because Representing Reasons frames the relationship between logic and feminism in terms of issues rather than historical figures or methodologies. As such, the articles serve as a model for crossing these divides, just as they break down the traditional divide between logic and feminism.

Here is what I wrote about this nonsense on 29 August 2006 (only slightly edited):

This drivel creates rather than closes a gap between logic and feminism and demonstrates how feminist philosophy defiles every subject it touches. "Feminism" in academic terms apparently has nothing to do with the perceptible goals of the sadly now antiquated term "women's liberation" (which presumably meant something); rather it is the self-serving ideological smokescreen for a professional middle class elite, much like Afrocentrism or similar mystical nationalisms. It is ironic but telling how traditionally 'feminine' petit bourgeois feminist theory is in practice—oh, I'm just a helpless innocent emotional female and look what these awful men have done to me—i.e. resorting to the most traditionally feminine weapons—duplicity and manipulation. If 'theorizing the world differently' comes to this, then these women have disqualified themselves from any claim to reason and demonstrated the very intellectual inferiority they protest.

The Undercover Philosopher & critical thinking

2011-07-11T11:36:00.000-07:00

I have long meant to read and review this important book. See also the web site for The Undercover Philosopher. Here is the Introduction.

I'm guessing that this could be one of the best introductions to critical thinking in a practical way, beyond the usual compendia of logical fallacies and guides to informal logic.

Here is a video from the case files of the Undercover Philosopher:

This book feeds into my project initiated a few years ago, under the title "Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking." This is could also be called metacritical thinking. I aim to evaluate various theories and practices of critical thinking.

I sent this comment to the author on 28 April 2008:

From the looks of the introduction, this book is right on point. [. . . .] I am especially interested in the philosophical dimension. Your capsule summary of the practical meaning of historical philosophical debates is pretty much on point. I only disagree that the Frankfurt School feeds into postmodernism. Some have tried to use late Adorno for such purposes, but I think this gambit is pretty flimsy. There is, of course, a tendency for the contemporary purveyors of a smorgasbord of continental doctrines to blend them all together, but, paradoxically, I think there's an implicit and not entirely honest selectively at work in what gets appropriated.

Interesting that you should mention Kant. This evening I attended a talk on Hume and Kant, which was quite interesting as an introduction, but the speaker herself couldn't draw the appropriate conclusions about the difference between the 18th century and now. The opposition between foundationalism and skepticism should have been left behind a long time ago. Oddly, nobody understood my point that once you drop the demand for absolute certainty, your philosophical agenda becomes completely transformed. However, I have yet to see the appropriate conclusions being drawn even among those with an academic training in philosophy.

All of the chapter and subchapter headings bespeak issues of great interest. The first ones I would want to see are the section "Media Misrepresentations: Training, Ideology, Careerism, Politics, and Organization", "Big Picture Assumptions", and Chapter 6—the philosophical chapter.

Now there is no need for you to concern yourself with any of what you just read. The book is very down to earth and is intended for the average person.

Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" (3)

2011-07-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

Follow-up on my preceding two posts: Here is my first intervention on the subject on the Ray Bradbury Message Board, 8-9 May 2003.

More importantly, there are several excerpts of the 1979 miniseries on YouTube. Here is one of the climactic scenes:

I presume this is part of the soundtrack. The entire recording was available for purchase and can still be found at amazon.com.

Ray Bradbury & religion

2011-07-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

I first became interested in this topic upon revisiting the 1979 mini-series The Martian Chronicles, which I found thematically rich, lack of sophisticated special effects notwithstanding. I wrote an essay about it and transcribed a thought-provoking scene:

The Martian Chronicles & Our Subjective Desires (8/2/2001, rev. 5/17/2003, 6/1/2003)

In 2003, I participated in the Ray Bradbury Message Board. (This is the current incarnation of the message board. There are links to an older version I will also include.) Here I am extracting and mildly editing some of my interesting posts on Bradbury's fictional treatment of religion and principles of criticism.

* * *

posted 05-15-2003 12:32 AM

I would also want to look at the open-endedness of Bradbury's stories from a less open-ended view, i.e. what makes it objectively possible to draw opposing conclusions from the text? It's interesting that Bradbury shows Peregrine to be selfish and parochial in projecting his own need and thus torturing the Martian. If the Martian really were Jesus, it would be just as bad, because the selfishness would be just the same. It's this aspect of the story that I find brilliant. On the other hand, the priest's basic standing, his mission, and his quest are granted their dignity; only his provincialism and lack of knowledge of other things in the universe are lacking. Hence he comes off looking pretty decent in spite of his limitations.

I find this fascinating and I think revealing of Bradbury. I would not have let the priest off the hook like this, but then I'm a different person. Ultimately this aspect of the story is a bit too pious (and even conservative) for me. It is also guaranteed as much as possible not to offend the religious believer, while the author still remains a freethinker. In other words, Bradbury comes off as a religious liberal rather than an iconoclast against traditional religion. I think this is a shortcoming myself, a lack of critical edge, but what Bradbury does he does beautifully.

posted 05-15-2003 02:23 AM

Now when I say that I would not have been as lenient as Bradbury, that statement is only of value insofar as it allows us to inquire into the logical structure of Bradbury's fictional treatment of religious topics. You have explained fairly well both aspects of RB's treatment of the subject. On the one hand, he evinces skepticism towards limited and partial views which lay claim to more complete knowledge that he evidently thinks exists. On the other, he treats these limited views as components of a larger truth, a puzzle to be better put together if not completed in the future. This is the logic I believe needs to be delved into.

This structure allows a number of things to happen. One, spiritual experience, or the alleged spiritual content of belief systems, can be preserved intact and only closed-minded dogmatism rejected. One could even claim that such openness reflects the real meaning of traditional religious views more so than their dogmatic shells. Two, the specific nature of the partial truths revealed in various religious systems in relation to the yet undetermined whole truth remains indefinite and unspecified. Hence a religious liberalism that can be all things to all people except to die-hard fanatics who terrorize anyone who refuses to genuflect to their religious beliefs--I won't name names.

I find this an interesting logical structure, esp. in comparison to others that might be constructed. True, it's Bradbury's that matter here: not to disavow, not to endorse, but to understand. But one way of understanding is to dig into the assumptions involved. In stories such as "The Fire Balloons" and "The Messiah", RB is might generous to these priests--much more than they deserve, in my opinion, but what matters is the underlying logic of the stories. Are there other RB stories where his implied criticism of conventional religion is much harsher?

posted 05-15-2003 12:39 PM

I agree on the point about the difference between the symbolic indeterminacy of literature vs. the precision demanded by philosophical analysis. Literature embodies within it various models of reality, and we both agree that we can demand precision in our analyses of these models even though we would never demand of the artist an unequivocal advocacy of a particular position. However, by making this demand on ourselves, we can overcome our own inhibitions in getting to the bottom of the object of our scrutiny.

My personal acquaintance with Bradbury's views suffers from several decades of separation from his work. I'm going on memories of books I haven't read since some of you were born, most likely. But my immediate stimulus was an investigation into The Martian Chronicles and related stories, though I have had thoughts about the prescience of Fahrenheit 451, and generally about the boldness in the repressive 1950s of Bradbury's radical critique of American society. I actually never read "The Messiah"--I don't remember reading it--until a few days ago. Same with "The Fire Balloons." Instead, I was going on a vivid impression I did not forget even after two decades of the scene from the miniseries. I've rarely seen such a brilliant expression of a philosophical concept. Indeed, ideas matter more to me than special effects, which is why I find SF movies so insufferable, including the recent dumbed-down version of Solaris.

The priest's confrontation with the Martian Jesus was brilliant. It was all about his need, his projections, and the effects of his subjective needs, i.e. the torture of others. This is a profound observation you never ever see in popular culture. And if this Martian Jesus were the "real" Jesus, the message would be the same: why do you continue to torture me with your need? Because of YOUR need, I am held hostage to this form and am forced to suffer. Brilliant!

So the story stuck with me, as it resonated with my world view, a rare experience for me in watching TV. But it didn't even occur to me until reading these stories and reviewing this thread that the story in its religious liberalism still respects conventional piety much more than it deserves. Not that I would demand Bradbury rewrite his story to unequivocally condemn the priest, but you see it's just this aspect of Bradbury's work that demands further analysis. Because in it there may be some conventional thinking, sentimentalism, or even psychological inhibition (Midwestern?) that may explain how Bradbury handles his material across the board. I never thought about this before, but this consideration opens up new territory, to me at any rate.

posted 05-15-2003 07:51 PM

I cannot pursue a conversation that is predicated on an opposition to critical thought. Hence questions like why can't you just appreciate it as a story and don't worry about what it means, or what's wrong with conventional thought, are conversation-stoppers for me. As for distrust, I distrust people who don't think and who oppose critical thought.

The question of leniency to the priest opens up an avenue of deliberation which several people would like to shut down. "Tolerance" in this case means the destruction of critical thought and the endorsement of repressive institutions that have 2000 years of unspeakable crimes behind them. The question here is not to force ex post facto RB to write the story some of us might have preferred to be written, but to get at the assumptions behind his treatment. In reality, there are several kinds of priests: the sincere kind portrayed in Bradbury's stories, political priests of the right and left, tolerant priests, fanatical, authoritarian priests, child molesting priests, passive and dependent priests who join the church like others join the army so that they will be told what to do, etc. But whichever type you pick to focus on, you ought to consider that person's relationship to an authoritarian, retrograde institution like the Catholic Church. (Not that others don't serserve the same criticism, but this reprobate institution is the one udner consideration now.) In other words, instead of taking people at face value, their underlying assumptions about their place in the world have to be questioned, by me anyway. But feel free to go back to sleep, if you like.

RB happened to pick one or more of the better priests: showing their limitations still leaves them off the hook because of their sincerity and alleged good intentions. I'm not saying that it is a defect of the story that RB didn't treat his priests differently: it's that, by considering a range of possibilities, we can get at the assumptions underlying the story and therefore the "evidence" given us to react to in the various ways that we do. I was quite content to accept "The Messiah" (in its transmuted televised incarnation) as is for over two decades, because what I thought it did it did brilliantly. I still do, but now I ask more questions, after reading through this thread, in which I find the analysis of Mr. Dark to be very useful and everyone else's remarks to be completely useless. The priest is shown to be reacting to his subjective need, which means victimizing the Martian "Jesus." But it might as well be the real Jesus: even the most sincere worshipper is a parasite feeding off the misery of this poor deified Hebrew instead of standing on his own two feet. The way RB dramatizes this insight is a stroke of genius. So this can be a basis of further deliberation: what are the other consequences of such belief systems and the institutions that support them, even in their most benign moments? Does Bradbury enable us to push even further, does he push further himself, does he backtrack? Does his tolerance in the final analysis put the brakes on critique being carried to its ultimate conclusions?

Again, he need not have done more than he did in this one story. But as readers we ought to do more. If we don't, then we remain naive. You of course have this right, but I am not obligated to keep quiet about what I think for fear of offending your delicate sensibilities, which in the final analysis may not be well-intentioned either.

posted 05-16-2003 06:51 PM

We could take this further and ask, why take the priest seriously at all? Just my question. Bradbury shows up his limitations, but not too harshly. [GS--another interlocutor] also makes the crucial point of tying Christian imperialism to real, physical colonization. The Martian Chronicles is inter alia a critique of how the USA treated the territory it conquered after exterminating the Indians. Anyone who knows the basic facts about the acitivies of Christian missionaries knows the criminal role they played in terrorizing the native peoples. And the Indians did not take this crap lying down. Several Indian chiefs, among them Red Jacket, had scathing contempt not only for Christians, but for Christianity itself. In their arguments they showed themselves the equals of any secular humanist, contrary to the popular images of Indians current nowadays guided in every thought and action by spirit visions. The compulsion of irrational belief in unprovable assertions of allegedly earth-shattering import based on unverifable sacred texts written in distant times and places, there is the very essence of imperialism. This issue is conceptually distinct to be sure from a generic conception of the divine or of spirituality, but the claim that a particular religious doctrine is not false but just part of a greater truth is the sort of wishy-wishy tolerance that tolerates nonsense and harmful ideas in lieu of defining the specific relationships between particularistic doctrines and the generic sensibilities to be defended.

[. . . ] What do you think RB's use of the word "God" implies? Is hew just using it as a conventional symbol or does he mean it literally in a recognizable way? And how does it relate to his poetic style in general? Do you take him seriously as a poet, or do you think his poetry is rather conventional, second-rate doggerel?

posted 05-16-2003 11:05 PM

To reiterate the logic of this inquiry: what is the structure of RB's story/stories that enables us to argue for an emphasis on its/their lessons from our own varying points of view? What are the range of possible interpretations that may reasonably be based on the text itself? Also, what are the projections we are likely to make based on our own individual viewpoints? [MD--another interlocutor] presented a convincing case for RB's own views, those implicit in his stories and what is known of his explicit views.

One or more people identified RB as a Unitarian. The question of RB's known personal identification and the views implicit in his fiction are not synonomous though obviously related. They are not identical questions, because the very nature of fiction or poetry as opposed to a philosophical argument or assertion is that it sets up a concrete picture of a reality, which, instead of labelling itself, presents itself to us to interpret as we may, as does life itself. Artists create something concrete, whose implicit structure may even "prove" the opposite of what they consciously intended.

Naturally, facing this scenario, I interpreted it in a way congenial to me. Then I read about two pages of posts on this thread, and I realized I had to think about other aspects of the story which were never issues for me. From reading these posts, I concluded that the lack of sharpness to what the issues really are in life could result in a flabby judgment of the fictional narrative. Again, it's not a question of whether RB should have written a different type of story and prove that he is on one side or the other. Rather, by inquiring sharply into the issues raised by the narrative, and the range of possibilities enabled by its structure, including but not limited to RB's known or probable attitudes, we get define with greater depth the logical structure of suppositions that both the narrative and we make.

I'm pretty sure I'm not succeeding in getting this across, even to a sympathetic reader, nor do I think I would do much better by taking care not to arouse other people's hysteria. It's not an easy point to convey under any circumstances. [GS] has brought out some additional implications of "The Fire Balloons." An essential point of my last point, hysterical reaction notwithstanding, was: what is the relationship implied between generic spiritual concerns and specific doctrines? It's not that RB must conform to anyone else's notion, or that an interpreter should project his own views onto RB's intentions in order to feel more comfortable with the work. It's that, unless we can pose pointed questions that sharply compare our sense of reality to what we read, we are not going to fully understand the conceptual structures at play. In the final analysis we might wish to determine, without diminishing RB's achievement: what is RB capable of saying or showing in his work, and what not? Hence the problem of being wishy-washy, or mental inhibition, self-censorship, the fear of thinking unacceptable thoughts.

posted 05-17-2003 02:05 AM

I am not interested in building community; I see no value in it, especially not in intellectual matters. However, I am interested in exercising the mental discipline not to lose focus or control of the subject matter and to be able to advance a line of argument to the next step. Avoiding stagnation--becoming bogged down--is what I would like to strive for in these discussions. That way, disagreement doesn't have to lead to a dead end, at least not until there's nothing left to be said.

Perhaps the fault is mine, but you missed my point about the Indians. My characterizing them as equal to secular humanists (not secular humanists themselves!) in their reasoning ability to reject the authority of the Bible is the opposite of romanticizing Indians (or am I compelled to say Native Americans?), as people close to the earth, guided by spirit visions, and similar Noble Savage crapola. My intent was to show them as reasoning beings in their better moments just like anyone else. So it's not about idealization or romanticization. As for any missionaries doing any of them any good, that's news to me.

Now back to Peregrine. Yes, I accept your characterization of the story and its characters. Just extend that reasoning further and ask yourself why those priests were even priests at all. If course if they weren't, there would be no story and we would be up the creek, but suppose Peregrine's open-mindedness and capacity for self-examination had led him to even more drastic conclusions about the institution and belief system in which he was enmeshed. There are even further implications to this scenario than those brought out. No, it wouldn't make sense for RB to pursue them to the extreme in this one short story. The story might even lose its plausibility and effectiveness if it were pushed too far. But it is easy to see that one could draw far more drastic conclusions about being part of a church or a religion. (This has happened in history, too, even in theology, for example in Higher Criticism or the curious doctrine of Christian atheism or Death-of-God theology.) I'm suggesting that it is important to see this, not to criticize Bradbury or his story, but to clarify its implications, its emphases, its silences, its ramifications, and to extrapolate to the horizons of its conceptual universe or beyond if necessary.

Something tells me you understand what I'm getting at and something tells me you don't. There are at least two levels involved here--one of that of Bradbury's stories and personal philosophy--and the meta-level of evaluation of religion and perhaps other issues in general. Then there is the interaction between the two. It seems that the issue here is not so much about Bradbury himself, but how our appreciation of Bradbury interacts with our general understanding and what we look for in any situation. My suspicion is that wishy-washy tolerance serves as a brake to conceptual clarity. And BTW, the original historical purport of toleration was to respect people's rights and freedom of conscience, not their beliefs, two entirely separate matters.

posted 05-17-2003 02:52 AM

I don't know how one separates thinking from feeling. I would never trust anyone who did that. One of course communicates with the prospect of an ideal listener who will understand what one is talking about, however slim the likelihood of such an outcome. Brains are only handed out one at a time, though, and thus it is an immense struggle to formulate the notions in one's head and for others to get them into theirs. The key word is struggle. How can there be any friendship in ideas? Thought is by nature ruthless; its very existence is a struggle against inertia; it can't accept being dragged down, slowed down, or held down.

I also have a problem with all fandom--it's like joining a cult or a church. Sometimes people can share things they love in common. But how far does that commonality extend? Why expect it to go very far? That makes no sense.

When I first read through this thread before adding my two cents, I was very offended by both content and manner of expression, especially by certain religious persons whose names I won't mention and with whom I have no intention of conversing. They have no obligations towards me, nor I towards them. But since such people are used to having their way in this society--in fact terrorizing the whole society--I only wish to emphasize that they're not going to get away with it around me. Other than that, they can do their thing and I mine, and hopefully we can stay out of one another's way. There is only one obligation as I see it: to be able to advance some usable idea, and not to go round and round in circles.

Otherwise, I think all the pretence to civility and community just covers up a lot of hypocrisy and the contradictions in the application of one's alleged principles. Why not just take difference as axiomatic? At least that way one can negotiate differences. But you can't go around pretending that people--or nations--are unified when they are not, except by violence, by silencing people who contradict your lies.

posted 05-17-2003 10:59 AM

On Blake [ . . . .] the concepts of outline and of nature are fairly consistently characterized in Blake. Nature is considered as the "indefinite". "Outline" is characterized as the basis of virtue. Nature without man is barren, the lowest plane of existence. All conventional religion: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam--the whole schmeer--along with deism and Lockean empiricism!--is really "natural religion", i.e based on the logic of brutality and domination that governs the empirical natural and social world. I've never seen any interpretation of this particular line, "Nature has no outline, but imagination has." Being literal-minded myself, I have my own interpretation.

FYI, this line comes from Blake's last engraved original work, "The Ghost of Abel"--very brief, only 2 plates--which is a heretical reading of a heretical reading of the Cain & Abel story. The first heretical reading was Byron's "Cain", which caused a major scandal. Blake defends Byron but suggests he did not go far enough. For Blake, the God worshipped by conventional Christians is really Urizen or Satan, the false God of empire, oppression, revenge, and "morality". Byron rebels against this God but is left in the wilderness, forlorn.

There is a whole a symbolic economy to Blake's words and symbols, which reflects and struggles against the ideological landscape of his time.

One might get something out of comparing and contrasting Blake with Bradbury, but I'm not going to touch it at this stage.

Since we are off-topic, just one more thing, as Colombo would say. Is it confirmed that Bradbury is a Unitarian? In the 19th century, the Unitarians were in hot water with the religious fundamentalists. There is also an indefinite association with the Higher Criticism and German philosophy, which was little understood but considered to be the fount of heresy. And then there was Bruno Bauer, dean of the Young Hegelians. Very little of Bauer was translated into English, so we are dependent upon paraphrases and interpretations of his views by others, such as this one:

"But if Christianity was universal and did not know the limits of previous religions, it was at the same time the worst religion: 'Christianity is the religion that promised men most, that is all, and took back most, that is all.' Bauer attempts to explain this ambivalence of Christianity thus: the nearer that religious consciousness approaches to truth, the more it alienates itself therefrom. Why? Because, qua religious, it takes the truth that is only to be attained to in self-consciousness away from self-consciousness and places it against self-consciousness, as though it were something alien to it. What is opposed to self-consciousness as alien is not only formally separate from self-consciousness (in that it stands outside it, is in heaven or comprises the content of some long past or far in the future events), but also this formal separation is backed up by an essential and real separation from all that goes to make up human nature. When religion has reached the point that man makes up its content, then the climax of this opposition has been reached."

I cite this as one way of approaching the issues raised by the ostensibly ecumenical spirit of RB's stories. I agree with [MD...] that the textual analysis of RB's own work is what matters here. But is there a single other person in this discussion whose treatment of the text has been based solely on what the text itself is saying? If it were, I would have entered this discussion in a very different frame of mind. But as I saw an ideology at work throughout this entire discussion, I said to myself: there's an obstruction at work here; what is it?

I think I've gone as far as I can without repeating myself endlessly. As for "community", as this brings us into the overall political situation, I would suggest that you look around you at what kind of society you are living in and what you think your place in it is. 'Nuff said.

posted 05-20-2003 11:40 PM

Do you think that Bradbury's conception of space travel as reaching toward God and finding the latter's finger approaching his is comparable to Arthur C. Clarke's notion, e.g. in 2001? If either one is right, though, wouldn't it depend upon space travel broadening the conceptions of the human race? It has been said that travel broadens the mind, but then again there's the classic American tourist: he stays in fancy hotels and acts as if he is back home.

posted 05-30-2003 02:16 AM

My video set of The Martian Chronicles miniseries finally arrived in the mail two days ago. I'm in the process of watching one of the three parts per night, which is two hours a pop. I've written some running commentary under a different rubric on this discussion board.

It's a good thing I ordered this, because I was correct in supposing that the telecast from which my home-made tape originated was a butchered version. I've watched parts one and two so far. Watching part 2 this time, I got to see the one scene that was cut from my version. In between the scene where David first reappears and disappears and his return to the Lustigs, there is a long segment featuring Frs. Peregrine and Stone. Lo and behold, it is the story of "The Fire Balloons", with only the names changed.

While at first the priests irritated me, as the cinematic depiction of all clergy does, their contrary points of view and Peregrine's strong interest in the Martians caught my interest. When they encounter the three blue spheres after getting lost walking their way back to the settlement, the priests' contrary reactions are noteworthy. Stone thinks they are the devil's work, but Peregrine has a positive attitude. The spheres save the priests' lives from an avalanche, but Stone's opinion does not change. While Stone is asleep, Peregrine tests his theory that they are intelligent, moral beings by jumping off a cliff, whereupon he is rescued by a sphere. Peregrine offers to build a Martian church, but the sphere declines.

I noticed something interesting about Peregrine's expression of faith. For all the talk of sin and meeting Christ, he has a different attitude toward the Martian spheres not from any faith in God but faith in his fellow creatures. This is quite clearly the opposite of Stone, who would rather find the inhuman in the human than the human in the inhuman. Peregrine jumps off the cliff with faith not in God but in the good will of the spheres. Very interesting.

Ray Bradbury's messianism in outer space

2011-07-02T04:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a piece (with only one or two editorial tweaks) I wrote on 20 May 2003 and posted on the Ray Bradbury Message Board. (This is the current version of the board.)

I finally got a chance to read Ray Bradbury's “The Man”, which I found in The Illustrated Man. My first association is with the Jewish writer Franz Kafka, who wrote that the Messiah would come when he was no longer necessary.

At first I thought this story was pretty insipid, like an exceptionally overbearing didactic episode of The Twilight Zone. But the story's last substantial paragraph made me reconsider. The image of the captain chasing after the Man on planet after planet, just missing him by a day, an hour, a second, etc., intrigued me. It temporarily redeemed an otherwise unappealing story.

Because the captain wanted to chase after the savior/Messiah/Christ as if he were hunting just another material entity external to himself, but with the wrong attitude, he would never find what he was looking for. The problem, of course, was within. And in that sense this is an arresting image. But it also highlights the contradictions of the story that tend to plunge it back into banality.

The essential contradiction is this: the ability to recognize the presence of the savior depends upon inner attitude, but with the proper state of being, the concept of an external savior is meaningless. The savior appears: the aliens are digging him; the captain doesn’t believe the rumors, and doesn’t and wouldn’t appreciate it anyway. So how could an external source prompt the appropriate reaction where the receptivity didn’t already exist?

The element that spoils the whole story and pitches it back into conventional mores is faith. The struggle between the captain and his officer becomes one of world-weary cynicism vs. simple faith of simple people. A pretty dull concept if you ask me.

Yet there is something else of interest to consider. The captain is a hardened autarch and knows only how to bully people. Yet once he learns that the Second Coming is real, he becomes obsessed. But as the mayor asks him: what are you going to say when you meet him? The captain is caught in a contradiction which his culture has bequeathed to him. He operates from only the crassest of pragmatic motives and assumes everyone does the same. Yet once part of his cultural indoctrination is triggered—the prospect of salvation—he wants that too, though it is no part of his practical reality. And then the paradox is that when he pursues it, he bases his pursuit on his faulty selfish premises, and so fails.

It’s an interesting contradiction when you think about it, and it’s a contradiction of a whole civilization and its symbolic economy, and not just of a sour individual. The need for faith is as much a sickness as the sickness it’s trying to cure. So while Bradbury is astute up to a point, he also unconsciously reproduces the contradictions of conventional thinking. The polarity of corrupt civilization and pastoral innocence is an old idea. Utopian thinking sits quite comfortably with the conservative, repressive institutions of civilization. This was true for the author of the original “Utopia” as well. Bradbury injects a new twist into an old story, but in the process of exploiting this ambiguous polarity between credulous pastoral innocence and cynical civilizational guilt, he places himself in ambiguous position whereby he can be interpreted as (and may himself be) conservative and liberal at the same time.

Paul Kurtz and Marxist humanism (5)

2011-06-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Click here for the Preface and Notes on Contributors, and eventually for other content:

Tolerance and Revolution: A Marxist-non-Marxist Humanist Dialogue, edited by Paul Kurtz and Svetozar Stojanović. Beograd: Philosophical Society of Serbia, 1970. 165, [1] pp. Contents, pp. 7-8.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ 5

I. PAPERS AND COMMENTARIES

I. J. P. van Praag – Causes of Alienation in Modern

Technical Society and Their Elimination ‑ ‑ ‑ 11

John Lewis – Commentary on van Praag ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ 25

Mathilde Niel – Commentary on van Praag ‑ ‑ 27

II. Svetozar Stojanović – Revolutionary Teleology and

Ethics ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ - - - - - 29

Andre Niel – Commentary on Stojanović ‑ ‑ ‑ 49

Staniša Novaković – Commentary on Stojanović - - 51

III. Paul Kurtz – In Defense of Tolerance ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ 53

Mathilde Niel – Commentary on Kurtz ‑ ‑ ‑ 60

Pierre Lamarque – Commentary on Kurtz ‑ ‑ ‑ 61

IV. Niculae Bellu and Alex. Tanase – Perspectives and

Contradictions in the Contemporary Development of

Man ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ 65

Andre Niel – Commentary on Bellu and Tanase ‑ 82

V. Mihailo Marković – Human Nature and Present Day

Possibilities of Social Development ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ 85

Mathilde Niel – Commentary on Marković ‑ ‑ - 102

VI. Lucien de Coninck – Human Possibilities and Social

Conditions ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ - - 105

Andre Niel – Commentary on de Coninck ‑ ‑ ‑ 112

VII. Andrej J. Hlávek – Power and Responsibility ‑ ‑ 115

VIII. Emanuele Rierso – Rights of Individuals and Demands

of Society ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ 123

II. DISCUSSION SUMMARIES

1. Human Nature and Common Values ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ 131

Robert Tucker English section

P. Vranicki German section

Andre Niel French section

2. Humanism and Radical Change of Social Structures 137

John Lewis English section

J. Pasman German section

Alex. Tanase French section

3. Participation and Bureaucracy ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ 145

Robert Stein English section

L. Hansel German section

Lj. Tadić French section

III. CONCLUDING DIALOGUE

Participation, Bureaucracy, and the Limits of Tolerance ‑ - 153

Paul Kurtz

Mihailo Marković

J. P. van Praag

Niculae Bellu

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Ethics as Metaphysics & Ideology

2011-06-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” – Theodor W. Adorno [1]

Ethics as a philosophical or ideological subject is both social and individual. Its purview is the regulation of individual behavior under an assumed social context. It may also involve a critique of the social context in so far as reality does not live up to ideals. But the ideals are as a rule predicated on existing social reality even when critical of it.

Marx’s & Engels’ dictum that in class society the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class holds here. The virtue ethics of an Aristotle or Confucius presupposes and justifies the repressive institutions of the existing order. Presumably some concepts of use may be extracted from them, but only selectively, shorn of their metaphysical and sociopolitical obfuscations.

In bourgeois society ethics undergoes certain transformations. Kant is a superb example of an individualistic ethics which both criticizes pragmatic social reality and reflects the presuppositions of emerging bourgeois society. Self-submission to an abstract concept of duty, irrespective of circumstance or inclination, the illusion that one can actually live as if others could be regarded as ends and not used as means, as if this were an individual matter, represents the quintessence of bourgeois illusion, of fairness and strict accounting in the marketplace, even as it criticizes the actual by reference to the ideal.

We could go through the various systems of ethics and unearth the tacit assumptions behind each—utilitarianism or any ethical calculus being the most obvious correlate to the quantifying tendencies of the capitalist marketplace and the money economy.

Ethics at this historical stage goes hand in hand with the secularization of society. What about ethics postulated as the basis of a movement or institutionalized philosophy? Here the secularization of religion comes into play.

Consider the Ethical Culture movement initiated by Felix Adler. Adler, raised in the rabbinical tradition, was philosophically a Neo-Kantian and politically a social reformer. If we move ahead to the forging of the first Humanist Manifesto of 1933, we see also an inclination towards social reform as well as the secularization of religion: the Unitarian influence in the formation of this humanist movement was considerable. [2] We have here, as in other instances, a transition from theology to philosophy and a liberalization of religion to the point of jettisoning its supernaturalist baggage.

In the ensuing decades we have seen episodic issuings of new manifestoes, publication of books enunciating the principles of humanism & delineating secular ethics, endless regurgitation of the same generalities, with varying specifics in laundry lists of social concerns. [3] The abstract principles of liberal democracy and individual human rights have been laid claims to along a spectrum of political positions, from libertarianism to anti-Stalinist Marxism. [4] To the extent that abstract humanistic principles serve as rallying points to focus attention and forge coalitions in differing social situations, they may be useful, though hardly resulting in a full-fledged sociopolitical world view as is often claimed.

Once one speaks of creating a new ethical system to be formulated and promulgated as a doctrine, especially as general principles have been enunciated time and time again and are already part and parcel of the moral arsenal of liberal democratic values, we see how little advance has been made in the past two centuries to transcend idealistic metaphysics. Whether it is individual ethics or a planetary ethic, what could be more pointless and ineffectual in the absence of a serious social movement that provides a comprehensive social analysis and platform? [5] For all the prating about the scientific method and scientific morality, a secular ethics is pure ideology, a metaphysical massage for the upper middle class intelligentsia and assorted entrepreneurs, a superimposition of a schema of platitudes onto social reality concomitant with a numbing of any serious analysis of class society, and absent serious linkage to reform movements in the manner of the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries.

Ethics as a new religion or religion-substitute had its time as a stage in the liberalization of religion and the reforming instincts of a “liberal class”, useful up to a point even with its limitations. But what it represents is long obsolete, actually retrograde by comparison with today’s needs and apparently progressive only with respect to right-wing religious revanchism. Religious humanism apes the institutional structures and moralistic sermonizing practices of its supernaturalist forbears. Secular humanism forgoes religious humanism’s obvious mimicking of religiosity (albeit in attenuated, watered-down forms), but preserves the ideological ornamentation of middle-class respectability: “we’re nice people and we have an ethical catechism to prove it.” Such earnest naïveté has lost its charm. [6]

[1] From Minima Moralia (1951). See also Wikipedia entry and Lambert Zuidervaart, Review of Deborah Cook (ed.), Theodor Adorno: Key Concepts. The standard translation by E.F.N. Jephcott is available in hard copy. Another translation can be found online: Minima Moralia, translation by Dennis Redmond (2005).

[2] Edwin H. Wilson, The Genesis of a Humanist Manifesto.

[3] See my bibliography, Secular Humanism—Ideology, Philosophy, Politics, History: Bibliography in Progress.

[4] See for example Tolerance and Revolution: A Marxist-non-Marxist Humanist Dialogue, edited by Paul Kurtz and Svetozar Stojanovic (1970) and Humanist Ethics: Dialogue on Basics, edited by Morris B. Storer (1980).

[5] Paul Kurtz still adheres to a social liberal, social democratic perspective and his condition of manifestoitis is chronic. See Humanist Manifesto 2000: A Call for a New Planetary Humanism and Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values: Personal, Progressive, and Planetary (2010).

[6] The ideological limitations of humanism were criticized by anti-Stalinist Marxists a half century ago and more. I have blogged twice about George Novack (William F. Warde, pseud.), “Socialism and Humanism” (1959) and Paul Mattick, “Humanism and Socialism” (1965), criticizing both. Mattick’s application to this post is more diffuse. Novack never updated his analysis from the 1930s, when Trotskyism and the liberal humanist movement were serious ideological contenders and competitors. Neither Novack nor Mattick seriously address the need for specific secularist campaigns and coalition politics even in their time, a lapse now especially obvious in the absence of the left wing working class movements of yesteryear.

Sikivu Hutchinson interviewed by The Secular Buddhist

2011-06-09T22:56:00.000-07:00

Episode 66 :: Sikivu Hutchinson :: Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars, The Secular Buddhist. 34 minutes.

"Author and educator Sikivu Hutchinson speaks with us about her book, Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars." Hutchinson reviews her work and her background, including her secular upbringing. Her family was nonreligious and politically radical, but in a community saturated in religion, compounded by a Catholic school education.

Hutchinson strives for balance in the evaluation of black religious institutions from slavery to the present. The adoption of Christianity was a means of claiming personhood in Western civilization under extreme conditions. But the various hierarchies inhering in the Bible are deemed "corrosive and insidious", not to mention the rise of the prosperity gospel. There is also a link between the black religious right and the white religious right, for example, in opposition to abortion. Black Americans are the most religious and most disenfranchised group in the USA.

Hutchinson is concerned with the revisioning of public morality, especially in public education, with a view to the elimination of the various orders of hierarchy, which have their origins in and are reinforced by religion.

The question of racial imbalance in atheist groups is addressed. How can this be remedied? In addition to greater representation of black intellectuals and leaders in prominent positions, Hutchinson sees a need to revise priorities, away from the fixation on evolution and science literacy, to a broader range of concerns that can be found among black atheists. Why is organized religion such a compelling force? If one cannot answer this question in connection with the various forms of social discrimination, then atheism and humanism will have limited appeal to people of color. Hutchinson focuses specifically on the situation of black American women. White atheists have to become educated about these issues. Secular humanism has to be made more palatable to people of color. Consider the social welfare dimension of religious institutions.

Near-term objectives include becoming more organized. Small organizations exist. The first African Americans for Humanism Conference was held last year. Hutchinson has received considerable feedback on her book. Hutchinson was especially compelled by the anti-gay agitation of black churches in California. Black nonbelievers need a safe place to show their faces. Hutchinson's group is Black Skeptics.

Black Freethought @ Atheist Nexus

2011-06-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

The last time I reported here on my Black Freethought group at Atheist Nexus was 10 December 2010. I have reported on the progress of other groups since. There's a lot going on; I can't keep up with everything in a timely fashion. Some time between 10 May and now my group's membership passed the 400 mark. The increase from 318 to 408 members in a six-month period is not spectacular, but 90 new members in a cyberspace in which there is much competition for attention, even for black atheists and their fellow travellers, is a respectable showing.

What Newtonianism was

2011-06-03T18:13:00.000-07:00

The thinkers of the scientific revolution, including the scientific geniuses who spearheaded it, had one foot in modernity, one foot in the pre-modern past. We would scarcely recognize their conception of scientific argument as it existed then. Case in point, here are a couple of paragraphs I wrote some years ago about Newtonianism in Newton's time.

* * *

Written 19 November 2003:

A few days ago I read Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Margaret C. Jacob. I once had quite an interest in Newton, circa 1979, when I was interested in the dynamics of the totality of his thought (which includes alchemy and theology) in the cultural-philosophical-ideological complex of his time. This little book shows how archaic Newton was in his overall perspective—he was no mechanist that we would recognize. Aside from his vitalistic conceptions of matter outside of the realm for which he is famous, his aversion to materialism with the ever-present atheistic tendencies attributed to or associated with it reveal a Newton not fully modern and a society caught in irresolvable ideological contradictions. Newtonianism was ideologically tinged with non-scientific political preoccupations: it could be an apology for order or a call to revolution. Newton was of the party of order and moderation, favoring neither revolution nor absolute monarchy.

* * *

Written 17 October 2007, extract from my post on another of my blogs:

For 400 years innovations in the special sciences have yielded master metaphors for organizing an explanation of the entire world and filling in gaps in specific knowledge of all its facets with ideology. From Newtonian physics to Darwinism to relativity to quantum mechanics to information theory to computer science to chaos theory to complexity, the process has never stopped. But in Newton’s time this phenomenon was far worse in that obscurantism per se was not the main issue, but rather the inability to separate scientific theory from metaphysics and theology. (See Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Margaret C. Jacob.) We would not even recognize the arguments over Newtonianism as scientific ones today, as both political and theological positions were staked out with respect to it, and it seems that neither its architects nor its popularizers had an adequate epistemological understanding of the basis of scientific abstraction and how it related to the rest of the world-picture. However, there was some place to go, from astronomy to physics, and finally to chemistry, and the Romantic era coincided with the question as to whether physio-chemical processes alone could account for life. Yet an organismic, vitalistic sense of living matter could not jibe with progress in scientific research, and however mysterious life and consciousness still felt with the progress of " mechanistic" science, vitalism could only lead to mysticism, obscurantism, and regression, and there are no more prospects for it today than there were 200 years ago, when lack of knowledge allowed it a respectable existence. Yet Goldner thinks he can finesse the objective problems of scientific research and its incorporation into a general world-picture by spouting nonsense about cosmobiology, an outmoded basis for world-comprehension.

From: Stephen Eric Bronner (3): Bronner vs. Goldner on science & the Enlightenment

Paul Kurtz and Marxist humanism (4)

2011-06-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

This article is only partially available online without a subscription to High Beam Research:

"The Survival of Humankind Is the Basic Humanist Value: An Interview with Svetozar Stojanović" by Paul Kurtz, Free Inquiry, Volume 16, Number 3, Summer, 1996.

This interview covers the history of the Praxis School as well as the later disintegration of Yugoslavia and Stojanović's political role during this period.

Presumably there is related material scattered in the archives of Free Inquiry; for example:

"A Serb's View of NATO's Bombs" by Svetozar Stojanovic, Volume 19, Number 3, Summer, 1999

Paul Kurtz and Marxist humanism (3)

2011-05-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

In previous posts I began to document Paul Kurtz's interaction with the Yugoslav Praxis School, particularly Svetozar Stojanović. This time we will feature another leading light of the Praxis School, Mihailo Marković. He also happens to be the Praxis philosopher with whom I am most familiar. In other contexts I prefer to highlight his brilliant philosophical contributions rather than his political degeneration later in life; for example, on my web site:

“Marx and Critical Scientific Thought”
"The Concept of Critique in Social Science"
Dialectical Theory of Meaning: Part One (Extracts)
Dialectical Theory of Meaning: Part Two: Linguistic Meaning (Extract)
Dialectical Theory of Meaning: Part Three: General Definition of Meaning: The Interrelationships of the Individual Dimensions of Meaning

There are numerous books by Marković and Stojanović and at least one by Gajo Petrović in English, as well as several essays by these and other Praxis philosophers in English in print and on the Internet, not to mention the secondary literature. (See for example the Praxis Group in the Marxists Internet Archive.) I just want to mention these books:

Crocker, David A. Praxis and Democratic Socialism: The Critical Social Theory of Marković and Stojanovic. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press; Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1983.

Marxist Humanism and Praxis, edited, with translations, by Gerson S. Sher. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1978.

Sher, Gerson S. Praxis: Marxist Criticism and Dissent in Socialist Yugoslavia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977.

The Praxis School is compared with related philosophical dissidents in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in:

Satterwhite, James H. Varieties of Marxist Humanism: Philosophical Revision in Postwar Eastern Europe. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. (Series in Russian and East European Studies; no. 17)

But back to the philosophical interaction between Marković and Kurtz. I refer now to an interesting volume which contains the contributions itemized below:

Humanist Ethics: Dialogue on Basics, edited by Morris B. Storer. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1980.

Comment by Mihailo Marković on Kurtz [“Does Humanism Have an Ethic of Responsibility?”], pp. 31-33.
Reply by Paul Kurtz to Marković, pp. 33-35.
“Historical Praxis as the Ground of Morality” by Mihailo Marković , pp. 36-50.
Comment by Paul Kurtz on Marković Article, pp. 51-54.
Reply by Marković, pp. 54-57.

When I am able to secure the full text, I will report in greater detail.

Crocker, who incorporates analytical philosophy into his analysis of Marković and Stojanović, devotes some space to a critique of “Historical Praxis as the Ground of Morality.” In a couple of places he mentions disagreement between Marković and Kurtz:

It must be admitted that Marković appears to have two minds about what this “appeal to history” amounts to. On the one hand, he says that three normative attitudes to the course of history are possible and that if soft procedures fail to bring consensus, then “discrepancy in value judgments cannot be overcome” (HP 40). Moreover, in responding to Paul Kurtz, who takes Marković to be trying to deduce the Ought of praxis from the Is and Was of history. [44] Marković says, “It [Praxis] cannot be derived from any factual judgment (which would constitute the naturalistic fallacy) but it is linked with a basic factual assumption—'Praxis is enente of history,' or more clearly: ‘Praxis is the specific necessary condition of all historical development’” (HP 57). On the other hand, both in HP proper and in his response to Kurtz, Marković appears to have something close to hard justificatory intentions. In the latter Marković claims that ethical pluralism gives rise to the need for “a foundation of ethical values” (HP 55). That is, because “various groups or individuals have genuine moral convictions with implicit claims to universal validity,” and because “these convictions are different or even incompatible,” one must ask oneself, “What is the ground on which his implicit claim to universal validity rests?” (HP 55). [p. 214]

. . . with this footnote:

44. Kurtz charges, “Marković seems to be committing one form of the naturalistic fallacy by defining as intrinsically ‘good’ one aspect of human history (praxis) and then reading that into the process as a ground for his preferences.” “Comment,” in Humanist Ethics: Dialogue on Basics, ed. Morris B. Storer (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1980), p. 52. [p. 223]

And here is the other comment:

Because people are used to a dichotomous either‑or (or to compromise positions), they (like Paul Kurtz) are likely to construe Marković’s procedures in terms of the dichotomy [of relativism and absolutism/dogmatism]. To the hard justificationist and skeptic, Markovic’s approach will look like no justification. To the absolutist, Markovic’s soft procedures will appear relativistic. After all, Marković does not demonstrate praxis and proceeds on the assumption that there is no way to get conclusive proof that one ethical outlook should hold for all people at all times. Moreover, what else is relativism but an unhappy compromise that weds skepticism to the view that each moral outlook is true (for its group)? And do not Marković’s procedures entail that any group (or individual) that employs them will emerge with what is ethical truth for it (him and/or her)? [p. 219]

These are, of course, only fragments of Crocker's presentation. In Storer's volume itself there are main essays by both Kurtz and Marković, and exchanges between the two on both of them. I will save further commentary for a future post.

One Marxist view of Dawkins & Harris

2011-05-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

This is old stuff, but here's the info. I could quibble over some details, but there are important criticisms here of the political and social ignorance of Richard Dawkins and especially of Sam Harris. These pieces come from the World Socialist Web Site. Sectarian politics notwithstanding, there are some intelligent commentaries from a philosophical perspective.

Atheism in the service of political reaction: A comment on author Sam Harris

By Christie Schaefer, April 16, 2007

In the recent review of Richard Dawkins’ new book, The God Delusion, Joe Kay mentions in passing the author Sam Harris, noting that the idealist standpoint of Harris and some of the other advocates of atheism is often bound up with reactionary political conceptions. (See “Science, religion and s

Science, religion and society: Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion

By Joe Kay, March 15, 2007

In his new book, Dawkins has done us a service, if only in making more acceptable the general proposition that religion and science are at odds with each other, and that it is science that should win out.

Social paranoia: one photo says it all

2011-05-22T21:21:00.000-07:00

I snapped this photo in early April 2011 across the street from the Southeast branch of the Washington DC library. It perfectly illustrates the ideology of right wing paranoia that forms the subject of my current research.

Theorizing Social Paranoia (2)

2011-05-22T20:40:00.000-07:00

Listen to my podcast on this subject:

Dumain, Ralph. “Theorizing Social Paranoia,” 22 May 2011, 58 min., an episode of "Studies in a Dying Culture" on "Think Twice Radio".

Martin Gardner vs. Wilhelm Reich & Orgonomy (2)

2011-05-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

There have been numerous attacks on Paul Kurtz's organizations, all now falling on the singular Center for Free Inquiry, from several directions. One is from advocates of parapsychology, who have expressed numerous complaints. I'm not to deal with them now. Wilhelm Reich's orgonomy does not belong to parapsychology, but it is fringe science nonetheless. Here is the second article I've found attacking Martin Gardner, and now Kurtz, Corliss Lamont, and the Amazing Randi along with him:

CSICOP, Time Magazine, and Wilhelm Reich by John Wilder, Pulse of the Planet #5, 2002, pp. 55-67.

Wilder links Time magazine and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in the scurrilous trashing of Reich's reputation. He reviews the attacks on Reich by the Freudians and the Stalinists. Wilder accuses Einstein's secretary of sabotaging Reich's attempts to continue correspondence with Einstein. Historians of philosophy and ideas have not been kind to Reich, not Peter Gay, at least. Paul Edwards is claimed to have treated Reich favorably, except for his dismissing Reich's later orgonomy as crank pseudoscience. Edwards alleged Reich's American acolytes to be right-wingers:

Interestingly, Edwards now decries what he calls the ‘right-wing’ politics of [Elsworth] Baker and others of Reich’s students in America, as he believes they have missed the contributions of Reich’s ‘Marxist’ period. The reader should recall that Reich, himself, dismissed this part of his work as a ‘biological miscalculation,’ as immature, as being insufficiently aware of the of the extreme stubbornness of the Emotional Plague.

Wilder asserts that the Kurtz's skeptic organization is wedded to mind-body dualism:

Despite Edwards lukewarm admiration of Reich, CSICOP seems to be populated with men who adhere to modern civilization’s mind-body split, a split which underlies the mechanistic-mystical dichotomy that fuels CSICOP’s engines.

Wilder further complains:

The membership, organization, and style of CSICOP reveal its traditional patriarchal, ‘top-down’ authoritarian character. Its membership, according to Hansen, is 95% composed of ‘white’ males; and nearly 100% of its members are intellectuals, mostly drawn from the non-scientific disciplines, despite CSICOP claiming ‘science’ as its patron. Few active research scientists belong. The membership at large, the ‘Fellows,’ has little, if any, power to formulate or change policy.

Wilder likens Paul Kurtz to the Kurtz of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, who faces irrationalism with a psychological regression:

Facing these unexpected outbreaks of apparently irrational behavior in the masses [in the late 1960s], facing what Reich had faced in the early 1930s (due to what Reich termed the biological miscalculation), Kurtz struggles to reforge his Marxist-Humanism into a weapon of control and repression. While Reich had turned away from politics to supporting changes in child rearing, to advocating sexual reform, and to studying biophysics, Kurtz, still at his core a political man, seeks elitist political and social solutions to suppress these uncontrolled, ‘unscientifically’ emotional horrors emanating from the masses.

Kurtz is painted as a control freak—espousing one-world government, praising the behaviorist B. F. Skinner, engaging in scurrilous character assassination of scientific claims he disdains.

I need to point out a streak of anti-communist paranoia that runs through the article, not all instances of which I cite here. Corliss Lamont is excoriated for his pro-Stalinist position, for example.

Wilder moves on to attack Kurtz's skeptical colleagues, among them Wilder's arch-villain Martin Gardner. Gardner was apparently in his youth a fundamentalist and a radical socialist, later became a magician and eventually "the foremost advocate of atheistic scientific orthodoxy, of the science of his patriarchy." Wilder outlines Gardner's five symptomatic criteria for judging pseudoscience: according to those criteria, Reich and Einstein would be judged alike. Wilder finds these demarcation criteria (citing Popper for the term) unusable in practice.

Wilder also finds the presence of erstwhile and practicing magicians in the skeptical movement suspect. He deems magicians to be "cynical, nasty people" as someone else puts it. An illustration of this is the Amazing Randi's participation in Alice Cooper's sadistic spectacles.

I now skip to the author's Postscript of August 1, 2010. Here is the most telling statement of Wilder's position:

I want to clarify that I see Communism as a particularly vicious head of the Emotional Plague, a social pathology described by Reich. This Plague is a hydra that has many heads, like the Inquisition, the KKK, the NAZIs, and Al Qaeda. Cutting off these heads has not and will not permanently end the Emotional Plague, anymore than removing cancerous tumors, while necessary and important, ends an underlying cancer biopathy. There are right wing and left wing variants of the Emotional Plague. There are even middle-of-the-road and non-political variants. Read the studies of pathological mass action and inaction.

In judging all this I am not going to address any of Wilder's factual claims. Nor will I address his evaluation of magicians. I question his analogy of Reich and Einstein, but I have always had a problem with Gardner's demarcation criteria myself, so I will refrain from taking apart Wilder's ridiculous argument. I also don't think there is an infallible formal criteriology for labeling someone a paranoid, and in any case, sometimes real paranoia and real persecution overlap in the same suffering individuals. It is not the mere eccentricity of Wilder's argument that I criticize. It is his underlying metaphysical perspective, and the characteristically paranoiac way in which his systematizing reasoning proceeds. His copious historical references notwithstanding, historical reasoning is excised from his world view, recapitulating the late Reich's retreat to metaphysics. If everything is a result of the Emotional Plague, which is an ahistorical psychobiological category, then the real historical development of society and its ideologies is eclipsed by a metaphysics, and one which bears all the characteristics of a right-wing world view, and hence of right-wing paranoia, regardless of Wilder's actual apolitical politics. This bizarre indiscriminate linkage of communism with Kurtz, a Time editor, Einstein's secretary, Lamont, and Gardner is characteristic of a paranaoic world view, however one might rationally analyze possible deficiencies of any of these individuals.

Finally I must mention the Editor James DeMeo’s 2002 Postscript. DeMeo wrote the article I analyzed in my previous blog post on this subject. Here DeMeo attempts to link Prometheus Books with pornography and pedophilia. If this is not the paranoid mind in action, what is?

I imagine some readers will think I'm overly generous in even bothering to analyze a manifestly crackpot view as seriously as I do. But this is not a randomly generated piece of craziness: there is a conceptual structure underlying it which needs to be analyzed. The more astute and acute our analytical capability becomes, the better will be be able to distinguish the merely eccentric and marginal from the fundamentally distorted framework of a wrongheaded world view, whether or not there are partial truths in it.

Paul Kurtz and Marxist humanism (2)

2011-05-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of more pertinent references.

Re-enchantment: A New Enlightenment, Editorial by Paul Kurtz, Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 24, Number 3.

Here are two quotes:

The Enlightenment's quest for knowledge inspired numerous scientists, philosophers, and poets, including Goethe, Bentham, Mill, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Einstein, Crick, and Watson.

And:

Regrettably, post-World War II Parisian savants spawned a vulgar post-modernist cacophony of Heideggerian-Derridian mush. Incoherent as some of their rhetoric may be, it has been influential in its rejection of the Enlightenment, the ethics of humanism, scientific objectivity, and democratic values. This literary-philosophical movement had made great inroads in the academy, especially within humanities faculties (though, fortunately, it is already being discredited in France itself). But it has taken a terrible toll, undermining confidence in any progressive agendas of emancipation. In part such thinking is an understandable response to the two grotesque twentieth-century ideologies—fascism and Stalinism—that dominated the imagination of so many supporters in Europe and betrayed human dignity on the butcher block of repression and genocide. "After Auschwitz," wrote Theodor Adorno, we cannot praise "the grandeur of man." Surely the world has recovered from that historical period of aberrant bestiality. However, many intellectuals are still disillusioned because of the failure of Marxism to deliver on the perceived promises of socialism, in which they had invested such faith. Whatever the causes of pessimism, we cannot abandon our efforts at reform or at spreading knowledge and enlightenment. We cannot give in to nihilism or self-defeating subjectivism. Although science has often been co-opted by various military-technological powers for anti-humanistic purposes, it also can help fulfill ennobling humanitarian goals.

1962-1975: High expectations, lean years | International Humanist and Ethical Union

The IHEU member organizations undertook a program of dialogues in the '60s:

In the mid-sixties a series of 'dialogues' was started. The main dialogues were those with the Roman Catholics and Marxists, but many others were attempted-though only few attempts were successful. The dialogues were meant: 1 to clarify ideas and correct misunderstandings about the other party; 2 to bridge ideological gaps-not by minimizing differences but by establishing modes of communication; 3 to support humanist minorities within for example the Catholic Church. 'By our communication we say: you are not alone'; 4 as 'a critique of our own self-righteousness [...] We learn that humanism is not the sole possession of an "elect"; that our "wisdom" is only wise in confrontation and [...] before the continuing question'.

On the dialogues with Marxists:

Dialogues with Protestant Christians have never been very successful. Since 1967 IHEU approached the World Council of Churches (WCC) to discuss the possibilities of constructive co-operation, and in 1968 the IHEU Chairman and Secretary personally visited Geneva for talks with the WCC. To no avail, the Council turned out to be not interested. On the other hand, an IHEU dialogue with the Marxists seemed more promising. In the late 1960s, several Eastern European countries tried to carve out a more open and progressive political course that was less dependent on the Soviet Union than before. In particular Dubcek's Czechoslovakia (until 1968), Tito's Yugoslavia and Ceauescu's Romania showed various forms of 'communism with a human face'. This seemed to make a dialogue with them interesting. After several prominent Marxists had been approached in 1967 and 1968, three dialogues took place: Vienna 1968, Herceg-Novi 1969, and Boston 1970. Subjects discussed were alienation, bureaucracy, tolerance, freedom, human nature, social structure, revolution, and social change. The Marxists professed being 'humanists with a Marxist flavor' rather than 'Marxists with a humanist flavor', yet there were profound differences:

'The Marxist humanists were inclined to condone less humane means for the achievement of high purposes and ideals, the non-Marxists from principle did not want to resort to inhumane means, at the risk of not realizing their ideals.'

The hoped-for establishment of a separate section for humanism and ethics by the national philosophical societies succeeded only in Yugoslavia. This Humanist and Ethical Section of the Yugoslav Association of Philosophy (HESYAP) became an associate member of IHEU in 1970 and was promoted to consultative status one year later, apparently as a token of support. In 1970 the dialogue with the Marxist humanists could be continued in Boston, though on a small scale, as only a few Eastern Europeans were able to participate. After that, the dialogues were hampered by increasingly uncooperative Eastern European authorities, and planned dialogues in 1972-1974 were cancelled. Not until 1979 would there be another meeting. However, IHEU found other ways to support the Marxist humanists in their struggle for human rights. When in the early 1970s the HESYAP group was put under increasing pressure by the Yugoslav authorities, IHEU intensified its support, both by issuing public declarations, and by choosing HESYAP figurehead professor Mihailo Markovic as an IHEU co-chairman.

A positive outcome of the dialogues is assessed:

Some humanists have expressed doubts regarding the usefulness of the dialogues. Paul Kurtz, however, who has been present at nearly all the dialogues with Marxists and Catholics, is convinced that they were constructive and they had a significant influence. The dialogues with Marxists, he says, have 'in a modest way helped to convince intellectuals about the importance of humanism. [...] In retrospect, Stojanovic and other philosophers believe that Marxist Humanism had an important role in moving communist countries away from Stalinism and towards democracy.'

Paul Kurtz and Marxist humanism (1)

2011-05-16T09:41:00.000-07:00

Historical amnesia in the USA is quite severe. There are two breaks in historical continuity that directly affect us today. The first was the Cold War McCarthyite repression of the 1950s; the second was the Reagan counterrevolution that took power in 1981. The atheist/humanist movement also suffers from this historical amnesia. The intellectual capital of atheism and humanism in the USA, and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent in the rest of the anglophone world, is severely restricted, yet it too once operated on a larger playing field.

There is no strain of humanism that was ever more intellectually sophisticated than the Marxist humanism generated by Eastern European intellectual dissidents, and, independently in many instances, anti-Stalinist Marxists in the West. Now I want to focus on the East Europeans, who entered into a symbiotic relationship with western humanists. (The Wikipedia articles are not perfect, but they are convenient entry points.) Most influential were the members of the Praxis School in Yugoslavia and various philosophers in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.

The documentary record of interaction between western and East European anti-Stalinist Marxist humanists (note that the Stalinists and orthodox Communist Parties also called themselves humanists) is all over the place. There is one book on the subject I need to track down:

Tolerance and Revolution: A Marxist-non-Marxist Humanist Dialogue, edited by Paul Kurtz and Svetozar Stojanovic. Beograd: Philosophical Society of Serbia, 1970.

In the interim, I began to research Paul Kurtz's interaction with the Marxist Humanists on the web. I have found this most interesting and my picture of Kurtz is slightly altering in the process. Kurtz apparently flirted with the left in the 1930s and seeing what Stalinism had wrought, became a mainstream liberal in the Cold War period. In technical terms, he is best classified as a social democrat, which is the more advanced European equivalent of what Americans called liberalism from FDR's New Deal up to LBJ's Great Society. Kurtz's age matters, for his memory reaches back more than eight decades, and can gain more sympathy with his personal philosophical orientation (apart from his functioning in an institutional capacity) from reading his reminiscences. I will begin with some samples in this post and continue in future posts.

Secularism and Religion in America by Paul Kurtz

I am happy to return to Yugoslavia. This is my fifth visit. My first was in the mid 1960s when my wife and I drove as tourists from Italy to Zagreb in Croatia on a sight-seeing expedition. The second was on the occasion of the first Marxist non-Marxist Humanist dialogue, held in Montenegro, in Herzeg Novi on August 11-16, 1969. This dialogue followed an earlier open dialogue in Vienna in 1968 at the World Congress of Philosophy on a similar theme.

The Herzeg Novi dialogue was sponsored by the Yugoslav Philosophy Association, the Serbian Philosophy Association, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). Participating in that dialogue from Yugoslavia were Svetozar Stojanovic, Stanisa Novakovic, Mihailo Markovic, P. Vranicki, and Ljubomir Tadic. There were participants from the United States, Germany, Belgium, France Great Britain, Italy, The Netherlands, and from Czechoslovakia and Romania in Eastern Europe. [1]

A second Marxist/non-Marxist humanist dialogue was held at Boston University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1970; a third dialogue in Dubrovnik in 1973, and a final fourth dialogue, again in Dubrovnik, in 1979. At these dialogues we discussed tolerance, human rights, self-management, and democratic participation. They were important because they helped crystallize an intellectual and democratic opposition to totalitarianism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and in a modest way they contributed to the eventual overthrow of dictatorships.

The Praxis Group of Eight philosophers were under constant fire from Tito, who needed Western support in his conflicts with the Soviets. Many people thought Yugoslavia was the most liberal Eastern European country because it permitted some degree of dissent. We in the West supported the Praxis philosophers and provided a constant barrage of letters and press releases to the Western press on their behalf. We thought Sveta Stojanovic was especially courageous for his heroic stance against repression and for democratization. The socialist humanists of Eastern Europe at that time pointed out the contradictions between socialist ideals and reality. They focused on the early Marx in order to defend the principles of humanism. But this is all past history.
[1] The papers of this conference were published in Serbia in a book here entitled Tolerance and Revolution, edited by Paul Kurtz and Svetozar Stojanovic (Philosophical Society of Serbia, Beograd, 1970). Incidentally, this was the very first book published by Prometheus Books, which had just been founded in the United States. Prometheus has since published some 2,500 books and has become a major publishing company.

Note the essay "Humanism and the Freedom of the Individual" in Toward a New Enlightenment: The Philosophy of Paul Kurtz, by Paul Kurtz, edited with an introduction by Vern L. Bullough and Timothy J. Madigan (New Brunswick : Transaction Publishers, 1994), pp. 49-62. "This chapter was originally delivered at the Marxist-non-Marxist Humanist Dialogue held on September 6-7, 1968, in Vienna, at a meeting of the World Congress of Philosophy. Published in The Humanist (January/February 1969), and In Defense of Secular Humanism."

In Defense of Eupraxophy by Paul Kurtz: Kurtz analyzes the failure of Soviet Marxism-Leninism and Soviet atheism. While he judges Marxism a failure in practice, he nonetheless states:

After a century of Marxism—and Marx was no doubt the greatest humanist thinker of the nineteenth century—and after the patent failure of Marxism, the question can now be raised, Where does atheism now stand?

Furthermore:

Humanism must address itself to the heart and the passions; it must have some relevance to practice and conduct; and it must have some effect upon how we live. I submit that broadly conceived the freethought movement has failed in that direction. Marxism was an effort to apply humanism to practice, and indeed Marxsaid that atheism was merely abstract, that it only became meaningfully expressed when it was realized in terms of Communism; and so Communism offered a program and an agenda for the future liberation of mankind. The Marxist-Leninists failed because they developed a new tyranny. And so we now see that Marxism without freedom is not an authentic humanism. But we must not give up on Marx's basic insight that humanism only has meaning if it is related to practice.

And here is the concluding paragraph:

We need to step up to a new plateau, and that, I submit, must be a plateau that defines a new eupraxophy that is relevant to the human condition, can inspire human beings to commitment and action, and provide meaning to their lives. This task is all the more pressing given the apparent collapse of Marxism, and the great vacuum in the world for inspiring ideals. Unless an authentic, democratic, scientific, and secular humanism can be identified as a viable alternative, then we may again be threatened by a new outburst of orthodox theism, and new cults of irrationality are most likely to emerge to plague humankind.

The Secular Humanist Prospect: In Historical Perspective by Paul Kurtz, in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 4: Kurtz traces the rise and fall of humanism around the world. Kurtz identifies six major ill-boding changes since the 1970s contributing to the decline of humanism. Note:

The third factor that emerged to challenge freethought and the secular movement was the near-total collapse of Marxism. For a good part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Marxist-humanist ideals had influenced intellectuals; with Marxism’s eclipse, anticlericalism and indeed any open criticism of religion have all but disappeared.

Juan Chi / Ruan Ji (210-263): Chinese bohemian poet

2011-05-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

Transmission of cultural and intellectual information across linguistic boundaries is far from perfect, and the notion that one will readily find everything one could possibly want in English is erroneous. I have blogged before on intellectual figures I could find almost no information on in English but learned about thanks to Esperanto, which has a history of serving as a bridge language between cultures. One such figure is the Chinese philosopher and freethinker Fan Zhen. Another is Ruan Ji, or Juan Chi in the older transliteration, whose life span was 210-263. All the relevant information in Esperanto can be accessed from my Esperanto blog:

Ĵŭan Ĝji, Saĝulo de la Bambu-Bosko

Works by and about Ruan Ji in English are difficult to find. Here's what there is:

Ruan Ji / Juan Chi: Selected Bibliography

"Speaking My Mind" by Juan Chi / Ruan Ji

Cultures all over the world have had their "holy fools": people who act eccentrically, in defiance of prevailing norms, whose extreme unconventional behavior—in complex civilizations, anyway—functions as a form of social critique. In the West, we have heard of Diogenes from ancient Greece. China, too, had many such persons. Here is an anecdote I have translated from Esperanto which I have not found in English:

He opposed feudal etiquette, acted strangely and unceremoniously; he took the space between heaven and earth as a chamber, his house as his trousers, remaining naked. When someone would enter his chamber, he would ask: "What are you doing in my pants?"

Michel Onfray in Esperanto

2011-05-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

I've blogged about Onfray on my Esperanto blog Ĝirafo several times, as I have on this one. Onfray is cited or mentioned from time to time in Le Monde Diplomatique en Esperanto. Onfray has subscribed to a petition regarding the acceptance of Esperanto in the French academic establishment: Campagne pour l'espéranto au bac, which advocates:

Pour toutes ces raisons nous demandons que l’espéranto soit ajouté à la liste des langues admises en tant qu’option au baccalauréat.

Now Onfray's Traité d'athéologie, which has been translated into several languages—in the USA it goes under the title Atheist Manifesto—is available in Esperanto translation: Traktaĵo pri Ateologio. I have blogged about this in Esperanto: Michel Onfray en Esperanto.

On this blog you will find my critical remarks about the ideological perspective underlying Onfray's work. I have not seen a critique in English that matches the thoroughness of this Russian Esperantist's critical review:

Ateismo subjektiva, limigita kaj katolika [An atheism that is subjective, limited, and Catholic] by Nikolao Gudskov

Gudskov cites a number of omissions in Onfray's historical account, but in addition to other specific criticisms, Gudskov criticizes Onfray's underlying methodology. Gudskov, who has no sympathy for Stalinism, nevertheless evidently learned something from historical materialism, as he insists that religion as a historical phenomenon cannot be understood as an abstraction isolated from the social factors that motivate it, and that the critique of religion cannot be limited to the critique of the Abrahamic religions or monotheism in general. He sums up Onfray's work as intellectually inadequate but useful as a popular work that articulates what fledgling atheists feel but have not yet fully articulated for themselves. I concur.

This is an interesting example of prevailing ideological differences among the intellectual cultures of different nations or linguistic spheres, in this case the French, Russian (formerly Soviet), and Anglo-American, though I should hasten to add that different intellectual cultures overlap said boundaries and can be found within them. Of course, Esperanto is not indispensable for overcoming provincialism nor does it by any means guarantee doing so. Nevertheless, it provides opportunities for dialogues among persons that would not exist otherwise.

The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator

2011-04-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure when intellectual gimmickry first gained a foothold in the best seller lists and became a pop culture phenomenon. I think the pioneer in this was Marshall McLuhan, whose hobbyhorse was, tellingly, the nature of the media. But now everyone has an angle, and at some point, the process can be automated:

The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator

My favorite so far is Blank: 300 Empty Pages to Fill with Your Own Fucking Theories.

Theorizing Social Paranoia (1)

2011-04-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

Theorizing Social Paranoia: A Précis for Discussion

By Ralph Dumain

“Fascism has awakened a sleeping world to the realities of the irrational, mystical character structure of the people of the world.” — Wilhelm Reich

“You’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you.” This adage reveals a fundamental problem in addressing the question of social paranoia and the concomitant phenomenon of conspiracy theories. Without the consideration of truth content, or a commitment to some view of social reality by which we could divide rational from irrational truth claims, we are left with a formalistic account of social paranoia based solely on defining characteristics of what Richard Hofstadter famously dubbed the “paranoid style.” Here are some essential questions to be addressed.

Is social paranoia essentially the same in all historical periods, and in all social and political circumstances and movements, or are there qualitative differences which need to be highlighted? What is the relationship between occult and supernaturally based paranoia—in primitive societies, the civilizations of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modernity—and secular paranoia—about elites or cabals openly or secretly controlling social institutions, the state, the economy, the world order? What transformations has the granddaddy of social paranoiac obsession—anti-Semitism—undergone since the Middle Ages? How shall we compare paranoia in power (in those who command state or institutional power) with the paranoia of the putatively powerless? Is there an equivalence between left and right, or are irrationalist worldviews associated with social paranoia essentially the property of the authoritarian right-wing? If there is an essential difference between right and left, what are the telltale signs of right-wing ideology? Are progressives vulnerable to appeals from the right, and are there examples of right-wing tendencies ensconced within the left?

Are the “moderate men” who evince a plague-on-both-your-houses attitude toward left and right guilty of shifting political discourse to the right?

The pooh-poohing of “conspiracy theories” is deployed by the right when it seeks to dismiss legitimate political criticisms and exposés, and often by the left as a distraction from structural social criticism. Given the shifting boundaries of what might be considered outlandish conspiracy claims in light of covert actions revealed over the past half century, how do we distinguish between at least marginally plausible conspiracy theories and totally outlandish or outright crackpot claims? What are the telltale code words and concepts associated with right-wing or other crackpot thinking? What are the tacit assumptions and characteristic fallacies in reasoning to look out for?

Finally, what does a climate of fear do in itself to break down rational processes and confuse attributions of causality? Wilhelm Reich, quoted above, himself succumbed to paranoiac thinking—even while diagnosing it—under the pressure of real persecution and the political horrors of fascism and Stalinism, and descended into crank pseudoscience even while making astute observations of the mystical mentality. Does a climate of fear—in which one has real reason to fear social forces which themselves may be imbued with social paranoia—bear the danger of impairing the rational capacity of a rational opposition?

In preparation for our forthcoming discussion, please consult the bibliography (with web links) I have prepared:

The Paranoia Papers: Theory of the (Un)Natural History of Social Paranoia: Selected Bibliography

10 April 2011

The Fascist Occult Unconscious of the World We Live In

2011-03-12T21:53:00.000-08:00

"Fascism has awakened a sleeping world to the realities of the irrational, mystical character structure of the people of the world."

— Wilhelm Reich

The paranoid fascist mentality is deeply ingrained in modern civilization. It is a deadlier mutation of the paranoiac magical thinking of primitive man, except that in a world in which one is menaced more by the forces of society than the forces of nature, occult thinking personalizes an impersonal and incomprehensible sociooeconomic system by constructing a narrative of mysterious omniscient, omnipotent, and omnimalevolent entities who operate according to a consistent master plan.

Stark naked sociology of religion

2011-03-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

While I'm trying to remember just why I can't stand Rodney Stark, let me call your attention to this article:

Stark, Rodney. "Religious Effects: In Praise of 'Idealistic Humbug'," Review of Religious Research, 41: 3, 2000, pp. 289-310.

Stark indicts the entire sociological tradition for denying religious belief as a socially causal factor. Stark aims to prove that certain historical events attributed to material causes have their roots in religious beliefs. Stark also argues that a sociology of religion ultimately rests on a sociology of gods.

Stark's examples are indeed interesting, but he missed something in his analysis of what's wrong with Marxist as well as other sociological explanations of religion.

If you'll notice, the problem centers on attributing ostensibly religious motives to economic or political motives. Apparently, a fair amount of bad Marxism was done this way. But positing a duality of motives in this way obscures the way in which people interpret their experience through the lens of their ideology, and more fundamentally, how their very subjectivity is formed.

The question, never satisfactorily addressed within the atheist movement, and apparently not fully via sociology, is what is religion exactly and what is its relation to social causality? Only dialectical social theory can address this riddle, not economism, not a crude conception of ulterior motives, not an assumption that irrational mythical thinking is a mechanically determined epiphenomenon of rational material interests, not just a translation of subjective motivations into putative objective material motivations without taking into account the formation of subjectivity itself.

Stark has some interesting observations, and his notion of the consequences of causal efficacy attributed to gods is worth investigating, but he remains trapped within the parameters of bourgeois sociology.

Marxism & the Jewish Question

2011-03-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

There are certain foci of social and historical investigation, which, when plumbed to their depths, unravel the entire weave of the modern world. Such are the roles of Jews in Europe and blacks in the Western hemisphere. In addition to the question of instrumental politics, there is the theoretical grasp of the collective existence of these groups, which, I argue, is the most symptomatic indicator of the progress and limitations of social theory. Thus, to advance one of my research projects . . .

Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography

This links to a related project of mine:

L. L. Zamenhof & the Cultural, Religious, Professional & Political Context of 19th-20th Century Eastern European Jewish Intellectuals: Selected Bibliography

Here is another resource, from the Marxists Internet Archive:

Jews, Marxism and the Worker’s Movement

Earl Browder, the Communist Party, & religion in the 1930s

2011-03-09T10:28:00.000-08:00

It must have been at least twenty years ago I looked up what Earl Browder had to say about the Communist Party's policy toward religion: it was in an issue of The Communist published between 1933 and 1935, I think. While I can't find the appropriate issue on the Internet, a web search suggests that what I have in mind is the report of a 1935 discussion with a group of students at Union Theological Seminary. And there is this publication, which almost certainly reprints the article in question:

Browder, Earl. "Religion and Communism," in Communism in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1935), chapter 22, pp. 334-349.

This is an entirely different publication:

Browder, Earl. Religion and Communism. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1939. 16 pp. (Address delivered at the regular morning service of the Community church in Boston on March 5, 1939.) Also available via Scribd.

And there is this:

Browder, Earl. A Message to Catholics. New York: Workers Library Publishers, June 1938. 16 pp.

Programmatic statements do not, of course, give us a full picture of the orientation stated here in practice, especially, given that in the USA as elsewhere, the CPUSA had to ingratiate itself with a variety of religious populations. I have not systematically studied this period, so I will confine myself to a few stray references. The Communist Party of the United States: From the Depression to World War II by Fraser M. Ottanelli depicts a sea-change in the Party's style with the advent of the Popular Front. An anti-communist study, Communism and the Churches by Ralph Lord Roy (Harcourt, Brace, 1960) credits Browder with putting a halt to the chronic ridicule of religion in the Party.

Naturally, this would be a treacherous minefield or tightrope to walk (take your metaphor of choice). I'm no fan of Browder, Stalinism, or pandering, but Browder's bold statements of 1935 should be studied today. In comparison to the flabbiness of the left today, they are exemplary.

Sikivu Hutchinson in Moral Combat (1)

2011-03-07T09:15:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning for some time to acknowledge publication of Sikivu Hutchinson's landmark book Moral Combat: Black Atheist, Gender Politics and the Value Wars. I am sure there is nothing like it in the atheist literature in the English language and that in many respects it is a welcome change from the usual narrow preoccupations of the atheist/humanist literature.

Here is a recent interview:

Moral Combat: Interview with Dr Sikivu Hutchinson
(Interviewed by Nathalie Woods, editor of the blog "Echoes of Commonsense")

There is much to applaud here. The contradictions embedded in the origin of Black American Christianity, for example, need to be better understood that simply chalking it up to the "Stockholm Syndrome" or the slave mentality (strong as the latter is). There is one assertion, though, that I find quite questionable:

‎"Ideologically, black atheists are distinct from white atheists in that they emphasize social justice and human rights rather than just fixating on science and the separation of church and state. "

I do think that the overall culture of American atheism & humanism, as represented by the preoccupations of its publications, speakers, leaders, and media stars, is indeed fixated on the natural sciences and has little of value to say about anything else. The rank and file, however, is more varied. Furthermore, there is no lack of reactionaries among black atheists, or of those enamored with the same science-spokesmen that white atheists adore. One thing to keep in mind about American "progressives" and leftists of any color is that they have no constituency, and anyone who pretends to speak for blacks is indulging in self-deception.

America's racial divide indeed as a rule engenders very different reference points for blacks and whites, and this sometimes correlates with different philosophical or political perspectives. However, that correlation can no longer be counted on, and to draw a hard and fast line between white and black atheists is symptomatic of something amiss in allegedly progressive politics.

Profiles in Humanism: A. Philip Randolph

2011-02-28T04:19:00.000-08:00

Profiles in Humanism: A. Philip Randolph by Bill Daehler, for the Humanist Network News.

Randolph, a black freethinker as well as a major figure in the history of labor organizing and the civil rights movement, is here honored. Randolph was selected 1970 Humanist of the Year.

The sleeping car porters that Randolph unionized played a key role in black history, in leveraging access to education and the middle class. See Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class by Larry Tye.

Anthony B. Pinn: Remembering African American Humanism

2011-02-27T19:56:00.000-08:00

From the Humanist Network News:

Remembering African American Humanism

A noteworthy statement by Anthony B. Pinn. I am puzzled though by his final statement, whose meaning I find unclear:

"That is to say, rather than simply acknowledging the diversity of our movement, we might take the next step and make diversity—difference—the hallmark of our movement . . . "

I think the words "diversity" and "difference" miss the mark, that they actually reinforce what Pinn apparently seeks to transcend, i.e. mere diversity. There's actually a stronger argument to be made.

I can't read Pinn's mind, but my reasoning goes like this: if there is an argument to be made about what goes beyond the mere acknowledgment of difference, it's the centrality of the black experience to the understanding of American history, but even this is too bloodless a way of stating it. Various black thinkers and writers have stated that the black experience crystallizes all the tendencies and social forces of the modern world. The implication is that no one's historical experience can be understood without the black experience being addressed. In one way or another, this has been stated by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Duke Ellington, James Baldwin, and C.L.R. James. This way of looking at things, which may have dropped out of popular consciousness for a few decades, was resuscitated in Paul Gilroy's 1993 book The Black Atlantic.

Playwright & Labor Organizer Manny Fried dies at 97

2011-02-26T00:52:00.000-08:00

Playwright Manny Fried dies at age 97: wivb.com

There are countless people who could be counted in the ranks of secular humanism, but one must recognize that while most of them were or are simply unorganized, and among those many who have not explicitly taken on such an identity, there was, especially in the first half of the 20th century, a large contingent who functioned not within a secularist, humanist, or freethought movement, but within the labor movement. Radical labor organizer, actor, and playwright Emanuel ("Manny") Fried (March 1, 1913 - February 25, 2011) was the son of Jewish immigrants, but like so many, Manny abandoned religious belief. This is not his claim to fame, but it is a fact. To be Jewish in the old days was to be subject to discrimination, harassment, and violence. And to be Jewish means more to be a member of an ethnic group than it does necessarily to be religious. Manny recounted in one of our talks the horrible antisemitism that prevailed in American society and which was part of his experience, also documented here and there in his work. He told me that he grew up in an area of Buffalo populated by Jews and blacks. In addition to his devotion to the cause of labor, he also opposed an attempt to segregate Hutchinson high school in Buffalo, and there are other comparable anecdotes to be related which I don't think can be found in his autobiography.

As Manny died yesterday, just a few days short of his 98th birthday, I am still collecting my thoughts. When I volunteered to create a web presence for him in 2003, there was practically nothing to be found on the Internet. He was a local hero, but largely unknown outside of Western New York. You are invited to familiarize yourself with Manny's life and work:

The Emanuel Fried Center

. . . and on the links page, here are the obituaries.

Religion & Hate (2)

2011-02-23T03:42:00.000-08:00

Regarding the group discussion of Feb. 22 mentioned in the previous post: To the extent that there were different schools of thought or aspects of the question represented in this discussion, here is how the various opinions expressed cluster:

(1) Whatever there is to be said about ‘human nature’ or tendencies with or without religion towards hostility and dominance, religion specifically exacerbates this tendency or adds ingredients all its own.

All religions make competing truth-claims.
Religious truth claims are exclusive.
Other belief systems are not only wrong, but constitute a threat.
All orthodox (specifically Abrahamic) religions foster hatred of outgroups: there is a demonstrable correlation.
In the distant past, there were local deities. Modern theism makes matters worse.
Religion does not permit for testability of truth claims.
Religion lends an absolute authority to prejudices.
Religion is a map that bends reality to fit the map.

(2) Defense of religion or specific religions, and disputes over same occurred.

Hate is only felt by individuals, not religions.
Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are counter-examples of religion’s hatefulness.
Buddhism is nonviolent. Various claims & counter-claims:

Buddhism is philosophy not religion.
Japanese Buddhism fed into Japanese nationalism.
There is definitive documentation of Buddhist atrocities.
Tibetan Buddhism is not what the fans of the Dalai Lama make it out to be.
The American version of Buddhism is not the same as Buddhism in Asia.

The Axial Age saw the birth of more humane belief systems.
St. Paul instituted a major shift to cosmopolitanism.
Stalinism was a secular religion.
There is a universal attraction to religion: religion tells people how to live.

(3) Claims about human nature were rampant, and questions over the uniqueness of religion as a causal factor.

The fundamental question is one of in-groups vs. out-groups.
Religion is not more hate-inducing than other things.
There are various pretexts & rationalizations. (In the case of religion, there’s an appeal to an absolute authority—an argument used by some against religion.)
Religion is mixed in with cultural & other rivalries.
Group conflict may be a perennial phenomenon, preceding religion.
Experiments show that any differentiating factor can serve as a catalyst for the delineation of in and out groups.
There are other ideologies of contention, especially nationalism.
Someone asserted that gender is primary.
Someone introduced the observation that “America” is a god.
Do all groups inspire hate? Are aggression and violence universals?
Several factors were put forward as stimulating aggressive tendencies:

Population density.
Pecking order: leaders start wars.
Testosterone: young males are the main culprits.
Males & females engage in difference types of conflict.
Unattached males are most likely to be prone to warfare.

(4) What is the basis of morality? Is or can there be a science of morality?

Religion is not necessary to morality.
Relativism should be opposed.
There is a difference between subjective & objective reasoning.
There is the issue of the testability of claims.
There is a scientific basis to morality.
Morality is not a science yet, but there is progress. More study is needed to render morality scientific.

(5) Miscellaneous points:

The inconsistencies in religion are exploited to different ends.
An example of twisted reasoning is gratitude toward God for ‘sparing’ selected individuals from disasters in which many others perish.
Missionaries have by and large been awful people.
How does one weigh the good and bad aspects associated with religion?
Something was said about Freud or psychoanalysis, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

(6) Definitional & methodological questions:

What is meant by hatred? Does hatred = violence = war?
Is preference hatred?
Who gets to define what a religion is?
Can one factor out religion from everything else?
Someone oriented toward social science is not satisfied with exclusively biological explanations for socially/historically determinant phenomena.

Religion & Hate (1)

2011-02-23T00:06:00.000-08:00

In preparation for a discussion this evening (22 Feb) on religion and hate, I sketched the following bulletin points. In a subsequent post I will list the bullet points of what was actually discussed.

(1) I always have a problem with the question of religion & causality, since religion itself is an expression of social (& psychological) forces.

(2) I think we have to go behind religion & begin with its origins in magical thinking, and thus the connection with dependency, fear & violence, beginning with the experience of violence in nature.

(3) As much as I dislike René Girard as a Christian apologist, his views adumbrated in Violence and the Sacred should be examined, particularly the notion of ritual sacrifice as a substitute for unregulated violence.

(4) I think religion has to be historically divided at least into 3 stages: (1) primitive magic & tribal religion; (5) religion in pre-modern class societies, wherein all the "great" religions took shape; (6) religion in the modern world, & the inability to digest modernity, in which magical thinking proliferates in both religious & secular ideologies.

(5) Without understanding the cultural reinforcements of hate, violence, oppression & paranoia, I don't see how we could understand religion's connection to hate, or in some cases, religion's rebellion against hate. There is even one religion or two which is mostly benign, the Bahai's, for example.

(6) And then there's the question of self-hate. Why do the victimized think they have done something wrong? Richard Wright addressed this question symbolically in his brilliant 1942 story, "The Man Who Lived Underground."

(7) References given here address different historical stages of superstitious / magical / paranoiac thinking. Girard addresses primitive religion. Edmund D. Cohen's The Mind of the Bible-Believer addresses the genesis and psychological mechanisms of thought control behind Christianity. Consult the LABELS on this blog for more on both of these authors. For an example of modern paranoiac thinking, consult reviews of Stephen Eric Bronner's A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion.

W. E. B. Du Bois on Religion (6): Race & Biblical Metaphor?

2011-02-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

Terrance Macmullan, University of Oregon
Treasure Hidden in the Field: The Significance of Biblical Metaphor within W.E.B. Du Bois's Conception of Race
(March 8, 2002, session on "Du Bois and Dewey")
Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 29th Annual Meeting, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME, March 7-9, 2002.

This is a rather pathetic, self-contradictory, and ultimately ambiguous attempt to highlight the alleged religious dimension of Du Bois. If it were simply a matter of highlighting Du Bois' use of Biblical metaphor as rhetorical strategy, and even to suggest the symbolic reference of Du Bois' rhetoric has been overlooked, there would be nothing controversial here. But Macmullan is apparently after more. In the first paragraph Macmullan claims that Du Bois' religious rhetoric is both prophetic and pragmatic, which of course brings to mind the philosophical empty suit of Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism, or preaching with footnotes. While there may be some use to interpreting properly the notion that "that each race bears a gift", it is a mystical notion left over from the 19th century that is best left to the past.

For emphasizing Du Bois' secularism and downplaying the spiritual dimension, Macmullan criticizes Shamoon Zamir, Adolph Reed Jr., Anthony K. Appiah, Lucius Outlaw, and even Cornel West. All this while admitting time and time again that Du Bois was a freethinker. Had Macmullan stuck to statements like the following, there would be no need to object:

His use of religious language stemmed from a recognition of the fact that the idea of race in America emerged largely from a religious discourse, and that this same discourse must be instrumental in its reform.

However, Macmullan implies more with formulations such as the following:

Where Christians at the time succored Africans in America with the image of the Lamb (the chosen child of God that humbly bears suffering for the sake of universal salvation), Du Bois calls on his fellow African Americans to read their plight as the trial of a prophetic people who must boldly speak out against their oppression that others might learn the consequences of cruelty and the need for love.

He further explicates the Biblical references, and continues:

If we take Du Bois’ biblical orientation to heart, we see that the race-specific ideals of life are prophetic gifts that are of unsurpassable value to those outside the race, yet are also potentially dangerous for the gift-bearing race.

The phrase "Du Bois’ biblical orientation" is misleading. Macmullan commences his conclusion:

When we attend to his use of religious language, we better see how and why the racial gift is a bridge across the racial divide made possible by the divide itself.

. . . and concludes:

Du Bois developed a perspective on race that is still a vital tool in ongoing efforts to heal the invidious racism of the last four centuries. However, in order to fully understand his idea of race, and in order to fully reach into the lived experiences of most people, we need to not only study the religious language at the heart of his concept but also engage the religious discourses that perpetuate outdated ideas of race.

This position is ideologically bankrupt. There is no vital tool here, but an obsolete metaphorical framework that may have been justified for its time, but can serve no constructive purpose now. The only proper way to engage religious discourses now is to obliterate them. Furthermore, the spiritualistic concept of race is not an advance over the later and more invidious biological concept, but is rather a retreat to German Romanticism, an absolutely reactionary move in light of two essential considerations: (1) it is essentially anti-scientific; (2) it could not be more at variance with the contemporary reality of American society, in which the meaning of culture, let alone of race, is so radically mediated and altered from the past, that the very idea of a mission or a coherent social entity that could be the bearer of a mission, is utter nonsense.

How rotten is this marriage of multiculturalism and the academic retooling of classic American pragmatism? How high the moon?

Joel Augustus Rogers & the Universal Races Congress of 1911

2011-02-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

Joel Augustus Rogers (September 6, 1880 — March 26, 1966) carried on a tireless war of ideas against the pervasive white supremacist ideology of his time. Here's another sample from his landmark 1917 book From “Superman” to Man, to which I've given a title . . .

Race, Equality of Intellect, & the History of Civilization by J. A. Rogers

Here you find a distillation of the style and content of Rogers' argumentation, which also serves as a window into the time in which he lived. There are several facets of this extract that could be annotated at length. Aside from the marshaling of facts and figures available to Rogers, note the refined and even-tempered tone of the protagonist Dixon contrasted to the frothing hysteria of his white racist antagonist. Note Rogers' insistence on a scientific perspective, to the point of pushing religion aside, for example in Dixon's argument:

“Finot, whose findings ought to be regarded as more valuable than the expressions of chose who base their arguments on sentiment or on Hebrew mythology, says,— ‘All peoples may attain this distant frontier which the brains of the whites have reached.’”

Also of historical interest is Rogers' citation here (and elsewhere in the book) of the First Universal Races Congress of 1911. The centennial of this landmark ideological intervention has so far gone virtually unnoticed, a situation which I am now endeavoring to rectify:

First Universal Races Congress, London, July 26-29, 1911: Selected Bibliography

W. E. B. Du Bois on Religion (5): "A Hymn to the Peoples"

2011-02-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

At the very least, Du Bois was an agnostic. He was also influenced by German thought. His negative attitude towards religion was registered for example in his Autobiography, published late in life. Here is an extract:

W. E. B. Du Bois on Religion

However, Du Bois did express himself in edifying language with a quasi-religious valence. Case in point, this poem inspired by the Universal Races Congress of 1911:

"A Hymn to the Peoples" by W. E. B. Du Bois

Note the peculiarities in Du Bois' use of religious language. Two questions immediately come to mind:

(1) What is meant by "God" in this poem?
(2) Does "World-Spirit" refer to Hegel's notion?

Black freethought groups proliferate

2011-02-09T13:35:00.000-08:00

The good news is, it's difficult to keep up with all the black freethought activity in cyberspace. Here are a few sites/groups I've recently discovered.

Black Atheists (blog)
"We are a minority within a minority."

Black FreeThinkers
Self-contained social network in ning format.

Black Nonbelievers of Atlanta
A local group with a presence on Facebook & elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, these all have the flavor of youth. All seem to be freshly experiencing the vigor and the militancy of self-assertion. Intellectual maturity will take much longer, but clearly there is a tidal wave of nonbelief among young black people in the USA (and elsewhere) that is making its presence felt, weak though in may be in the vast ocean of black religiosity.

Joel Augustus Rogers (1880-1966)

2011-02-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

Joel Augustus Rogers (September 6, 1880 — March 26, 1966) was an autodidactic historian and pioneer in combating racial supremacist ideology, beginning with his classic 1917 anti-racist tract in dialogue form, From “Superman” to Man.

The fifth edition, which I consulted, has an index which you can find on my web site.

I have also digitized the section designated in the index as "Religion and the Negro".

See also my Esperanto blog for information on Rogers' use of the First (and only) Universal Races Congress of 1911:

J. A. Rogers, L. L. Zamenhof, and the Universal Races Congress of 1911

To learn more about Rogers, you can read the following article in its entirety when you associate yourself with a public library:

"Joel Augustus Rogers: Negro Historian in History, Time, and Space" by Malik Simba

Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator

2011-02-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

Note that this 1895 book (first edition, 1891) by an admirer of Douglass includes Douglass' harshest remarks on religion:

Holland, Frederic May. Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator, revised edition. New York; London; Toronto: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1895. (American Reformers, edited by Carlos Martyn) See Chapter XIII: Marshal and Recorder.

I don't have any further information about Frederic May Holland (1836-1908), except that he also authored books on Robert Browning, the Stoics, the French Revolution, the revolutions of 1688 and 1776, and the history of freedom and liberty.

Frederick Douglass & Darwinism

2011-02-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

"I do not know that I am an evolutionist, but to this extent I am one. I certainly have more patience with those who trace mankind upward from a low condition, even from the lower animals, than with those that start him at a high point of perfection and conduct him to the level with the brutes. I have no sympathy with a theory that starts man in heaven and stops him in hell."

— Frederick Douglass, "'It Moves': or the Philosophy of Reform", address delivered in Washington, DC, 20 November 1883; in The Frederick Douglass Papers, series 1, vol. 5; ed. John W. Blassingame et al (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 124-145.

Note that the title of this speech is inspired by Galileo's reaction to the suppression of his work: "Eppur si mouve"— "nevertheless, it moves" (the Earth round the sun). Interestingly, this formulation of Douglass reminds me of Bakunin's antitheist argument in God and the State.

Douglass' Women, Douglass' secular humanism, Douglass' politics

2011-02-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

My discovery of this novel this morning perked up what otherwise started out as a rotten day:

Douglass' Women: A Novel
by Jewell Parker

There was a real-life intellectual and romantic liaison between Frederick Douglass and German-Jewish emigré Ottilie Assing. She even lived with the Douglass family on Cedar Hill, something you won't learn when you visit the Douglass house today. Naturally, Douglass' wife was not thrilled at this arrangement, but there you go.

Assing claimed in a letter to Ludwig Feuerbach that Douglass was an atheist, but she was likely exaggerating. You can read the letter for yourself on my web site:

Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass

We shall see how Parker handles the freethought aspect of their relationship.

This liaison is actually in the news, connected to the question of Douglass as freethinker. Here is a recent news story:

Douglass a Secular Humanist? by Hector Avalos, Ames Tribune, Saturday, February 5, 2011.

The Douglass-Assing relationship is the linchpin of Avalos' article. Avalos puts Douglass in the company of Dawkins and Hitchens. It's hardly a stretch to identify Douglass with secular humanism; this does not prove Douglass to be an atheist, Avalos admits such as assertion to be an exaggeration, but it would still be more accurate to specify what is knowable about the degree of overlap between Douglass' undeniable secularism and humanism, and the hardcore atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens.

This rather insufferable Christian rebuttal is ridiculous in rendering Douglass' 1883 "It Moves" speech consistent with Christianity, but the blogger is correct that Douglass' statements in themselves do not prove a disavowal of theism per se.

Deeper historical contextualization is mandated, if not in an occasional newspaper piece, then in further investigation of the subject.

I have always had doubts as to where Wilson Moses is coming from, but he has authored several books engaged in in-depth historical analysis of 19th century black nationalism. Note his treatment of Douglass here:

Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History by Wilson Jeremiah Moses

Moses addresses the tensions within Douglass' politics, principally between his advocacy of the black cause and his integrationism. "His hostility to the traditionalism and institutional structure of organized religion was part and parcel of the extreme progressive liberalism that he embraced." Moses analyzes Douglass' moral perfectionism and aversion to relativism, a joint product of Enlightenment thought, liberalism, Victorian rationalism, and Christian perfectionism.

Here is another take by Moses on Douglass and other iconic black political intellectuals:

Creative Conflict in African American Thought by Wilson Jeremiah Moses

Here you can read an excerpt:

I. Introduction. Reality and Contradiction

Among other things you will find here an analysis of the ideological differences between Douglass and Alexander Crummell, the uneasy relationship between moralism and power politics, and the tension in Douglass between individualism and racial loyalty.

Finally, note the quotation from Douglass in Evolutionary Writings by Charles Darwin, edited by James A. Secord (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

History of Pastafarianism

2011-01-26T08:09:00.000-08:00

We're Not in Kansas Anymore
Cerebral Boinkfest (blog), Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Linda Hedrick runs down the history of Pastafarianism and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future?

2011-01-13T08:45:00.000-08:00

Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future? is the theme of the May-June 2009 issue of Jewish Currents. There is first the editor's Introduction (pp. 1-3), and here is the rest of the contents:

"Offers We Couldn’t Refuse: What Happened to Secular Jewish Identity?" An Analysis by April Rosenblum (8-28)
"My Dinosaur Days: Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future?" An Illustrated Memoir by Lawrence Bush (29-50)
"Humanistic Judaism and Sherwin Wine: The “Other Wing” of the Jewish Secular Movement" An Appreciation by Rabbi Adam Chalom (51-55)
Responses from Readers and Activists (56-69) Barnett Zumoff, Linda Gritz, Ross Perlin, Marie Parham, Rabbi Shai Gluskin, Ira Mintz, Lyber Katz, Joel Schechter, Dorothy Zellner, Brian Klug, Michael Prival, Jack Nusan Porter, Rokhl Kafrissen, Michael Gould-Wartofsky, Billy Yalowitz

Rosenbaum provides an historical account of how secular Jewish (Yiddish) culture was once in the mainstream of American Jewish life and how various social pressures virtually eliminated it in the 1950s and beyond.

Lawrence Bush recounts his own experience in the secular Jewish milieu and his engagement with Jewish Currents, of which he is now the editor. Contrary to Irving Howe, he maintains that Yiddish culture is not doomed after all.

From being the lone humanistic rabbi in the 1960s, at the time of this writing (Wine died in 2007) Sherwin Wine engendered over 30 congregations and over 50 leaders.

Interestingly, even secularists, in trying to demythologize their religious tradition, didn't make it quite that far:

For example, from Mayn Folk, a 1962 Workmen’s Circle children’s history book (my translation from the Yiddish):
When the Jews lived in the wilderness, their leader was Moses. He was the leader of all the Jewish tribes. All Jews obeyed him. Moses taught the Jews how to live properly and well. He gave the Jewish people wise and good laws. He gave Jews the Torah.
God is edited out of this book, which instead focuses on the “organizer” Moses. However, despite all the evidence of archaeology and Biblical criticism that the Torah was compiled centuries after Moses (if he existed), the traditional teaching of the siddur (prayerbook) that “this is the Torah that Moses placed before the Children of Israel” persists.

Turning Moses into a left-winger is a miracle in itself, but I heard the same line some years ago when attending a Labor Seder, replete with heavy-handed didactic politicization of the traditional ritual in the service of the cause of the day. I was quite amazed to see a number of young people present, as I expected nobody under 80 would be found there. I don't know what denomination the labor seders are held under; it was not Humanistic Judaism as far as I know, but it may as well have been. I liked the people, and especially the participation of African-American, Ethiopian, and Latino union activists, but I found the ceremonial aspect rather lame.

I have also known some of the members of the Washington DC branch of Humanistic Judaism, Machar, but in settings far removed from any semblance of a religious service. Hence I remain mystified what religious services of Jewish atheists could possibly look like and what an atheist rabbi is supposed to do. I suppose this article attempts to answer that question.

Wine attempted to combine both the congregational and secular dimensions of Jewish life, and both the particular tradition and universalism, incorporating non-Jewish intellectual sources. Wine also incorporated intermarriage into his denomination and even gay commitment ceremonies. Wine was willing to question even the cultural survival of the Jewish people. He rejected the Bible and Torah as below the standard of real intellectualism. His philosophy can be found in Judaism Beyond God (1985, revised 1995). His liturgical innovations can be found in Celebration: A Ceremonial and Philosophic Guide for Humanists and Humanistic Jews (1988). His final statement can be found in the festschrift A Life of Courage: Sherwin Wine and Humanistic Judaism (2004).

Given my limited exposure, all I can say is that people have to do the best they can from where they find themselves. If I had to go this route, I would probably prefer Ethical Culture, which I'd also prefer to the even more vapid Unitarians, but I find it all a bloody bore and essentially a palliative for the upper middle class. (Though in fairness I must concede that the traditional clerical institution provides a base for charitable work and social action.) Still, Humanistic Judaism is the next best thing to Jewish humanism, that is, humanism ex officio.

Barnett Zumoff supplements Rosenblum's analysis with a couple of internal factors and adds that "secular Jewishness is currently maintained in America only by a tiny group of determined individuals, through heroic effort and in a very diluted form." Linda Gritz recounts her own efforts in preserving secular Jewish culture. Ross Perlin addresses the problems endemic to this endeavor. Marie Parham recounts her upbringing in the Jim Crow South. The civil rights Freedom Rides and the African art her father brought home from his travels inspired her. She did not realize there was a tradition behind her impulses until she visited Camp Kinderland and heard Miriam Makeba broadcast over the PA system. Rabbi Shai Gluskin thinks that secular ideologies like Stalinism are far worse than theism, so he prefers liberal Judaism. Ira Mintz claims that "Secular Judaism is alive and well and living in Central New Jersey." Lyber Katz estimates that half of the American Jewish population is secular. He also sees a rise in an interest in spirituality among the baby-boom generation. He agrees with Rosenbaum about the devastating effect of McCarthyism. Joel Schechter is an enthusiastic latecomer to Yiddishkeit. Dorothy Zellner blames the red scare and Zionism for the destruction of secular Jewish culture. Brian Klug describes Jewdas (www.jewdas.org) a fairly new Jewish group in Britain that characterizes itself as “radical voices for the alternative diaspora.” He describes an event in London, a "Rootless Cosmopolitan Yeshiva". (I like the sound of that.)

Michael Prival recounts his own formative experience in the Jewish milieu of the Bronx. But there is no reason that younger people, who are entirely removed from this experience, should bother with it. Here he hits the nub:

In my family, secular Jewish identity survived to my children’s generation largely because of our participation in the Humanistic Judaism movement described by Rabbi Adam Chalom. Although Humanistic Judaism is totally accepting of those from non-Jewish backgrounds, secular Jewish identity continues to be rooted in ethnicity. We live in a society so welcoming that the ethnic ties of all groups weaken over time. We may regret the gradual loss of identity, but we can only celebrate the openness of the society that causes it.

A distinct secular Jewish culture cannot survive through the generations in the United States without ghettoization of housing and education that limits exposure of the young to the broader culture and, more importantly, to non-Jewish potential mates. Fortunately, these conditions do not exist for most of us, so our ancestral culture is disappearing.

Now this I can relate to.

Jack Nusan Porter was raised Orthodox, but learned to incorporate secularism? Why not the reverse?

Secular Judaism is not “marginalized,” it simply does not give Jews the nurture and “soul” that religious ritual gives. That’s why I always felt, even back in Morris Schappes’ time, that secular Judaism would decline if it did not acquire some kind of spirituality — and why not a Hebrew prayer-language, and not just a Yiddish spirituality?

Yuck!

Rokhl Kafrissen recounts her disillusionment with Hadar and encounter with Jewish Currents. She is not "secular"; she wants to lead an "integrated Jewish life". Oy.

Michael Gould-Wartofsky is the son of philosopher Marx Wartofsky (who knew?). He grew up in a secular socialist environment but found this at odds with mainstream Jewish identity, i.e. religiosity + nationalism. He could only find like-minded Jews in social movements not specifically Jewish, which he terms the "inner diaspora". (My kind of people.) He enumerates the ideological parameters of the Jewish mainstream and calls for a radical rupture with it.

Such a secular revival could be global, with the help of new media and the Internet. It could embrace all forms of Jewish culture, not only those that speak Yiddish or Hebrew, and open itself up to the Latino, Arab, and Black Jewish traditions.

Billy Yalowitz starts off by mentioning his presence at two seders, one with the Reconstrucions, the other with is secular left-wing family. Coming from a heritage of communists and Yiddish speaking socialist, he inherited a contempt for Judaism and religion in general, but finds inspiration in the combination of Yiddish literature, left-wing political culture, and Judaism which is also part of his family history.

It should not be too difficult to discern my own sympathies. One area to pursue that was only touched on by a couple of the participants: how to non-Jews associated with Jews, most notably in mixed families or intimate relationships, relate to secular Jewish culture under discussion? Prival and Gould-Wartofsky skirt this question from opposite angles. I don't see any future for any culture in the USA that is not open to everyone. In addition to the factors adumbrated by Prival, the communications revolution—the enculturation of children via media technology from birth—has permanently altered the nature of culture and established a permanent discontinuity with the cultural past. On the other hand, it has also created options for recombinant appropriations of the flotsam of all cultures that never previously existed. So there is now a question of what any individual from one ethnic group experiences, related to a question of what individuals from different groups experience in association. This, as well in differentials in the experience of or need for belonging, are factors to consider. I personally can only stand so much of belonging, and so total immersion in anything is too much for me to take, but others will make their way as suits them, hopefully without getting stuck in a rut.

Jewish attitudes toward Jesus in history

2011-01-12T10:58:00.000-08:00

Jewish Perceptions of Jesus in Religious Texts and Artistic Works
Bennett Muraskin
Jewish Currents, Spring 2010

Most of this information is new to me. Christian slanders against Jews are legendary. Jewish resentment against Christians is understandable. I never knew of any particular Jewish hostility to Jesus, though. Apparently, there's a long history of this from about half way through the second century AD through the Middle Ages. This I found absolutely hilarious:

Throughout the Middle Ages, European Jews generally continued to revile Jesus, albeit secretly. They would bring images of Jesus and Mary into their outhouses. Jesus was called Yoyzl or Yoshke Pandrek, which means “Mr. Shit.” They would treat Haman as a proxy for Jesus during Purim, hanging an effigy on a cross and burning it. Michael Wex’s acclaimed Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods (2006) provides numerous examples of Yiddish expressions that mocked Jesus and Christian beliefs well into the 20th century.

The fun had to end sometime:

However, the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskole) of the 18th and 19th centuries effected a sea change in attitudes towards the figure of Jesus among liberal and secular Jews.

The author documents praise of Jesus from Heinrich Graetz in the 19th century to Buber and Einstein in the 20th. Jewish artists like Chagall and Jacob Epstein also used the Jewish Jesus as a weapon against Christian anti-Semitism and to promote peace and justice. Several Yiddish writers capitalized on Jesus' martyrdom. Sholem Asch made a decisive impact but also caught a lot of flack with his popular Yiddish novel The Nazarene in 1939. Matthew Hoffman in Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (2007) judged "the Jewish reclamation of Jesus" an important contribution to secular Jewish culture.

Hypatia revisited

2011-01-10T23:14:00.000-08:00

Written 12 January 2008:

Dzielska, Maria. Hypatia of Alexandria, translated by F. Lyra. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Interesting little book on the great mathematician/astronomer/philosopher Hypatia, torn to pieces by Christians in Alexandria, 415 AD. Much accepted as fact about Hypatia is actually the repetition of legend. This book reviews the literary history of Hypatia. She was a hero of the Enlightenment. Several writers of the period blamed St. Cyril for complicity in her assassination. (The first English writer to honor her was the heretical John Toland.) Hypatia became a symbol of Hellenism defiled by Christian fanaticism. She was also the subject of a novel in the 19th century by Charles Kingsley (of which I have two editions), a Protestant clergyman who wanted to sock it to the Catholics. In more recent years she has become a heroine of the feminists.

After reviewing this history, Dzielska assembles ascertainable historical data about her and her belief system, based on what can be learned by her disciples. I don't recall her relation to Christianity, but I believe she was most likely a Platonist who headed an esoteric circle rather than a public or itinerant teacher.

I paused after this point. The third chapter I think is about the circumstances of her death, and the fourth is the conclusion.

17 January 2008:

After reviewing the literary history of Hypatia and the ascertainable facts about her circle, the subsequent chapter is about her life and death, then a conclusion, finally a bibliographical supplement.

While portrayed as a beautiful young woman in literature, in reality Hypatia was probably born circa 355 AD and thus was murdered by a Christian mob at the age of 60. Her father was a noted mathematician and astronomer, and she carried on his work and added her own achievements. In addition, she was, as were other scientifically minded individuals of her time, heavily involved in hermeticism and esoteric teachings. An elite, upper class group constituted her circle. She was neither popular with the masses, nor was she a particularly avid defender of the traditional "pagan" religion.

Hypatia got caught up in the vicious religious politics of her time. When the patriarch Cyril (later sainted, natch) took over from Theophilus, he made aggressive efforts to wipe out paganism and Judaism, which destabilized an inherently precarious situation. Cyril incited violent, homicidal warfare between Jews and Christians, which ultimately resulted in an anti-Jewish pogrom devastating the Jewish presence in Alexandria. Furthermore, he locked himself into a power struggle with the pagan leader Orestes. Hypatia has friends in high places, both with Orestes and in the center of empire. Aloof from public life, she was set up as a scapegoat for the city's tensions. She was portrayed as a witch casting a spell over Orestes, preventing a rapproachment with the Christians. Cyril is known to have incited the climate of hate, but there is no evidence directly linking him to her assassination. However, a cabal of Christian leaders whipped up a lynch mob against her among the poor and ignorant yet obedient to the priesthood, and these people attacked and dismembered her in 415 AD.

Nothing like that Christian love, n'est ce pas?

David N. Myers on history vs theology in German-Jewish thought

2010-12-25T19:09:00.000-08:00

David N. Myers, The Problem of History in German-Jewish Thought: Observations on a Neglected Tradition (Cohen, Rosenzweig, and Breuer). The Samuel Braun Lecture in the History of the Jews of Prussia. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press. 2001.

While I'm finding Myers' work on the history of alternative Jewish nationalisms (with a focus on cultural Zionism) interesting, I'm finding myself irritated with this essay from the beginning. Myers ponders the opposition between self-authorizing, self-insulating theology and an historicism which undermines it. Myers aims to show that this tension is not limited to Christianity or to Islam but has a substantial history in Jewish thought. Several instances are cited, for instance Baruch Kurzweil's war on the "Jerusalem School" for its unforgivable tendency "to lower Judaism from its absolute validity to a state of relativism." Moreover,

If the perverse fascination with mysticism went hand in hand with historicism, there was another partner in what Kurzweil considered the unholy trinity of secular modernity: nationalism. Where mysticism sought to subvert the normative tradition, nationalism aimed to "normalize" Judaism by removing its veil of uniqueness. In this regard, it was an ideal partner for historicism. Kurzweil was well aware that, in Europe, nationalism and historicism were close and mutually affirming allies from the early 19th century on. More often than not, historical scholarship had been called upon to tell the story of the nation. Nationalism, for its part, provided not only intellectual inspiration, but also an institutional home for historicism in the form of universities, learned societies, and large collaborative projects.

Myers finds this fascinating.

Making sense of Baruch Kurzweil's contentious battle with Jewish historicism is a fascinating challenge. One can readily point to a number of intersecting explanatory layers: his iconoclastic personality; his personal animosity and inferiority complex toward the Hebrew University (where he sought and failed to gain a professorial appointment); his ambivalence toward Zionism, and
particularly Zionist claims to intellectual or spiritual rejuvenation; his attention to the moral caesura occasioned by the Holocaust; and his uncommonly keen awareness, especially for a non-historian, that historicism was in the throes of crisis in postwar European intellectual culture.

While I too am drawn to solve historical-ideological puzzles, I am far from fascinated at the starting gate. Let's see where Myers takes us. He puts Kurzweil in abeyance while he takes us on a historical journey beginning in the 12th century. Judah Ha-Levi and Maimonides disdained history. But 18th century Enlightenment paved the way for 19th century historicism, which involves a new conception of mundane causality and context. This was bound to cause conflict between Jewish thinkers imbued with historicist prerogatives and traditional transcendentalists. But Myers is not so much interested in the fussy traditionalists as in "Jewish figures who, regardless of their adherence to traditional ritual, were deeply and unapologetically immersed in a secular intellectual world, had absorbed the impact of historicism, and sought to protest against it—from within." One example is Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's opposition to Heinrich Graetz. Nietzsche, too, railed against historicism, and he was an influence on Jewish thinkers. Debate raged in Christian theological circles as well. And then there is the neo-Kantian movement. Hermann Cohen found historicism suspect, opposed Zionism, and argued against Emst Troeltsch.

The discussion of various figures continues until we come to a sustained discussion of Franz Rosenzweig, who was convinced he found an escape route from relativism, ultimately taking refuge in religious faith, with a great affinity to Christian theologians. He also chafed against Zionism, fearing the descent into time.

In this [1919] lecture on "The Spirit and Epochs of Jewish History," Rosenzweig declared that the Jewish people refused to succumb to time, indeed, refused to be reduced to a scheme of periodization. On the contrary, the "Jewish spirit breaks the shackles of (historical) epochs" and "walks undisturbed through history."

Myers moves on to Isaac Breuer, who sought to "overcome the emptiness of bourgeois life", but on an entirely different basis than, say, the Frankfurt School. To say the least: "Breuer's premise led him to conclude that the Jews, unlike other peoples, were not subordinate to the normal forces of nature or human will." Yet he believed in teaching history.

How Myers could sustain interest in this drivel is beyond me. Well, there's one obvious basis of interest:

Breuer was a steadfast believer in the existence of a Jewish nation and a fierce opponent of the idea of a secular Jewish state. Throughout his life he waged battle against Zionism, whose impious disregard for Torah rendered it "the most terrible enemy that has ever risen against the Jewish nation."

This does not mean that Breuer wanted to stay out of Palestine.

In his summation, Myers evinces a sense of regret and in some way sympathizes with the impetus to "resist the powerful pull of historicism" even while being irrevocably drawn toward it. But so what? None of this metaphysical folderol yields the slightest understanding of one's historical situation. Whatever Myers thinks is historicism is not historical materialism, which is excluded from consideration, and the resistance to secular historical consciousness is a denial of reality utterly opposed to any scientific, that is intellectually honest and non-delusional, comprehension of history and society. Ultimately, there is going to be a draw-down between Jewish thinkers who do not function within the confines of "Jewish thought", i.e. all the intellectual innovators who really matter, and a retreat into a specifically Jewish metaphysics, however permeated with the influence of Christianity and German philosophy. Myers is lost; he wants to say something, but he really has nothing to express other than regret over where he finds himself deposited in history.

Frederick Douglass home invasion

2010-12-10T22:51:00.000-08:00

Frederick Douglass home, Anacostia, Washington DC, 14 January 2005

Here's my report written just after my visit on 14 January 2005:

Today I finally got around to a project I've had in mind for a few years: I visited Frederick Douglass' Cedar Hill home in Anacostia, now maintained by the National Park Service. My goal was to attempt to photograph certain objects in Fred's study, particularly busts of Ludwig Feuerbach and David Friedrich Strauss, both members of the Left Hegelian movement and pivotal figures in the history of German freethought. Strauss' 1835 Leben Jesu marked a turning point in the demythologization of the gospels. Strauss also divided the struggling factions following Hegel into Left, Right, and Center. Feuerbach is best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, translated into English early on (unlike most of other writings of the Young Hegelians, a good number of which remain untranslated to this day) by the novelist George Eliot. Feuerbach argues that religion reflects an inverted world and is a projection of the alienated human essence. This revolutionary concept had an enormous impact, so much so that Feuerbach himself is often forgotten. Feuerbach also had a revolutionary program for philosophy, which didn't get quite so far because of the limitations of his concepts. He considered philosophy (having reached its summit in Hegel), like religion, as a disguised form of theology, and hence requiring a materialist inversion as well. Feuerbach provided Marx with a nascent conception of ideology, and also lives on historically as a precursor to Marx, though he should in no way be limited to this role.

Unfortunately, the National Park Service's Douglass web site neglected to mention that, due to renovation, the entire contents of the house were removed, and so all there is left to look at inside is the wallpaper. Various old black-and-white photos of the missing objects were set up on easels so you could see what you were missing. The only upside is that this is the only opportunity visitors will get to walk through these rooms, which will be roped off once restoration is complete. So the only thing left for me to do was pose for a couple photos in front of Fred's empty bookcase. You can see the bookcase, as well as his study when Fred was using it, in a photo on my web page:

Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass

This brings us to Ottilie Assing. After leaving the house, we stopped in the Visitor's Center to see more artifacts and other items on display. I guess the Park Service wants to keep it clean for the kids, as no mention was made anywhere of one of the most important people in Fred's life, the German-Jewish immigrant Ottilie Assing (an intriguing gerund), Fred's unofficial main squeeze and intellectual influence. There is of course plenty of documentation on Fred's two wives and kids, but poor Ottilie is left out of account. I think she committed suicide after Fred married someone else. Ottilie was a fervent atheist, and claims in a letter to Feuerbach (see web page) that she converted Fred to atheism. Fred was of a skeptical temperament (evinced in remarks about racist churches and complaints about his people's absorption in lodges and mystical cults), but my guess is that she was exaggerating a bit. This is another obscure tidbit of intellectual history that reveals yet again the complex interweaving of human destinies and covert interconnections that bind us all together.

Black freethought explosion 2009-2010: from blogs to social networking

2010-12-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

I have variously reported on the state of the black freethought movement in the USA and abroad. Key entries are dated: May 13, 2008; February 6, 2009; May 30, 2009; June 2, 2009; September 14, 2010. There are of course numerous specific reports interspersed throughout. But since I haven't been systematically updating my readers, I want to give a quick overview of progress over the past two years.

In my estimation, the watershed year for the burst of black freethought activity was 2009. I can't determine at the moment when I joined Facebook. I joined in 2008, and I was active by January 2009, but I am usually a late comer, so I was slow to join up and get involved. By that time I had found "Black Planet" to be subpar. (There were two groups at that time, one of which involved several people who don't know what "freethought" means.) When I joined up on Facebook, there were a few black freethought groups, some inactive or with low membership, a couple more active. The membership numbers and activity at that time were not impressive, as far as I can remember.

I had been aware of Reginald Finley's prodigious radio show The Infidel Guy. There was also a plethora of YouTube videos. Otherwise, I noted an upsurge in black freethought activity with the emergence of blogs. It did not seem that the various bloggers and commentators on them were generally aware of one another's existence. One of the first blogs I frequented was Zee Harrison's Black Woman Thinks...Religion, Politics, Race, Atheism and more!. Another was Wrath James White's first blog, Words of Wrath. (He subsequently initiated a second blog called Godless and Black.) I discussed the need for a new social networking group with someone I encountered on Wrath James White's blog, I think, but since I didn't see others taking the initiative, I went ahead and started my "Black Freethought" group on Atheist Nexus, which at that time had just become the social networking site for atheists in the English-speaking world. I started my "Black Freethought" group on February 6, 2009.

On June 1, 2009 my Black Freethought group attained its 100th member. At that moment, it was the leading social networking group of its kind. Spring 2009 also saw other major advances, such as Gary Booker's First Annual Conference of Black Nontheists in Atlanta, and Sikivu Hutchinson's public visibility. Since then, activity of all kinds has exploded, with conferences, organizations, blogs, Facebook groups, podcasts, and various other individual initiatives. (I have reported on various of these, but I will have to review my records and then list them all in one place. I see I will also have to update my web guide.)

It seems that Facebook is where everyone wants to be. I didn't care for it at first, and I still don't like the way it's organized, but I spend more time on Facebook than elsewhere now. My group on Atheist Nexus is no longer in the lead. At some point, the Facebook groups "Black Atheists" and "Black Atheist Alliance" pulled out way ahead of mine.

Here are some statistics as of this writing:

Atheist Nexus groups:
Black Freethought - 318 members
African Atheists - 60 members
The Infidel Guy Show - 168 members

African/Black Atheists and Believers @ Think Atheist - 24 members

Facebook groups:
Black and Non-Religious - 97 members. (I joined at least as far back as February 2009, eventually became administrator.)
African American Atheists - 13 members - stillborn
African Americans for Humanism - 227 members
African Freethinkers - 385 members
Black Atheist Alliance - 455 members
Black Atheists (Mario Stanton) - 584 members
Black Freethinkers International - 17 members
The Infidel Guy Show - 447 members
Secular Students at Howard University - 58 members
Single Black Atheists Dating Pool - 134 members

There are four Facebook freethought groups specifically for South Africa. For all I know, there may be other groups, as I can't keep up with everything. Making generalizations about the content of all these communications will require a much more intensive effort.

I should also mention the pioneering network Meetup.com, which involves special interest groups organizing face-to-face meetings. I got involved with meetups as far back as 2004, including local atheist meetups. I have not investigated the activity of meetup groups nationwide, but there is a meetup group for the recently organized African Americans for Humanism DC (AAH DC).

I'll conclude with a reminder of my Web Guide to Black / African-American / African Atheism (which I see needs some updating) and my Working Bibliography on African American / Black Autodidacticism, Education, Intellectual Life.

Not by Genes Alone

2010-12-09T06:13:00.000-08:00

This looks more promising than the fare offered by Richard Dawkins and E. O. Wilson:

Richerson, Peter J.; Boyd, Robert. Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Publisher description:

Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics.

Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature.

In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come.

Wisdom and Abstract Thought

2010-12-09T05:43:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I expressed exasperation with Stephen S. Hall's new book Wisdom. There are a few references in his book that seem to be worth following up.

* * *

Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development, edited by Robert J. Sternberg. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Contents:
Preface
Part I. Approaches to the Study of Wisdom:
1. Understanding wisdom R. J. Sternberg
Part II. Approaches Informed by Philosophical Conceptions of Wisdom:
2. Wisdom through the ages D. N. Robinson
3. The psychology of wisdom: an evolutionary interpretation M. Csikszentmihalyi and K. Rathunde
4. Wisdom as integrated thought: historical and developmental perspectives G. Labouvie-Vief
Part III. Approaches Informed by Folk Conceptions of Wisdom:
5. Toward a psychology of wisdom and its ontogenesis P. Baltes and J. Smith
6. Wisdom in a post-apocalyptic age M. J. Chandler and S. Holliday
7. Wisdom and its relations to intelligence and creativity R. J. Sternberg
8. Wisdom and the study of wise persons L. Orwoll and M. Parlmutter
Part IV. Approaches Informed by Psychodevelopmental Conceptions of Wisdom:
9. The loss of wisdom J. A. Meacham
10. Wisdom and reflective judgment: knowing in the face of uncertainty K. S. Kitchener and H. G. Brenner
11. Wisdom: the art of problem finding P. K. Arlin
12. An essay on wisdom: towards symbolic processes that make it possible J. Pascual-Leone
13. Conceptualising wisdom: the primacy of affect-cognition relations D. Kramer
Part V. Integration of Approaches and Viewpoints:
14. Integration J. E. Birren
Author index
Subject index.

"This authoritative volume represents the only complete collection of psychological views on wisdom currently available. Considered an elusive psychological construct until recently, wisdom is currently attracting interest as an independent field. The acclaimed psychologist Robert Sternberg perceived the need to document the progress made in the field, and to point the way for future theory and progress. The resulting book introduces the concept of wisdom, considers philosophical issues and developmental approaches, and covers folk conceptions of the topic. The final chapter presents an integration of the fascinating and comprehensive material."

* * *

Paul B. Baltes (1939–2006) appears to be the leading researcher on wisdom. See also the Paul B. Baltes Wisdom Page. And lest we forget, Wikipedia. And here is the book referenced by Hall, available online:

Wisdom as Orchestration of Mind and Virtue by Paul B. Baltes. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 2004.

* * *

The Wisdom Page "is a website dedicated to helping us better understand wisdom — that vitally important but poorly understood pinnacle of human functioning." This site is chock full of resources on the subject.

* * *

In December 2003 I approached this question not from what is usually thought of as practical wisdom, but in its historical dimension, linked with the development of the human intellect along with society. See my essay Wisdom and Abstract Thought, which I wrote for discussion with a local philosophy group. Unsurprisingly, it fell on deaf ears.

My point of departure was an aspect of what I found salvageable in Soviet philosophy, namely a correlation of philosophical development with the evolution of the scientific-technological basis of society and social organization. This was a fundamental approach of specialized Soviet philosophy quite different from the way philosophy is taught in these parts, where the best we can do as an alternative to traditional teaching and the wasteland of analytical philosophy is this duplicitous ideological category misnamed "continental philosophy". Though I've cogitated about the relation between wisdom and abstract thinking for years, I decided to pursue the topic after chancing upon Theodore Oizerman's Problem of Wisdom as a Real Problem, a subchapter in Oizerman's Problems of the History of Philosophy. Oizerman is subject to criticism on other grounds, but here is a complement to the ahistorical approach of people like Hall.

Incidentally, the most influential Soviet Marxist developmental psychologist continues to be Lev Vygotsky. Attempts have been made to fold his socially oriented perspective into cognitive science (see my blog entry on this subject), notably:

Frawley, William. Vygotsky and Cognitive Science: Language and the Unification of the Social and Computational Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Neuroscience as ideology: bourgeois wisdom at work

2010-12-09T04:05:00.000-08:00

In re:

Hall, Stephen S. Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

"A compelling investigation into one of the most coveted and cherished ideals, 'Wisdom' also chronicles the efforts of modern science to penetrate the mysterious nature of this timeless virtue."

Contents:
PART ONE: Wisdom defined (sort of)
What is wisdom?;
The wisest man in the world: the philosophical roots of wisdom;
Heart and mind: the psychological roots of wisdom
PART TWO: Eight neural pillars of wisdom.
Emotional regulation: the art of coping;
Knowing what’s important: the neural mechanism of establishing value and making a judgment;
Moral reasoning: the biology of judging right from wrong;
Compassion: the biology of loving-kindness and empathy;
Humility: the gift of perspective;
Altruism: social justice, fairness, and the wisdom of punishment;
Patience: temptation, delayed gratification, and the biology of learning to wait for larger rewards;
Dealing with uncertainty : change, "meta-wisdom," and the vulcanization of the human brain
PART THREE: Becoming wise.
Youth, adversity, and resilience: the seeds of wisdom;
Older and wiser: the wisdom of aging;
Classroom, board room, bedroom, back room: everyday wisdom in our everyday world;
Dare to be wise: does wisdom have a future?

See also the web site of Stephen C. Hall.

* * *

"Wrong life cannot be lived rightly."

— Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, section 18

This aphorism does not appear in Stephen Hall's book, and Adorno does not appear to be part of the mental universe of Hall's attempt to scientize "timeless virtue". As bourgeois reason totters on its last legs, the latest fad of popular science purporting to explain social and in many cases political behavior is neurobiology. Like all bourgeois scientism, this line of inquiry is predicated on ideological amnesia, an erasure of real history, society, and politics. Granted that both neurobiology and evolutionary theory are essential to comprehension of the material basis of the organism, of everything it is capable of thinking and doing, the conceit here is that the biology of individual cognition in abstraction is proffered as an explanation of how we function in society, and this is why the spate of popular books on the subject is reactionary to the core.

Hall only questions his endeavor in the final chapter, pondering whether a focus on wise individuals only fosters a personality cult and hero worship, distracting from the thing itself. He also contemplates the future of wisdom given the state of consumer culture.

Otherwise, Hall trots out various culture heroes as possible examples of wisdom: Confucius, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Oprah. Again, qualities of wisdom are abstracted out of total social situations, oblivious to the dimension of ideology critique that could be applied to any and all of his examples.

Anyone who could quote David Brooks even in passing as a person to take seriously betrays a political cluelessness the contemptibility of which defies description.

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly

2010-12-09T03:13:00.000-08:00

"Wrong life cannot be lived rightly."

— Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, section 18

Here are some of my thoughts on the subject, from 2009, slightly edited.

* * *

22 Jan 2009

Of late this aphorism keeps popping up in my head, as a spontaneous counterpoint to social/cultural input. I can't recall the contexts that spur these thoughts, but they may have something to do with the self-help industry, Oprah, Obamamania, the culture industry, American individualism, upper middle class liberalism . . . vs. the larger perspective that challenges the false immediacy of popular ideology. I also have in mind Adorno's notion of theory and practice, of his lectures on Kant's morality, on his obsession with Auschwitz. Otherwise, I am just considering this sentence in isolation from its context in Minima Moralia.

I keep coming back to this quote as a challenge to the veil of falsity that hangs over American life, which this insane fetishism of President Obama perpetuates. There should be a way of explaining accessibly what is at stake in Adorno's view, or in any intellectual's that does not join in with the crowd.

Now I am curious about who has written what on the ethical dimension of Adorno's thought, indeed, that lies behind Adorno's thought. I haven't read it, but the first thing that comes to mind is . . .

Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics by J. M. Bernstein

Contents:
Introduction;
1. Wrong life cannot be lived rightly;
2. Disenchantment: the skepticism of enlightened reason;
3. The instrumentality of moral reason;
4. Mastered by nature: abstraction, independence, and the simple concept;
5. Interlude: three versions of modernity;
6. Disenchanting identity: the complex concept;
7. Toward an ethic of nonidentity;
8. After Auschwitz;
9. Ethical modernism.

You can also read some of the intro via amazon.com.

Also, there are two essays in The Cambridge Companion to Adorno.

23 Jan 2009

A few years back I objected to Adorno's notion that the good life could only be characterized negatively; that we couldn't say anything positive. This also dovetails with Adorno's animosity towards Erich Fromm, who, because of his generally affirmative posture, was called by one of the Frankfurters — maybe it was Marcuse — the Norman Vincent Peale of the left. And yes, I have found Adorno far too ascetic and austere. But when one feels that one's culture and society has been totally compromised, and one can see the long-range implications of negative social forces, taking this stance makes more sense.

But it's not mere elitism that drove Adorno, though it does relate to his lived experience as a product of high bourgeois culture. Adorno lived through the destruction of European culture as he knew it. His first book, on Kierkegaard, was published the day Hitler took power. The swallowing up of the individual personality — what was then called "modern man" — by the monstrous machine of society, was not the world of postwar prosperity in western nations as we knew it from approx. 1950-1970, which also involved a dehumanizing regimentation against which the '60s generation rebelled. Fascism meant that the individual life could be totally compromised, and there was no room to maneuver. Adorno may have also experienced survivor's guilt, not only in general, but in particular, in relation to his close friend Walter Benjamin.

However exaggerated Adorno might have depicted the iron cage in prosperous western democracies (but for only about the last two decades of his life), even with a more differentiated and refined analysis, Adorno's broad-brush picture nonetheless abstracts out broad social trends, ongoing processes rather than total faits accompli. As such, Adorno highlights decisive aspects of contemporary society that are ideologically repressed by the culture industry and the so-called ideological state apparatuses: that is, Adorno expresses broad contours of society against the enforced silence about how society is fundamentally constituted.

Hence Adorno doesn't address what the individual is going to do, or what social activists are going to do, but what can't be spoken in the mainstream media and cultural apparatus. And this is why I bring in the self-help industry, Oprah, Dr. Phil, Extreme Home Makeover, American Idol, and the rest. The largess bestowed by the wealthy and corporate America on a few lucky people is fine for the individuals who benefit, but it is predicated on the falsification of social reality and social misery, while fostering a groveling attitude to corporate America (or whatever country you live in).

So maybe we don't need to be depressed all the time, but the gap between the illusory notions on which society runs and the recognition of the gap between that and an understanding of what's really going on and the depth at which it has to be challenged, is likely to promote a much-needed negativity. Though I don't believe in being grumpy 24-7, I don't trust people who always want to think positively, for, when one examines their ideology, one always finds it predicated on falsehood. And when the people who espouse it belong to the privileged upper middle class (though not exclusive to them), I find their attitude insufferable.

Howard L. Parsons: East meets West (2): Naturalizing the religious impulse

2010-12-01T14:41:00.000-08:00

I have uploaded three excerpts from this book I started to review in a previous post:

Parsons, Howard L. Man East and West: Essays in East-West Philosophy. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner, 1975. xi, 211 pp. (Philosophical Currents; v. 8)

Howard L. Parsons on the Role of the Philosopher

This is Parsons' general prescription for the philosopher's task and not specifically tied to the theme of the book.

Howard L. Parsons on Naturalist vs. Supernationalist Perspectives on Value

Parsons is skeptical both of Barth's neo-orthodoxy and Tillich's liberal theological palaver about 'being'. We should seek the natural basis of human dependencies instead of railing against modern man and hyping his dependence on a transcendental source. Progress means that theology tends to become anthropology. Parsons seeks to preserve some of the traditional concerns, but with an updated, naturalistic world view. This is an example of how he typically expresses himself:

Yet a full anthropology, which sees man in society, history, and nature, in the full stretch of space and time, might bring modern humanism to affirm, in a new and qualified way, some of the assertions of ancient religion.

While I've seen much worse in my time, I find this sort of formulation conceptually muddled. Parsons also evinces an excessively deferential attitude toward sacred figures and what others call the great spiritual teachers. On the plus side, Parsons sees the human symbolizing capacity as having from the beginning taken a wrong turn into superstition. Parsons also criticizes Sartre's mournful nostalgia for the outmoded supernaturalist position.

Howard L. Parsons on Naturalism & Religion: Conclusion

Parsons sums up his position in the final pages of the book. Parsons is mostly on track, but I object to his characteristic formulations, e.g.:

Is it possible to combine the best of the religious perspective with the power of scientific knowledge and control now in our hands? It is not only possible; it is necessary, if we are to be saved from a science determined by men who do not understand or appreciate the evolutionary role of man in nature and his responsibility toward it, and from religions that do not understand and even repudiate science. The first would give us man divorced from nature and from values grounded in nature; the second, values divorced from man and nature. In both cases, values become arbitrary and, in the event of conflict, subject to settlement by capricious preference and arbitrary power.

In his essay "Theories of Knowledge: A Dialectical, Historical Critique" Parsons evinces an awareness of the interplay between positivist and irrationalist tendencies in the ideological life of bourgeois society. However, he tries too hard to have it both ways, affirming modernity and criticizing tradition while fudging his analysis of the allegedly admirable facets and impulses of pre-modernity. There is both sophistication and epistemological repression going on here, which I suspect is related to his brand of Marxism with its lack of recognition of the ineluctable impossibility of socialism in rapidly modernizing peasant societies.

Shit happens

2010-11-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

I can't remember whether it was two or three decades ago that I saw my first "Shit Happens" T-shirt. There are many variations of the list, but they're all about the various religious views of why shit happens. There are numerous listings on the web. I haven't checked to see which is the most complete. This one, from the infamous journal Maledicta (Volume 12, 1996), claims to be complete:

The Complete "Shit Happens" List

Some of these are quite funny. Note, thought, that the first one listed here is also the first one you will see on all the T-shirts, namely: "Taoism: Shit happens." And seriously, that's all there really is.

Tribute to Indian Atheists- Part II

2010-11-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here it is. Most of these names are new to me. I recognize Ambedkar, Rushdie, A. Roy, and B. Singh.