D. T. Suzuki revisited

I had forgotten that I had something to say about D. T. Suzuki in a previous post: 

Gods, UFOs, Zen, epistemology, autonomy

Last year I retraced my steps back to 1977, when I read Zen Buddhism & Psychoanalysis, by D. T. Suzuki, Erich Fromm, and Richard De Martino (New York: Harper, 1960). I concluded somewhere along the line that Fromm was naive about Suzuki and other religious/spiritual figures, but this time I was appalled by Suzuki, so I wrote this:

Revisiting D. T. Suzuki: Selective reading, memory, & embarrassment

Christopher Caudwell on religion as static imagination

I have blogged here before about Christopher Caudwell. As I also mentioned, I used the title of his essay collection Studies in a Dying Culture (1938, followed by Further Studies in a Dying Culture, 1949) as the title of my podcast/radio series and one of my blogs.  Here is an interesting quote on religion from Caudwell's correspondence:

As I see it, religion undoubtedly represents very strong emotional realities, but they only become religion by religious people’s making them static, i.e. by demanding that their formulations (angels, salvation, heaven, hell, God, etc.) represent actual existent entities with the same reality of existence as matter. It is just this static formulation which is the core of any formal religion (Buddhism, Christianity, Mohommedanism). Separate that out and what have you left? Primarily two currents. One: art, or ‘poetry’—The fluid emotional experimenting with illusory concepts drawn from reality, either felt as illusory, as in our civilised age, or felt as real, but unconsciously acknowledged as illusory by the very fluidity of treatment, as in Greek myth (not Greek religion). The other current is sociological, and is symbolical of the tremendously powerful and emotionally charged currents that hold a society together, and express, in a subtle instinctive way, the fact that though individualities, we yet have a real being in common: buds of the same tree. We are not completely divided by ‘The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.’ The power of this bond is expressed in the attitude of men to a drowning stranger, a ship in distress, in time of war, and so on. You may feel a sociological conception of religion arid and empty of content. So do I, but that is because we are children of a civilisation that necessarily sees society as linked primarily by money exchanges, I mean sees that intellectually, whatever we may sometimes feel emotionally. The first criticism of Communism is always that men would never do their best work for society, regardless of income, and this expresses perfectly how debased and empty of content our conception of social relations has become. But the Greek citizen, or the merest tribal primitive, would see nothing strange in our conception of the society as the basis of religion. To him the city or tribe is joined with religion’s bonds; and even to‑day, when religions are so palpably failing, we see, in Italy and Germany, how men are bowled over by the sociological as opposed to the theological element of religion, in however questionable a guise it comes.

But why not leave it at that, you may ask, and, seeing religion’s aesthetic and sociological credentials, say ‘Pass friend, all’s well?’. Just because religion, to be religion, formulates its sociological and aesthetic beliefs in terms of science, of external reality. So that on the one hand art is held back from developing, made to accept the outworn forms of yesterday, and, on the other hand, man, mistaking social relations for divinely ordained permanences, is held back to the social groupings of yesterday. So the Greek, cramped into the City State, was torn by internecine warfare and fell victim to the barbarians he despised. So we, with our national formations, and national churches, are involved in imperialistic wars, in which ministers preach from the pulpit the divine approval of a just war. And it is no answer to say that genuinely religious people are pacifists, for we can only take religion as it appears, and to do otherwise is to mean by the adverb ‘genuinely’—‘religious in a way we approve’, which, from a historical view­point, taking religion as it has manifested itself, turns out to be not religious at all, but people who put social reality before theological formulations—heretics, prophets, and rebels.

SOURCE: Caudwell, Christopher, Letter to Paul [Beard] and Elizabeth [Beard]. 21 November 1935 (from London), in Scenes and Actions: Unpublished Manuscripts, selected, edited, and introduced by Jean Duparc and David Margolies (London: New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), extract: pp. 220-221.

Evolutionary psychology, bourgeois reason, the management of duality & the erasure of history

Evolutionary psychologists should be presumed guilty until proven innocent.

I was amazed to find Christopher Badcock, writing for Psychology Today, advocating Hungarian Esperantist Sándor Szathmári's utopian/dystopian novel Voyage to Kazohinia as a prescient anticipation of Badcock's model of the diametric mind:

 "Voyage to Kazohinia: A Diametric Dystopia" by Christopher Badcock, Psychology Today, May 6, 2017

"The ABC of the Diametric Model, Twenty Years On" by Christopher Badcock, Psychology Today, July 5, 2017

I blogged about these two posts on another of my blogs:

• Voyage to Kazohinia: A Diametric Dystopia (2)
• Voyage to Kazohinia: A Diametric Dystopia

In my work on Szathmári, I have emphasized that this novel embodies a basic cultural and ideological dichotomy of modern civilization in a unique fashion. Badcock in his other work manifests this awareness as well, as well as its relationship to C. P. Snow's "two cultures"--another relationship I have pursued--but he attributes the social configuration to genetic causes. Here are a couple more of Badcock's several contributions to the Psychology Today site:

Brain Imaging Reveals the Diametric Mind: Mentalizing brain areas inhibit mechanistic ones and vice versa. Posted Apr 11, 2014

Diametrically Beyond the Two Cultures: Conflict between science and humanities is rooted in cognition. Posted Aug 29, 2012

Here is a book-length continuation of his original book on the subject:

The Diametric Mind Insights into AI, IQ, the Self and Society: a sequel to The Imprinted Brain.

And here is a related essay referenced by Badcock:

Autism, Psychosis, and the “Two Cultures”: C. P. Snow Reconsidered in Light of Recent Theories about Mentalistic Cognition by Jiro Tanak

Now, the hypothesis that there is a certain structure to the human brain, if there is anything to this model, and that this would have a relationship with the historical development of human institutions, would be a major factor to take into account in understanding why certain modes of thought and behavior are so readily reinforced. But the charlatanism that constitutes a large part of evolutionary psychology obscures the mechanisms and structure of social organization in historical development and uncritically reads society directly off of genetic dispositions.

If you read Badcock's posts and other writings, you may smell something rotten as I do. Reading this sort of material is like reading a parody of the scientific method. The concrete relationship of multifactorial social complexes becomes reduced to the most simplistic schematisms built up on a naive ideological basis. Of course, the irreligionists who gobble up this fare fancy that they have found the master key to irrationality and the reason they think they embody. But this is also a symptom of social and ideological degeneration, bourgeois reason at the end of its rope.

William Sanders Scarborough, reason, & the anti-racist struggle

There is an incredible history of Black American intellectuals, stretching back to the era of slavery, and of outstanding intellectual achievement against overwhelming odds. Intertwined with this history is a history of Black American scholars of the Greek and Roman classics, who pursued and transmitted their expertise, took on administrative functions in higher education, and as writers and activists pursued the goal of racial equality. It is a noble and inspiring history.

One such pioneer was William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926). I will have more to say about him and the larger tradition later on. (For now, see another post: William Sanders Scarborough & Volapük in the Black Press.) Here is an excerpt from Scarborough's essay opposing the prevailing superstition of  "Race Integrity" (i.e. racial purity and superiority).

This age is regarded as one of great enlightenment. Yet With all its knowledge, there is a vast deal of ignorance or wilful blindness manifested along some lines. This state is born of many things, but when based upon traditional ideas, deep rooted, not only in error, but in prejudice and malice, there we find the most insensate manifestations.

Cherished beliefs, no matter upon what founded, have always resulted in rearing idols to be worshiped. Before such icons the world has bowed again and again. Religion has had its share of them, but the religious world also raised idol-breakers—the Iconoclasts who set to work in the eighth and ninth centuries to shatter them as did the Protestants in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century Dogmas have crept into every phase of human life and endeavor, and no doubt will continue to do so, while mankind exists with its passions, its prejudices and its weaknesses, its preconceived notions and its obstinacy; so the labors of the Iconoclast have been and will be demanded for the sake of progress.

Among the multitude of cherished superstitions to which world-masses cling at one time or another, there are none more erroneous, more mischievous than that included under the unctuous expression, “Race Integrity.” Here is heroic, legitimate work for the Iconoclast. Here his labors are an absolute necessity. But we are aware that to lay hands upon this idol, to tear it from its place, will covenant profaning the holy altar itself; that there are those who, viewing such an act, will fear that punishment to follow that overtook Uzziah when he sought simply to steady the ark on the memorable journey from Kirjathjearim. There is no doubt whether that if the ranting Dixons and Tilmans and Vardamans and men of that ilk could become avenging fates, any one who dared attempt to shatter this idol would suffer instant annihilation.

But in the progress of civilization those who would overthrow cherished superstitions have had to suffer. Galileo’s idea of the world systems ran counter to set theories, and under awful penalties he had to recant, though he whispered under his breath “E pur si muove.” “It moves for all that.” Luther, Cranmer, Latimer and countless other martyrs have suffered when seeking to pull the bandage from eyes so long blinded, and let in the light of truth. Today no one disputes Galileo’s claim; and theological freedom of thought and expression agrees with Luther and others of his school.

These men had to suffer I say; but they did good service and accepted the stake, or dungeon, or ban, bravely for the sake of truth. They shattered falsity; and the Iconoclast of today will render equally good service in dissipating the errors of the present, none of which, I repeat, is worse than the hydra-headed dogma that masquerades under the alluring title of Race Integrity—the one of all of Errors’ vile brood, most fitly designed to perpetuate race discrimination, race hatred and race conflict.

To the task of an Iconoclast I propose to devote this article, with the postulate that there is no such thing as “Race Integrity.”

SOURCE: Scarborough, William Sanders. “Race Integrity,” in The Works of William Sanders Scarborough: Black Classicist and Race Leader, edited by Michele Valerie Ronnick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 473-481. Above excerpt from beginning of article, pp. 473-474. Original publication: Voice of the Negro 4, no. 4 (1907): 197-202.

Social class & the atheist movement (2)

My previous post was heavy on the abstract and conceptual. More needs to be said about David Hoelscher's essay Atheism and the Class Problem (Counterpunch, November 07, 2012). Hoelscher explodes the pretensions of 'social justice' atheists in a more thorough fashion than I have seen anywhere else.

Hoelscher prefaces his essay with a quote from Marx's Capital, which expresses the essence of the Marxian view:

The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature. 

For more, see my web page Karl Marx on Religion: Sources & Quotations.

Hoelscher convincingly demonstrates that the Atheist Plus "movement" and Richard Carrier specifically have not the slightest understanding of class inequality and include the issue of poverty at most as an afterthought. On the other hand, atheists who do emphasize the class issue, like Michael Parenti, are ignored. Hoelscher makes light of Greg Epstein, who "holds the odd and unfortunate title of “Humanist Chaplain” at Harvard University"and whose book Good Without God curiously omits the issue of poverty and class oppression.Yet religion and economics are inseparable, and a staggering percentage of the world's population is condemned to poverty.

Hoelscher also refutes the notion that the “secularization thesis” has been decisively refuted by the likes of Rodney Stark and Alister McGrath .

Hoelscher wants to account for this flagrant blindness. He attributes it to classism. But he doesn't limit his criticism to atheists lacking in class consciousness. He also indicts leftists who dismiss religion as being a problem at all, for example Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, the Marxist literary theorist and apologist for religion Terry Eagleton, and left-wing journalist Alexander Cockburn. The popular philosopher-mediocrity Alain de Botton also gets a comeuppance. Sam Harris gets the analytical thrashing he deserves. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's reactionary politics are also noted.

Richard Carrier gets taken apart a second time, this time for his praise of Obama, whose anti-working class presidency is treated at length. 

Hoelscher reminds us via a speech by Barbara Ehrenreich, "that there is a vast and largely forgotten tradition of blue collar atheism in America, usually called freethought, in the nineteenth century . . . " There is no such talk about the working class today. Haven't I been saying this for years? Thank you.

Social class & the atheist movement (1)

As I do not regularly follow the blogosphere, I missed out on this article, which I was informed of only last week:

Counterpunched: We Have No Theory of Power by James Croft, Temple of the Future, December 20, 2012

Since I make a weak effort at best at publicizing my podcasts, I am surprised to find this:

The freethought movement has recently come in for a barrage of criticism, but not from the usual sources: in the past few months we’ve been battered from the left. It’s one thing to be attacked by right-wing fundamentalists and Fox News pundits – I expect that - but when columnists in the leftist political newsletter Counterpunch and radical Marxists like Ralph Dumain start throwing punches, I’m caught off-guard.

Perhaps this is why so many of their blows land: the movement does have a problem with sexism (as Jeff Sparrow contends), it does tend to overlook issues of economic justice (as David Hoelscher avers, twice - and I’m as guilty of this as anyone, something I’ll address in future posts), and it hasn’t grappled sufficiently with critical theory (as Ralph Dumain argues).

Apparently, one of my punches thrown in a vacuum landed somewhere, and is part of a barrage of criticism. Odd, given how peripheral I am to the entire atheist/humanist/skeptics movement. I suspect that David Hoelscher is hardly a household word, either, though I may have read his insightful essay Atheism and the Class Problem when it appeared.

Croft admits that the humanist movement is "ill-equipped to fend-off challenges from the left" and that "we have no theory of power". This is an odd way of formulating the problem. But then he addresses the basis of my ideological critique:

Dumain thinks similarly [to someone named Sparrow], arguing that “the atheist – humanist – skeptical movement, particularly in the USA…addresses only one half of the cognitive sources of irrationality of the modern world, and is ill-equipped to grapple with the secular forms of unreason, which can be denoted by the term “ideology”.” 

Similarly, the atheist/humanist movement has failed to address the structural critique that Hoelscher emphasizes.

To his credit, Croft addresses the intellectual deficiencies of celebrated humanist intellectuals like Corliss Lamont, Paul Kurtz, and Richard Norman. Lamont was involved in a number of progressive causes, reflecting the left-liberal orientation of leading humanists who publicly coalesced in the 1930s. In terms of general principles, humanism offered a strategic point of departure, but as a total world view has always been anemic. (Roy Wood Sellars, principal author of the first Humanist Manifesto, is in my opinion the most outstanding figure of classic American philosophy, but he developed his "critical realism" entirely separately from organized Humanism.)  I was a student of Kurtz 40 years ago: to me he was a mediocre representative of Cold War liberalism rendered irrelevant by the political radicalism (however deficient) of the time, including that of the student movement. His version of social liberalism is now as dead and forgotten as American liberalism itself. But Kurtz, coming from his generational perspective, having grown up in more radical times, possessed the intellectual frame of reference to concede, as not a single public advocate of "social justice" atheism would today, that "Marx was no doubt the greatest humanist thinker of the nineteenth century".

Croft is also laudably aware of the critique of irrationality in a social/historical vacuum.

The major New Atheist authors tend to criticize religion (rightly) as a sort of cognitive error or collective mistake – a “delusion” or a “spell” which must be broken – whilst mainly avoiding the ways in which religion is reinforced and propagated by societal institutions and social practices. Perhaps predictably, when they bring their intellectual backgrounds to bear on the topic, what you get are evolutionary, philosophical and, to some extent, political explorations of religion, none of which fully address its sociological aspects.

This freethought tendency, I argue, is linked to another: the tendency to focus our critical gaze on the individual, rather than the group or community. When racism, sexism, homophobia and other systematic forms of oppression are discussed, it is often in service of the reform of individuals rather than the melioration of social conditions and institutions which shape individuals in the first place.

One manifestation of this phenomenon is the omnipresence of the noxious abuse of the notion of "privilege," a concept originated decades ago by hard core Marxists who saw structural racism as key to ruling class power and who sought to intervene practically in the labor movement to the benefit of all concerned, now reduced to manipulative personalization and guilt-tripping of one group of middle class professionals by other middle class professionals who represent nobody.

Add to this the general atmosphere of superficial branding and self-promotion that permeates the age of cyber-mediated social interactivity. The ahistorical, shallow sloganeering embodied in the pseudo-concept of Atheism Plus is emblematic of our time. Richard Carrier's vicious rant, The New Atheism +, is characteristic. Following complaints that he lumped in Marxists with "Neonazis and anarchists and UFO cults and churches and right wing think tanks", Carrier removed Marxists from this grouping. Elsewhere he dismisses Marx and thus renders himself dismissible in return. Here his rant has a twofold character: one is a rejection of unacceptable behavior within atheist groupings (such as the unconscionable harassment, threats, and defamation of women), the other is drawing a line in the sand between social justice atheists and the rest of the atheist community. Several people have protested both the branding (what's wrong with "humanism"?) and the rigid us-vs.-them mentality. The shallow posturing of Atheism Plus may suit those accustomed to internecine blog/Twitter/YouTube/Facebook wars, but it succeeds only in supplementing one turn-off with another. There is certain behavior that is intolerable within any contemporary formal or even informal organization. Atheism Plus fails, though, to address intelligently the relationship between advocates of various causes and the core basis of secularist/atheist/etc. organizations.

Croft promises to follow up in future posts. I shall have to look into this. This post was well crafted.

As I am apparently a batterer from the left, it might be expected that I am a crusader for the reform of atheist organizations. But I have limited myself to a critique of the ideological parameters of the movement. It makes perfect sense for those with more encompassing political agendas to form their own institutions. In fact, since black atheists began to spring up en masse seemingly out of nowhere a few years ago, several enterprising individuals have formed their own networks, radio shows, social service programs, organizations, etc. Some have cordial or even productive relationships with mainstream organizations, others go their own way, one insists on demagogically race-baiting the whole movement in the most public way possible. But however legitimate one's dissatisfactions may be, there remains the question of what one should legitimately and realistically expect from the mainstream umbrella organizations, or from any single-issue movement, as all movements in the U.S. political context are constrained to be.

One must first acknowledge that atheism is a bourgeois movement, and will remain so no matter how one attempts to combine it with some other perspective. This is not necessarily meant as a pejorative: it's an ineluctable objective fact. One can operate outside this purview only intellectually; the most effect one can practically hope to have is to alter the intellectual culture of the movement, and even then one moves within constraints. Combining atheism with a feminist or black perspective may broaden the referential base and maybe even the practical activity of the movement, but intellectually it does not advance beyond the ideological perspective of a bourgeois movement. No number of pluses can do this. And there's nothing wrong with being an honest delimited reform movement that doesn't pretend to be something it cannot be.

Aside from issues of unethical behavior, and the more obvious issues of inclusion and tokenism, one can expect only so much from a national organization unless its mission statement encompasses or implies something it is failing to do. The central issues would be the allocation of resources and the governance of specific organizations. As an outsider I am liable to misfire intervening in public controversies, let alone in commenting on the governance and use of resources. Any complaints I have heard are technically hearsay and I cannot competently comment on them. (Because of the people I know, all such complaints I have heard have come from black atheists, but they do not in every case involve specifically black issues.) Presumably the mainstream organizations, even without noticeably altering their missions, could improve the intelligent direction of their efforts.

There remain constraints here as there are in any single-issue movement. The dictionary definitions of "atheism", "humanism" etc. notwithstanding, there is a spread of political opinion in every grouping. Imagine what would happen to the financial base of any of these organizations if the libertarians--who are the greatest enemies of progressive politics--were ejected. And, as obnoxious and lopsided as celebrity atheism is, well-connected celebrities are poles of attraction and presumably generate revenue as well as spread the message of atheist/etc. organizations to large numbers of people.

Any group maneuvering within the strict limitations of the American public sphere can only do so much, given the severity of the constraints. And it may be too much to demand the movement broaden its scope of instrumental action to encompass what only a different political movement can really address. (Prior to the McCarthy era, working class freethinkers had their own institutions, apart from any national umbrella institution--a historical fact forgotten along with the working class itself.)

For these reasons I have confined myself to an ideological critique. Involving oneself in the strategic social/political space of "atheist", "humanist", or "skeptic" is one thing, but making a total intellectual or political identity out of any of these, even combined with some other sectoral identity (feminist atheist, black skeptic, etc.) ends up at best formulating a more refined form of ideological self-deception.

From Adam & Eve to Cain & Abel

In line with an ongoing project, I finally put together a working though obviously non-comprehensive bibliography on unusual treatments of the Eden and Cain/Abel myths, actually two bibliographies, one in English and one in Esperanto (consisting of original and translated works in the respective languages), which do not completely overlap, as there is much that is found in only one of these languages:

• From Eden to Cain: Unorthodox Interpretations & Literary Transformations: Selected Bibliography


• De Edeno al Kaino: Malkutimaj Interpretoj & Literaturaj Pritraktoj en Esperanto: Bibliografio

Suggestions for additions are welcome.

Not everything gets translated, for example, Johannes Linnankoski's play in Finnish, Ikuinen taistelu (1903, ‘The eternal struggle’). See:

Johannes Linnankoski (Pseudonym of Johannes Vihtori Peltonen, 1869-1913): Literature in English & Esperanto

Ever since reading Byron's Cain in 1979, in conjunction with Blake's The Ghost of Abel, I have been interested in the reversal of the orthodox meanings of myths canonized in sacred texts. One sees an autonomous reconfiguration of myth in British Romanticism, in Blake, Byron, and Shelley. I have recently returned to this subject in engagement with literary uses and unorthodox interpretations of the Edenic and Cain/Abel myths, for example, with Imre Madách's classic verse drama The Tragedy of Man and with Erich Fromm's psychoanalytic and humanist interpretation of the Old Testament. I am interested in how far the meanings of these mythical constructs can be stretched in literary interpretations before their deployment bumps up again insuperable limitations. I am also interested in the fundamental flaws and intellectual duplicity of liberal religion. (See my previous post on Erich Fromm.)

Erich Fromm on religion (3): In the Garden of Eden

I probably first read Erich Fromm's distinctive analysis of the Biblical myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in his most important book, Escape from Freedom, which as a teenager I read several times. Over the next few years I read most of Fromm's books in English.  But as with several of my youthful interests, I moved on and only took him up again decades later.

I was always intrigued by his interpretation of the Eden myth, which makes a good deal of symbolic sense, i.e. that what Christians call the Fall really represents man's rupture with his unity with nature, with his unselfconscious animal state, whereupon he gains knowledge of his mortality and becomes embarrassed by his nakedness. I believe he is correct in this, but I cannot accept this as a complete interpretation. Several myths (my interest is primarily in the Edenic and Cain/Abel myths) have been reinterpreted, transformed, even turned upside down. But I think that, at the end of the day, there's an inherent limitation in myth, and I think the Edenic myth is a case in point.

Fromm includes variations of his analysis is various of his works. It seems to me that there is an unresolved contradiction in his perspective. His thesis on the Old Testament is that Judaism begins as an authoritarian religion and ends up as a humanistic one. I think that his approach is fundamentally flawed, but at the moment I would like to point out Fromm's admission that the Edenic myth shows evidence of its development in ancient times and the survival of repressed elements (see my previous post) and that God's judgment on Adam and Eve is a manifestation of authoritarianism. So, if the Edenic myth is interpretable both as anthropomorphically authoritarian and as symbolic of the rupture with the unity of nature, there is an unresolved discrepancy here. I think both assertions are true, but this is precisely why myth is inherently limited and liberal religion inherently ideologically suspect.

Here is my list of significant references.

Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1941. In Britain: The Fear of Freedom, 1942; see pp. 27-28.

__________. Psychoanalysis and Religion [1950] (New York: Bantam Books, 1967), pp. 41-42.

__________. The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths (New York: Grove Press, 1957 [1951]), pp. 234-235.

__________. Marx’s Concept of Man (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1961), Chapter 6, Marx's Concept of Socialism.

__________. You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Traditions. New York: Fawcett Premier / Ballantine, 1966. See pp. 21-23, 57-58, 96-98.

Summary: Naomi Sherer reviews... You Shall Be As Gods by Eric Fromm.

__________. “On Disobedience” [excerpt] (1984).

Soviet atheism revisited in jest

This is of course a huge topic, but I recently stumbled across a mock-nostalgia page on the Soviet Union, with particular mock-nostalgia for the Stalin era:

Cyber-USSR:
"A realm where no kulak goes un-liquidated, no five-year-plan goes un-overfulfilled, and no Great Leader and Teacher goes un-venerated."

Contents of this site can be found here:

Charter of the Cyber-USSR

So, from the period of stagnation:

Moscow University, 1977-1978: Courses on atheism

And from the period of "militant atheism" in the 1920s:

Some anti-religious cartoons and articles in the journal Bezbozhnik (1924, 1927).

There are several links on this page to sample materials in Russian, including covers of this periodical directed against Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. (What, no Hinduism?)

"Militant atheism" in the USSR was crude, and in the Stalin period, became even cruder, with a sledgehammer ideological and instrumentalist approach accompanying "socialist construction". This crudity, accompanying the virtual deification of Stalin, is what a peasant society undergoing crash modernization gives you, a monstrosity the likes of which were not to be seen again until Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Ludwig Feuerbach 13: Nina Power on Feuerbach on religion

Here is a 4-minute video by philosopher and social theorist Nina Power:

Radical thinkers: Ludwig Feuerbach on religion - video

This is on the occasion of Verso Books' re-publication of the anthology The Fiery Brook: Selected Writings by Ludwig Feuerbach, translated by Zawar Hanfi.

This is a collection of Feuerbach's shorter philosophical writings. We are fortunate that it is now back in print. For the contents and other writings by and about Feuerbach in English see my bibliography of Ludwig Feuerbach.

Feuerbach is most known for his views on religion, in particular his epoch-making book The Essence of Christianity (1841). Power references this work in her video. While I can't recall the items I've read, I know I have read some very intelligent pieces by her. I have no real complaints about this brief introduction to Feuerbach, but I would contrast Feuerbach with the so-called "new atheists" in a different way. It is not a question of belligerence vs sympathy for believers, but one of methodology, depth, and insight. There is more to be mined in Feuerbach than has been mobilized to date. Feuerbach is incomparably richer in insight than Dawkins' drivel about memes, religion as virus, and similar ideologically driven pseudo-explanations, and that goes for the others on the bandwagon of the journalistically dubbed new atheism. For me the watchword is a later Feuerbach work:

Lectures on the Essence of Religion (1851), translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. (See Lectures I & XXX offsite, Lecture 1 (Part II), Lecture 2 and more on my site.)

Confucian 'humanism' revisited

Revisiting this post on the The New Humanism Blog:

Confucian Humanism

This is an unintentional reminder of the corruption and exploitation that is the "People's Republic" of China. Note my comment, posted on June 16, 2010:

The resurgence of Confucianism as a cynical ideological deflection of corruption and social inequality is nauseating in itself, but it also raises the question of the vague deployment of the term “humanism”. Confucius has often been mislabeled a humanist because this philosophy is this-worldly, rather than other-worldly, but in this one instance the Maoists were right. Confucianism and secular humanism are completely incompatible. “Humanism”, while anathema to the Christian right, sounds warm and cuddly to others, hence the promulgation of obscurantist humanisms among intellectuals from various cultures, e.g. “African humanism”, also a spurious ideological construct.

Note also the follow-up comment by Jim Farmelant.

Science, Scientism, & Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism

Science, Scientism, and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism
by Susan Haack,
Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 21.6, November / December 1997.

I once attended a lecture by Susan Haack on logic, in 1980. I subsequently read her book Philosophy of Logics (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Since then, she's written on broader issues.

Here she decries the corruption of standards in academia, particularly in philosophy. She sees it being corrupted by business imperatives, careerism, and the interdependent dynamic of scientism and anti-scientism. An example of the former is the lucrative area of cognitive science, eclipsing epistemology. As for anti-science, she roundly condemns, as she should, feminist philosophy, which she regards as a sham.

A key quote on the interdependence of scientism and anti-science:

"Now one begins to see why the revolutionary scientism encountered in contemporary philosophy often manifests a peculiar affinity with the anti-scientific attitudes which, as I conjecture, are prompted by resentment, as scientism is prompted by envy, of the sciences. Both parties have become disillusioned with the very idea of honest inquiry, of truth-seeking."

Gender & race wars in the secular movement (1)

As a peripheral observer of the atheist/ humanist/ skeptics/ secularist movement, who only intermittently keeps up with goings-on in the movement and hardly ever reads the relevant blogs, I find my sense of reality challenged by the controversies raging within it, mostly over women's issues but also over racial issues, and of course the two combined. I have always found this movement (in the USA at least) so shallow that I cannot take seriously the terms of these debates, as the very people dissenting from the prevailing order of this movement are interested in claiming an identity in it, and this identity is something I don't believe in in the first place.

To claim oneself as a feminist skeptic or a black skeptic, for instance, to me means in the first place that however one redefines the issues, one has already accepted not only the labels but the tacit conceptual basis for these labels. While I do take seriously the issue of harassment and character defamation of women in the secular movement, I do not take so seriously the framing of the ideological issues within it. Its fundamental premises are bourgeois. This may not be so obvious because the dissenters represent or claim to represent progressive causes. However, the ideological basis of these causes and their relation to the context in which they operate changes over time.

It is difficult to see this because Americans have to confront two historical breaks which have instituted our historical amnesia: McCarthyism and Reaganism.  I gave the briefest outline of how this affects the tacit ideological underpinnings of the explicit ideological assertions of the humanist movement, in my previous post, John Shook & the banality of humanism's dead liberalism. I will quote just one paragraph, in which I distinguish the left liberals/soft socialists of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto from today's "liberals":

 All of these people were products of a different era from the generations that produced the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s and '70s. In addition to class-based agitation, this period foregrounded the new social movements--black civil rights & black power (along with other mushrooming ethnic movements), feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, etc.  What survives of all this, however, is predicated on the destruction of the old social liberalism that was undergirded by the labor movement.  Hence what passes for liberalism now is not class-based social equality, but the equal right of members of marginalized groups to participate at all levels of class exploitation. Our black president is the logical outcome of this historical trend.

You can read the rest yourself. What I need to add is that the movements of the 1960's and '70s cannot simply be isolated as black, women's, gay, etc. movements. There existed an entire spectrum of political positions associated with each of these movements. And social class was alive as an issue in a different way than it is today, as the old social liberalism (welfare state capitalism cum industrial trade unionism) is dead as a political force. Hence the notion of what it means to be progressive today hinges on fighting the right-wing assault based on their "cultural issues": defending women's rights, black voting rights, the status of Latinos, etc. Of course there is also a battle on defending public service unions and the social safety net. Nevertheless, the framing of the battles on behalf of marginalized and discriminated-against groups is shaped by the overall political context of today.

What remains of the consideration of class is encompassed in the left bourgeois notion of intersectionality and the childish deployment of the concept of privilege. Study of the intersections of race and class and gender and class goes back a long way, but the framing of these issues is a result of the combination of progress and regress since the end of the 1970s: increased consciousness of the issues raised by the new social movements combined with the eclipse of class politics. As for privilege, this notion grew out of the radical '60s in the context of left-wing organizing confronting the labor movement. The concept is now reduced to privileged middle class professionals baiting ostensibly more privileged middle class professionals.

As for the actual marginalization of various groups within secularist etc organizations, others will have to testify. However, the situation is complicated not only by the gatekeeping practices of organizations, conference organizers, etc., and by explicit positions taken by public figures, but by the atmosphere of the blogosphere, social networking, and cyberspace generally. As for the debaters who are recognized public figures, to what extent are the debates artifacts of competing self-promoters as superficial in their pronouncements as their opponents? How much of the alleged "war on women" actually concerns the recognizable organized secularist etc. movement and how much the free-for-all of commenters on blogs and social networks and YouTube wars? The fact that harassment and character assassination should exist at all and must be endured or fought is itself depressing.  Why not just attack someone's half-baked ideas when the occasion arises, if that is what is really at stake, and leave it at that?

The freethought community, on matters of social/political thinking, is as shallow as the rest of American society. Social issues should certainly not be silenced or discouraged, but that doesn't mean everyone who brings them up is a genius. We live in a media-saturated environment in which everyone reacts to everything. but unfortunately superficiality dominates all discussions. It is typical of argument in America: he said-she said. Who wants to participate in such discussions ad nauseam?

John Shook & the banality of humanism's dead liberalism

“Humanism at its core, at the heart of its ethical project, is the statement of a difficult problem, and not an elitist ideology offering simple platitudes.”

— John Shook, “With Liberty & Justice for All,” Humanist, January / February 2013

But actually, humanism in the USA intellectually really is little more than a collection of platitudes, and John Shook's essay demonstrates this.

When the first Humanist Manifesto was issued in 1933, capitalism was awash in its worst crisis, fascism menaced the world, Stalinism was the major alternative as a global political force, and Roosevelt's New Deal was about to be born to rescue American capitalism from the other two alternatives. In this context, the left-liberal and soft socialist declarations of humanism in the USA meant something, even without a political force to back it up. The 14th principle reads:

The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.

The actual political force bringing about whatever possibilities of this being realized in the USA came from the burgeoning American industrial labor movement, with the major participation of its Communist and other left contingents. Social liberalism in the USA, more or less corresponding to what is known as social democracy in more civilized countries, became a reality for the first time.

Some of the leading humanist intellectuals were players in various reform movements. Philosophically, the works of such people as Corliss Lamont are not terribly sophisticated or interesting, though Lamont himself was active in peace and justice movements. John Dewey is the closest thing American humanists have as a philosophical patron saint. Nevertheless, one has to pursue his philosophical works beyond A Common Faith and beyond the literature proper to the humanist movement itself. The second most (undeservedly) honored philosophical personage in American humanism is Sidney Hook, but the anti-communist Hook, not the Hook who was one of the foremost among the few Marxist philosophers in the English-speaking world in the 1930s. The principle author of the draft of the 1933 Manifesto was Roy Wood Sellars, my favorite among the classic (pre-World War II) American philosophers and a man of the left, but his philosophical works are not really counted in the literature of American humanism.

All of these people were products of a different era from the generations that produced the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s and '70s. In addition to class-based agitation, this period foregrounded the new social movements--black civil rights & black power (along with other mushrooming ethnic movements), feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, etc.  What survives of all this, however, is predicated on the destruction of the old social liberalism that was undergirded by the labor movement.  Hence what passes for liberalism now is not class-based social equality, but the equal right of members of marginalized groups to participate at all levels of class exploitation. Our black president is the logical outcome of this historical trend.

Of course, many people attached to this new liberalism in a neoliberal (i.e. the new era of unregulated capitalism) era also have an interest in class-based justice, but generational turnover combined with historical amnesia have obscured how far to the right the political order, including the empty liberal gesturing of the Democratic Party, has been pulled.

This is the social environment in which the "new atheism" and the surge of activity overall in the atheist/humanist/skeptics is functioning. What do the ideologues of "humanism," who promise to offer more than mere "atheism," have to offer to explain world developments over the past 60 years or so and what concepts do they put forward to point the way out of the current political impasse, if impasse they even see?

John Shook's vacuous essay gives us a demonstration of the overall ideological backwardness of the atheist/humanist/skeptics movements. Shook enunciates the principles of the now-dead social liberalism:

As an ethical stance, humanism focuses on the individual and at the same time concerns itself with society; both commitments must remain bonded in mutual support, otherwise humanism makes no sense. History attests to the dangers of pursuing one to the detriment of the other, producing anti-humanist results. Societies that prioritize private liberty to excess, that let individuals accumulate all the powers they can, find that vast inequalities emerge. Those inequalities congeal into hierarchical social classes and rigid castes and severely restrict freedom of opportunity for all but the privileged and wealthy. On the other hand, societies that prioritize social justice too heavily, trying to equalize everyone’s wealth and status, find that vital initiative gets crushed beyond consolation. Where bureaucracy dictates investment and commerce, creativity goes unrewarded and opportunity is wasted.

Had Shook been more forthcoming, he would have stated this as a contest between capitalism and socialism. However, characterizing the problem with self-proclaimed socialist countries as those who "prioritize social justice too heavily" is not saying much about the provenance, history, and organization of such societies and to what extent the intent of their leaders is anymore geared toward social equality than ours is to democracy and the dignity of the individual. A simple balancing act between the abstractions of liberty and equality tells us nothing about the actual basis on which the class structure of any society is based. Bourgeois liberals and conservatives alike justify their positions on the basis of the same abstractions.  And in this fake balancing act, the actual mechanisms of capitalist exploitation are safely hidden.

Furthermore, there is no accounting for the extent to which any balance towards social justice was actually achieved and why it is being taken away now. Social liberalism has been politically dead in the USA for three decades at least. Not only does Shook regurgitate platitudes, but platitudes that are utterly useless given the irreversible shift to the right of the entire American political system.

Let us continue:

Balancing liberty and justice in healthy proportions is wiser than naively supposing that both can be maximized simultaneously. Human potential is too fragile and precious to abandon it to the caprice of private liberty or to entrust it to the rules of social justice. The individual needs freedoms within a supportive society, while society needs individuals to support the whole.

The first sentence is drivel. The principled enunciated in the rest of the passage were those of the Marxist humanists of the Yugoslav Praxis School with whom Paul Kurtz once dialogued and from whom he learned nothing. And while that school went down with Yugoslavia, Shook has nothing to say to compare to what these philosophers strove for.

Shook enunciates three general principles of the interdependency of individuality and sociality and then launches into a precis of the evolution of moral habits and responsibilities from primitive tribal organization on and the emergence of humanism within various civilizations. However, the master concepts of "culture" and "ethics" do not constitute a remotely usable basis for social theory.

Shook continues:

The only reasonable humanism trying to gradually improve people’s lives is one that starts with actual people as they really are, culture and all. Humanism opposes tribalism in any form, but it can’t stand aloof from culture itself, especially because many cultures are helpful repositories of humanistic wisdom with proven practical value.

This is worse than useless as social analysis. And not the word "gradually." An utterly useless liberalism that has no teeth in confronting the world in which we actually live. A reincarnated Dewey a century on is worthless, whereas the original Dewey performed at least some function for a burgeoning progressive liberalism. With Shook the keyword is "reform" repeated over and over against utopian schemes, i.e. a code word for "revolution" or "radicalism" or "socialism," which are in essence ruled out of court as anti-humanist. Shook wants to be a good liberal, but he has nothing to offer in the fashion of the good liberals of yesteryear.

The intellectual basis of humanism was always fairly thin, but as a strategic rallying point around a complex of issues it served a purpose. It still does as long as the participants in such a movement understand that it represents an alliance rather than a unity of social principles and that such a skeletal set of principles cannot serve as the basis for a complete social philosophy or world view.  Bourgeois liberals pride themselves on being the very embodiment of reason, but they are no such a thing. They are intellectually and ideologically underdeveloped, and thus the identity they claim in the end is just one more ideology to be overcome.

Life of Pi (film)

Saw the movie (spoiler alert:) Life of Pi yesterday afternoon. It was visually stunning. The acting was superb. The two-hour narrative was compelling, though I grew impatient with the long sojourn in the Pacific Ocean, which took up at least half the movie. As a film, it is definitely worth seeing. I have not read the novel.

However, thematically I have a big problem with it. For its major theme is belief vs reason, and while it gives reason some props, and preserves ambiguity, belief ends up having the upper hand.

The film is enacted mostly in flashbacks. Pi's story is supposed to convince a skeptical journalist of the existence of God. Pi himself as a young man develops a belief system in which he is a combination, Hindu, Christian, and Muslim. (Later in life, as a scholar, he develops an interest in Judaism.) His brothers mock him for adopting several religions at once; his father, however, is a rationalist and skeptic, warning Pi not to be fooled by the pageantry of religious ceremonies as they distract from the darkness underlying all religion. Pi, raised in a zoo, develops an early empathy with animals, and even tries to develop a rapport with a tiger named Richard Parker, who eventually becomes the second most important character in the tale.  But Pi's father warns him not to project his own human emotions onto the tiger, giving him a graphic demonstration of what tigers as predators are really like.

Later on (spoiler alert) Pi spends half the movie trapped on a lifeboat with the tiger Richard Parker. This goes on a bit too long, and though not boring, could tax the patience of a viewer who rejects the basic premise of the narrative, which involves a paradoxical symbiosis between man and tiger.

The story Pi tells about this sojourn on the Pacific is so incredible that the question arises at the end whether, without corroborating evidence, it can be believed, or for that matter, an alternative story that Pi makes up.  And this is related to belief in God.

Pi does in the end give credit to his rationalist father for teaching him the survival skills necessary to deal with the tiger.  So in the spirit of eclectic liberal tolerance, rationalism too occupies a place of honor, even if in the end a subordinate one, in the pantheon of religious pluralism.

The emphasis on the believability and desirability of one possible narrative among others on the basis of congeniality alone strikes me as decidedly postmodern and consonant with the liberal religiosity congenial to the upper middle class, with an inherent appeal to a middle class middlebrow or art film audience. These people are suckers for Pi's eclectic spirituality. I do not like this.

Given the foregrounding of Pi's relationship with animals, particularly the tiger, I thought at first that the spirit of the film was essentially pantheistic, but the violence of nature is not soft-pedaled. Pi constantly invokes God, which inevitably points to theism, despite the misguided, unrealistic empathy with the tiger, who has to be tamed anyway.

I also have a problem I have with the essentially individualistic character of spirituality, common among religious people irrespective of education and class, but obnoxious in a special way in bourgeois spirituality. It doesn't matter how many people suffer as long as one person is miraculously spared. The faith of the lone survivor is always vindicated in this world view. But the universe is not your friend, and even if by chance it seems to act that way upon occasion, it surely ain't everybody's friend.

The unbelievable fantasy dimension of the narrative (the ocean odyssey) is irritating even though clever, and its framing in the context of belief in the existence of God is really a waste of the imagination deployed in concocting this tale. And the beautiful visual imagery, reflecting the exquisitely developed technology now at the filmmaker's disposal, reflects the disparity between our advanced technological capability and the constriction of our ideological universe.

I wrote most of the above review upon arriving home yesterday, before I discovered this article:

Life of Pi author Martel hears from Obama, Winnipeg Free Press, 04/8/2010

According to the article, the author received a letter of praise from President Obama. Read attentively what Obama wrote, and tell me this does not confirm my analysis to a 'T'. It's fitting to contemplate this amidst all the fakery of today's presidential inauguration:

"My daughter and I just finished reading Life of Pi together. Both of us agreed we prefer the story with animals. It is a lovely book -- an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling. Thank you." 

I can't think of a more fitting basis on which to condemn this story.

Norm Allen on humanism, politics, Malcolm X

"On Conceptions of Humanism, Freethought, Atheism, Rationalism, Skepticism, etc."
By Norm R. Allen Jr., December 21, 2012

Although Norm's argument that there is no necessary correlation between nontheism & political positions is correct, there are further implications, in that "humanism" too is almost politically meaningless though it promises more, in a strictly definitional sense, than "atheism". This is true for "secular humanism", all of its manifestos and affirmations notwithstanding, and a fortiori for religious humanism, which stretches the meaning to unlimited flexibility and hence virtual meaninglessness.

Norm recognizes the entire political spectrum that nontheists occupy. Among black atheists, he singles out the group of nationalist bigots (my designation) Black Atheists of Atlanta.  He did not mention other black nontheists who do not only advocate a tie to social justice issues but demagogically presume they represent black atheism as a whole in contraposition to white atheism. But black atheists, however the percentages may be skewed, also span the spectrum of political philosophies.

Back to Norm: Groups that couple a primary interest in atheism (or any of its synonyms) with a specific political philosophy should label themselves clearly reflecting their position. But also, there are nontheists who engage their social justice issues in other organizations and don't wish to narrow the common agenda of nontheists & secularists by tying down that movement to a specific political orientation.

The term "humanism' brings with it a source of confusion not found in the other terms:

Many humanists focus primarily on atheism, freethought, and rationalism. However, politically, they rend to be liberal or progressive. This causes much consternation among conservatives, libertarians and others that attend humanist gatherings. Yet unlike most of the other terms that non-theists use to describe themselves, humanism means a belief in humanity, and implies caring and concern for human beings, which usually translates into support for progressive social, political and economic programs. Conservatives, libertarians, and others might want to exercise caution when considering becoming involved with a humanist organization.

Perhaps a statistically oriented survey will bear out this generalization. However, many nontheists are not very discriminating about the labels or organizations they affiliate with or consider themselves humanists no matter how reactionary their politics. And the good liberals are not necessarily so discriminating either when choosing their heroes.

The problem is that the intellectual basis of the humanist movement is basically identical to that of any of the other labels used, and is so threadbare that it can't nail down anything more specific than general abstract principles, or platitudes. As a rule, humanism articulates certain general principles of liberal democracy, which are compatible with a range of political positions from capitalist libertarianism to Marxist humanism. (And this is not to take into account hypocrisy whatever the position taken.) This flexibility allows "humanism" to be a strategic focal point for organization and agitation in a variety of contexts, and for strategic alliances. But this does not make "humanism" a complete philosophy or world view. Not to see this is to fail to recognize that "humanism" essentially functions ideologically in the pejorative sense, that its proponents do not understand the deep structure of their own ideas.  For historical amplification, consult my podcast Atheism & Humanism as Bourgeois Ideology (11/17/12).

So whatever your conviction is as to what constitutes a true humanism, whether it be Barry Seidman's anarchosyndalism, which is as analytically vacuous and platitudinous as humanist liberalism, or something else, your efforts at hijacking the concept of humanism in general will be futile.

The threadbare intellectual character of the humanist movement in the USA can be seen in another essay:

MALCOLM X FROM A BLACK HUMANIST VIEW By Norm R. Allen Jr., September 10, 2011

. . . which contains this preposterous assertion: "As far as Black leaders of national renown go, Malcolm seems to have been the leading critical thinker."

This is not only nonsense with respect to the entire history of black American political thought, but also with respect to Malcolm's contemporaries. I am reminded of a remark C.L.R. James once made when questioned about Malcolm X, responding that the person who really matters is Paul Robeson.  This remark implies a whole lot more than it says, for it points to a larger historical perspective lacking among Americans, black Americans included, as James asserted in another speech.

Malcolm X emerged in a political vacuum created by the silencing of the infinitely more sophisticated black left in the McCarthy era. Malcolm trashed mainstream American liberalism not from the left but from the right. One can focus on the more intelligent components of his speeches, but his defamation of the civil rights movement coupled with his alternative separatist fantasy bespeaks a decidedly inferior politics. A disciple of Elijah Muhammed's fascist religious cult, Malcolm could only be considered a critical thinker in a limited sense. Malcolm's world view could only be considered compatible with humanism in the last year of Malcolm's life when he renounced the Nation of Islam and refused to make authoritarianism and racialism the basis of his political world view (though he became an orthodox Muslim).

Norm to be sure is no blind hero-worshipper. Yet a critical evaluation of Malcolm demands more than a criticism of his sexism, the blandest, easiest, and most politically correct criticism to make. As for critical thinking, I've argued elsewhere that there is only critical thinking in particular, not critical thinking in general, and that "critical thinking" is selective and content-driven. See my bibliography Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking: A Guide.

Philosophically, "humanism" has always been quite feeble though its platitudes are salutary. Here we have further confirmation of this philosophical anemia.

3 takes on critical thinking

As I have noted before, I have a problem with the theory and practice of critical thinking. From my web guide and links you will be able to see why:

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking: A Guide

Now here are some recently encountered examples of the problem:

(1) For a Better Society, Teach Philosophy in High Schools by Michael Shammas, The Huffington Post, 12/26/2012

This piece of airheaded fluff disproves the author's thesis. It's typical of a spineless formal liberalism that in fact commits itself to nothing other than the image of its own niceness. It is the clueless bourgeois ideology of an "open-mindedness" that means nothing, and an especially stupid specimen of it.

But since we are on the subject, you should know there is a whole literature on teaching philosophy in the classroom from early childhood on up. See the section on Philosophy for Children in my 'Intellectual Life in Society, Conventional and Unconventional: A Bibliography in Progress'.

(2) Five Critical Thinkers on Television by Breanne Harris, Critical Thinkers, July 26, 2010

Aside from this post being fluff, this web site is a representative of an entrepreneurial/consulting outfit, and the spin as well as the limits of the application of 'critical thinking' in an entrepreneurial setting should be evident. Bourgeois professionals are not prone to turning critical thinking on themselves except in that pseudo-detached fashion outlined in the first example. The exception I suppose is that small corner of left-liberal academia preoccupied by reflexivity, which translates into the politics of guilt.

(3) Educational Objective: Critical Thinking Skills, Ruthless Criticism

This little article is in a whole different category, as is this far left web site. The problem with several articles on this site is that there is no mediating analysis between the abstract concepts under review and the particulars of a political/social configuration in a way that would give us more than generalities.

If you read this article carefully, you should see that its critique applies to the tacit ideologies of the first two examples, especially the first. I do not find this to be an adequate critique, but it contains essential elements of a critique of 'critical thinking' that dovetails with my own.

The first point in this criticism relates to the educational emphasis on the critical subject, i.e. self-criticism. While the student is urged to be self-critical, where does one find the discussion of the objects that one can or should or cannot or should not be critical of? The sense of neutrality, of even-handedness and the avoidance of partisanship, is mocked, as it deserves.

The second admonition of the educational ideology of critical thinking, is skepticism. Again, there is an implicit critique of the formalism by which one can subjectively approach any topic with a skeptical point of view without actually knowing anything one way or the other. Note the criticism of the indifference to content.

Third, there is a criticism of relativization, that is, of the posture of modesty, which I presume to be an aspect of the posture of even-handedness and impartiality which is presumed to be ethically superior to 'ideology', extremism, partisanship.

Fourthly, there is a criticism of the presumption that there is a general critical capacity that needs only be awakened. This criticism and article ends most aptly, pooh-poohing "the possibility of criticizing something specific is supposed to exist in abstraction from each specific criticism, namely in the individual and not in what he has to criticize."

Such critiques of critical thinking seem to be very rare, at least in this part of the world. All these points are good ones, but the argument is far too adumbrated: without further exposition, the reader is likely to fail to grasp these points and to fill in the missing pieces of the argument as well as its necessary correlative overall structure.  This does nevertheless add something to my critique of the formalist, approach endemic to the critical thinking industry, without degenerating to postmodernist irrationalism.

Unresolved duality in Richard Hofstadter's historical method

Written April 2, 2011 at 7:52 pm 

Here's a telling clue:

Since Julius W. Pratt published his Expansionists of 1898 in 1936, it has been obvious that any interpretation of America's entry upon the paths of imperialism in the nineties in terms of rational economic motives would not fit the facts, and that a historian who approached the event with preconceptions no more supple than those, say, of Lenin's Imperialism would be helpless. This is not to say that markets and investments have no bearing; they do, but there are features of the situation that they do not explain at all. Insofar as the economic factor was important, it can be better studied by looking at the relation between the depression, the public mood, and the political system.

SOURCE: Hofstadter, Richard. “Cuba, the Philippines, and Manifest Destiny,” in: The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays; foreword by Sean Wilentz (New York: Vintage Books, 2008; 1st ed.: New York: Knopf, 1965), p. 183.

Lenin understood imperialism much better than Hofstadter, who, in the second paragraph, on the causes of the Spanish-American War, states: "The most striking thing about that war was that it originated not in imperialist ambition but in popular humanitarianism." (p. 145)  This follows upon an even more naive first paragraph, to the effect of: how could Americans do such a thing as engage in foreign conquest? This is quite revealing of an inherent flaw in American liberal and progressive historiography. As Hofstadter rebelled against the economism of Charles Beard and co. that prevailed in his youth, he was left with a curious dualism (or should I say, pluralism?) of material and ideal causes. Obviously, he learned nothing from the Marxism of the 1930s, but thanks to the economism of the dominant Soviet Marxism, it too suffered from a comparable flaw of suppressing theoretical comprehension of the ideological and even irrational subjective dimension of experience which itself is rooted in the objectivity of social relations. So, akin to the banality in John Dewey's view of society, Hofstadter leaves us with a multiplicity of factors rather than an integrated conception of structure. It's a shame, because the empirical depth in which Hofstadter engages in American political history is quite instructive concerning the configuration of America's entire pathological history.

Barbara Ehrenreich vs 'positive thinking'

Thank goodness Barbara Ehrenreich has written about a subject that has been grinding my gears for several years, the self-help industry and above all the odious ideology of 'positive thinking', i.e. the logic of laissez faire capitalism elevated to the supramundane level of metaphyics. While to some extent personal optimism can be a motivator to overcome the most egregious of obstacles, as the basis for a world view it is obscene. What personally gets you over is not the basis for the whole cosmos, and the universe is not everybody's friend, not yours either.

As usual, Adorno expresses the issue better than anyone:

Adorno on Truth, Survival, Consolation & Freedom of Thought

But back to Barbara. She's written a whole book on the subject:

Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America (2009)

I wouldn't call this "utterly original" as I've had exactly the same thoughts for years, but I also have not seen these thoughts expressed elsewhere in print. There are links to videos and other material on her site, but let me point out this essay:

Pathologies of hope by Barbara Ehrenreich, Harper's Magazine, February 1, 2007

But here is another video for your perusal. Barbara's talk is good, the comments not so much:

RSA Animate - Smile or Die

Dominique Lecourt on the "Sacred" as Contemporary Ideology

Before so liberally attributing such a ‘sense of the sacred’ to humanity, however, are there not good reasons first of all to ponder the meaning of this notion? Far from being eternal, the category of the ‘sacred’, such as we spontaneously contrast it with the ‘profane’, was in fact invented very recently—in the early years of the twentieth century, when Émile Durkheim published Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912), and Rudolf Otto a famous work entitled Das Heilige (1917). These books have inspired the two major currents in the historiography of religion. The first comprises the ‘immanentist’ historians, who regard religious facts as assimilable to the same type of explanation as the set of phenomena studied by the social and human sciences. The second inspires those who regard such facts as intrinsically different from other facts, because they refer to a distinct order of reality. But ultimately, the opposition between ‘immanentists’ and ‘transcendentalists’ proves secondary. The essential thing is that ‘religious facts’ exist and that they are observable, identifiable as such, throughout human history. What, however, of the conception of religion that has governed the characterization of these ‘facts’? Let us read Otto: it is clearly a Christian conception—the particular conception that prevailed in the Lutheran current of the Reformation, placing emphasis upon inner feelings, on the faith that would inevitably be born out of the experience of transcendence. By what right do we universalize this conception? Can the ‘facts’ assembled under the heading of ‘Greek religion’ really be conceived in these terms? Or Roman religion? Or Aztec rites and beliefs? Buddhism? There are excellent reasons to doubt it. What, then, is the purpose of such universalization? Otto—who at least does not conceal his hand—answers as follows: in the end, it involves a celebration of the superiority of Christianity, such as he practises it, over all other religions!

SOURCE: Lecourt, Dominique. The Mediocracy: French Philosophy since the Mid-1970s; translated by Gregory Elliott (London; New York: Verso, 2001), pp. 89-90.