Common Knowledge current issue

"THE PERIOD AFTER 1989"

Havel, V., Michnik, A. — 2009-08-24

This guest column amounts to a conversation between two of the crucial figures in the world of Soviet bloc dissidents about developments in their part of the world since the overthrow of communism there in 1989. They agree that a "creeping coup d'état" is underway, in which not only the government administrations of their countries have changed, but also their systems of governance—for the worse. "It is not," they agree, "what the democratic opposition spent twenty-five years fighting for." Their apprehension is that, under new forms, the old authoritarian impulses are returning to East-Central Europe as well as Russia.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (AND -FIVE): A Brit Looks Back

O'Neill, A. — 2009-08-24

Aidan O'Neill remembers Britain as a fundamentally riven society twenty-five years ago under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher; a country divided by she who sought to rule it with certainty, but without compassion. The memories of Britain as a bitter and broken polity split asunder by a year-long strike of its coal miners were stirred again by a recent visit to the United States to attend a conference on Catholic Social Teaching where the growing social and legal acceptance of homosexuality and the continued toleration of lawful abortion were both angrily denounced by two speakers who revealed a fundamental disjunction between their vision and hope for a properly Christian America, and their experience of an America which they characterized as misgoverned by a conspiracy of liberal judges and complaisant politicians. A subsequent roundtable discussion on the prospects for a written constitution for the State of Israel also revealed a picture of a profoundly divided society with utterly irreconcilable political visions competing for its future. In the face of such radical diversity in political vision the author suggests that the better way forward is to focus not on ends but on means, and always to honor the constitutional and legal processes which result in, albeit imperfect, decision making. Although a very thin form of consensus, it is suggested that such an approach is the sine qua non for any polity aspiring to the condition and ideal of democracy to be able to function, and, ultimately, to achieve some kind of justice.

1968

Marcus, G. — 2009-08-24

The author, who lived in Berkeley, California during the disruptions of 1968, remembers the year as one of bad faith, though also of a sense of making history. He recalls the events of that year (and of 1964) in Berkeley, where he still lives, then moves out into related events in the rest of the world, but also into more lastingly important events in popular culture, especially popular music. He concludes by memorializing what now appears to him the most important event of all, certain records broken that year in sports.

1509

Richmond, C. — 2009-08-24

To commemorate the five hundreth anniversary of the accession of Henry VIII to the English throne, this guest column reviews the inventories made, upon his death, of the king's possessions at Hampton Court, the Tower, and other locations. Focusing on extensive equipment for royal-games playing, especially for "tennys," this paper is essentially a list of possessions that evidence the blend of frivolity and cruelty characteristic of Henry's self-indulgent reign.

Introduction: The Promise of Apathy

Perl, J. M., Price, A. W., McDowell, J., Taylor, M. A., Thompson, C., Mao, D. — 2009-08-24

This essay is the journal editor's introduction to part 3 of an ongoing symposium on quietism. With reference to writings of James Joyce, Francis Picabia, J. M. Coetzee, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Elaine Pagels, and Karen King—and with extended reference to Jonathan Lear's study of "cultural devastation," Radical Hope—Jeffrey Perl explores the possibility that the fear of anomie ("anomiphobia") is misplaced. He argues that, in comparison with the violence and narrowness of any given social order, anomie may well be preferable, and, in any case, may be no more than another name for quietism.

INTUITIONS OF FITTINGNESS

Price, A. W. — 2009-08-24

In one sense of the term current among analytical philosophers, the quietist_lacks skeptical doubts about the metaphysical or epistemological status of ethical judgments as a class of judgment. He may still have doubts about, say, the current state of morality.

There are criteria of courage by which, though they are open-ended, a man may count as acting bravely. It need not follow that he has adopted the best tactics. Yet he must have responded fittingly to danger. But how is that to be identified?

"Ought"-judgments are to be understood contextually, with an implicit relativity to certain ends or quasi-ends, and—when the "ought" is only pro tanto—to certain aspects of, or opportunities within, a situation. These judgments are often intuitive in that they do not derive from the application of a principle. Fittingness is an anthropocentric relation that holds within some human perspective; we should not think of it as a feature purportedly inherent in the very nature of things.

It is salutary to remember cases where the "ought" is so relativized, say to an undesirable end, that it identifies no reason for action. The nature of the relation does not change when it is relativized to an end that the agent has reason to achieve. "Ought"-judgments should not be interpreted in ambitious ways that make them generally problematic.

WITTGENSTEINIAN "QUIETISM"

McDowell, J. — 2009-08-24

In his Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein describes, and represents himself as pursuing, a way of doing philosophy without putting forward philosophical theses. I exemplify his approach with a sketch of his treatment of rule following. I focus in particular on the simple case of following a signpost, conceived as an expression of a rule for getting to a destination. Wittgenstein uncovers a threat that we will find it mysterious how one could learn from a signpost which way to go, and he dissolves the threat, not by putting forward philosophical theses, but by reminding us of things we already knew about signposts. Insofar as the point of Wittgenstein's procedure is to give philosophy peace, the label "quietism" fits. I take issue with readings of Wittgenstein's quietism that represent him as uncovering a need for positive philosophical work, but using quietism as a pretext for declining to do the work himself. Wittgensteinian quietism is not a stance of complacency or idleness. The kind of thing Wittgenstein does is difficult and laborious. It requires accurate and sympathetic engagement with frames of mind in which positive philosophy seems to be necessary.

THE "PHANTASMODESTY" OF HENRY ADAMS

Taylor, M. A. — 2009-08-24

Written exclusively in the third-person by a narrator who repeatedly refers to "Henry Adams" as "passive," "submissive," and "a helpless victim" in relation to the "forces" in the world that form him, The Education of Henry Adams attenuates both author and subject by valuing environment over eponym. The critical literature on the text has focused primarily on the formal or psychological bases of such practice in order to argue that Adams is behind, and thus exempt from, the book's paradoxical self-effacements. But for Adams the rationale for the impersonal, evacuated form of The Education is more ontological than personal, the necessary consequence of his quietistic belief in a materialist determinism so absolute as to reduce persons and history alike to "sum[s].... of the forces" of "nature." This belief, one shared by many of his contemporaries and most fully evolved in Adams's "dynamic theory of history," entails, in the context of The Education, making the distinction between auto-biography and autobiography, between a text generated by an "automaton" and one written by a person. Routed through a discussion of de Man's and Kierkegaard's conceptions of irony, this essay explores the relevance of such a distinction to both the humanism of Adams's age and the posthumanism of our own.

QUIETISM FROM THE SIDE OF HAPPINESS: Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, War and Peace

Thompson, C. — 2009-08-24

Tolstoy writes in a letter to his friend A. A. Fet that what he has written in War and Peace, "especially in the epilogue," is also said by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation. Tolstoy adds, however, that Schopenhauer approaches "it from the other side." Schopenhauer does indeed say much the same thing as Tolstoy says in his epilogue and elsewhere about history and the will. Each of these authors argues that history is not progressing and that it is not governed by the actions of individual political or military leaders alone, but by the infinitely many actions of the multitude of people. What underlies this critique of history in each case is a quietist outlook on life, a perspective from which one must abandon the assertion of the will and accept life as it is given. Tolstoy's quietism, however, is a happy quietism; he wants his reader to joyfully embrace life for all that it has to offer. Schopenhauer's is an unhappy quietism; he wants his reader to accept life in the face of all that it is not. Thus, Tolstoy and Schopenhauer approach quietism, and consequently their critiques of history and the will, from different "sides." These sides—to borrow Wittgenstein's way of speaking—are the sides of the happy and the unhappy. To approach quietism from one side rather than another is no small matter. In Tolstoy's case in particular, it made all the difference in the world.

THE LACK OF REPOSE

Mao, D. — 2009-08-24

In a dialogue whose precedents include Oscar Wilde's "Critic as Artist," two fictional professors of English take up the relationship between aestheticism and quietism. Their conversation begins with a debate on the necessity of treating sociopolitical contexts when teaching literature then moves to connections among aesthetic experience, political disengagement, inactivity, and contemplation explored by Wilde, Miguel de Molinos, Aristotle, Hannah Arendt, Walter Pater, Arthur Schopenhauer, Johann Winckelmann, and others. Having described the influence of nineteenth-century science and determinism on Wilde's gospel of inaction, as well as Pater's adaptation of the Winckelmannian view that people and things express their nature most truly when still, one speaker wonders whether aesthetic experience gains some of its significance from its affiliation with leisure. The other resists the idea that repose might constitute one of life's key desiderata, but notes at the close how both his own view and his interlocutor's are adumbrated in the Wallace Stevens poem that furnishes the dialogue its title.

SIX POEMS

Kozer, J. — 2009-08-24

FROM POISON, SHADOW, AND FAREWELL

Marias, J. — 2009-08-24

Misunderstanding: A Typology of Performance

Garand, D. — 2009-08-24

Taking as its point of departure a systematic presentation of the various types of misunderstandings, ranging from the most banal and benign to the most perverse and pernicious, this text principally examines the ways in which they can pave the way for disagreement. While it is possible that a rational examination of motives and sources pertaining to a misunderstanding may help to minimize its undesirable effects upon communication, a misunderstanding may also signal the incontrovertible and irresolvable nature of a disagreement. This paper, therefore—while basically Habermasian in its orientation—also questions the validity of Jürgen Habermas's premises regarding the ethics of communication: the scope given to speculative reason and the effectiveness of an explicative metadiscourse for clarifying misunderstanding or resolving conflicts; the possibility of authentic discourse in certain conflict situations; consensus as the ultimate goal of dialogue. Although Habermas stipulates that the expectation of validity is incumbent upon any authentic exchange, this paper underscores instead the expectation of satisfaction, which compels all individuals seeking to communicate. Through this comparison, the paper attempts to show that even the most tenacious disagreement originates in this affective nexus, and to show as well how we may construct ethical practices that are contingent upon disagreement.

What's Wrong with Democracy? From Athenian Practice to American Worship

Ober, J. — 2009-08-24

The Declaration of Independence: A Global History

Katz, S. N. — 2009-08-24

Nongovernmental Politics

Katz, S. N. — 2009-08-24

The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece

Boardman, J. — 2009-08-24

Europe between the Oceans, 9000 BC - AD 1000

Burke, P. — 2009-08-24

Ocean of Reasoning: A Great Commentary on Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika

Tuck, A. P. — 2009-08-24

Soul and Other Stories

Emerson, C. — 2009-08-24

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

Epstein, M. — 2009-08-24

The Unthought Debt: Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage

Fagenblat, M. — 2009-08-24

Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur

Konstan, D. — 2009-08-24

Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe

Isaacs, A. — 2009-08-24

The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary

Donoghue, D. — 2009-08-24

Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid

Cannadine, D. — 2009-08-24

Postcolonial Disorders

Seeman, D. — 2009-08-24

Worlds at War: The 2,500 Year Struggle between East and West

Duara, P. — 2009-08-24

Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond

Roberts, S. — 2009-08-24

For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia

Schwanitz, W. G. — 2009-08-24

EIMI: A Journey through Soviet Russia

Chace, W. M. — 2009-08-24

New Writings of William Hazlitt

Bromwich, D. — 2009-08-24

The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms

Gossett, P. — 2009-08-24

W. A. Mozart

Weber, W. — 2009-08-24

The Architecture of Happiness

Trilling, J. — 2009-08-24

A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression

Allen, B. — 2009-08-24

The Other Virgil: "Pessimistic" Readings of the Aeneid in Early Modern Culture

Jenkyns, R. — 2009-08-24

Rumble, Young Man, Rumble

Randall, B. — 2009-08-24

Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece

Stephens, S. — 2009-08-24

The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance

Tronzo, W. — 2009-08-24

Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science

Tamen, M. — 2009-08-24

Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England

Tanselle, G. T. — 2009-08-24

DEPRESSION: Financial, Post-manic, and Floral

Andersen, W. — 2009-08-24

Like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the current international monetary crisis—bank failures and a collapse of markets worldwide—was not sufficiently predictable to preempt with defensive action. One would think that history's experiences with sudden breakdowns in global economics would have taught the modern world enough lessons to assure that economic intelligence would have tightened the reins of investors and speculators over the last decade of runaway optimism. But history has never been a good teacher—better said, people have rarely been good students of history's lessons in cause and effect. Still, it makes sense, as with this essay, that we look back on such financial follies of the past, as epitomized by Holland's tulipmania, and take comfort in finding that our follies are just enough different from historical ones to at least claim them as our very own.

Notes on Contributors

2009-08-24