Common Knowledge recent issues

"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

Introduction: "The Need for Repose"

Perl, J. M., Choudhury, M., Chamberlain, L., Jain, A. R., Kripal, J. J. — 2009-03-26

This essay introduces the second installment of a symposium in Common Knowledge called "Apology for Quietism." This introductory piece concerns the sociology of quietism and why, given the supposed quietude of quietists, there is such a thing at all. Dealing first with the "activist" Susan Sontag's attraction to the "quietist" Simone Weil, it then concentrates on the "activist" William Empson's attraction to the Buddha and to Buddhist quietism, with special reference to Empson's lost manuscript Asymmetry in Buddha Faces (and to Sharon Cameron's work on the topic in her book Impersonality). The author, who is also editor of the journal, argues against the effort of some contributors to substitute new terms for quietism and emphasizes instead what he calls (quoting Sontag) "the need for repose."

A BETRAYAL OF TRUST: The Jesuits and Quietism in Eighteenth-Century France

Choudhury, M. — 2009-03-26

An examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French history indicates that the relationship between the Jesuits and Quietism was shaped by politics as well as by concerns of theological orthodoxy. During the late 1690s, the Jesuits championed François Fénelon accused of Quietism at the same time as they spearheaded an attack against Quietism in Burgundy, emphasizing crimes of spiritual incest or the abuse of clerical authority. Such ambiguity indicates that the Jesuits were motivated by a desire to consolidate political power in Louis XIV... trades court. However, the fusion of Quietist heresy, charges of spiritual incest, and political gamesmanship would ultimately make the Jesuits themselves vulnerable to claims of heresy and abuse when the Girard/Cadière affair became a national scandal in 1731. This essay argues that this disquiet over clerical behavior and power was articulated in a changing political culture between the late seventeenth century and the 1730s. Growing dissatisfaction against the crown established a new political consciousness, one that regarded the politics of secrecy as problematic if not outright illegitimate. The secrecy of the confession, the emphasis on interiority seemingly at the expense of morality, and the enigmatic language of mysticism, all associated with Quietism played into fears of clerical (or "Jesuit") cabal and conspiracy. When Jesuit opponents linked the order to Quietism, they presented the Jesuits as threats to an emerging set of political values in which legitimate authority was transparent and open while illegitimate power operated in the shadows.

QUIETISM AND POLEMIC: A Dialectical Story

Chamberlain, L. — 2009-03-26

Although they have a religious origin, the terms quietist and quietism have generally been used in the anglophone world in the context created by the French Revolution, which made them expressions of political abuse. Examination of classic instances of their use shows that in fact they were terms of psychological abuse, signs that men and women of political commitment could not understand, let alone accept, others who were not committed to one side or other in the revolutionary struggle. This paper takes issue with the egregious simplicity of that that attitude, while exploring aspects of the Idealist tradition in German philosophy which, also emerging from the challenge of the French Revolution, found positive terms and complex human explanations for behaviour that held back from definite political commitment. It concludes by suggesting the terms quietist and quietism have become redundant in a world that has moved on from a crude clash of revolution versus reaction.

QUIETISM AND KARMA: Non-Action as Non-Ethics in Jain Asceticism

Jain, A. R., Kripal, J. J. — 2009-03-26

This essay is conceived as a contribution to the academic debate on the ethical status of mystical traditions with regard to Jain asceticism in particular and—through comparison of Jain with Advaita Vedanta asceticism—to ideologies of radical quietism more generally. For both Jain and Advaita Vedantic ascetic traditions, the material world, and particularly the body, are the primary obstacles to spiritual development. We deal with the social, physical, and environmental implications of such a worldview, rather than with the practice or the phenomenology or the doctrine of mysticism, which we grant to be an accurate reflection of a particular kind of cosmic experience. We address ethical issues, not metaphysical ones. In our discussion of Jain asceticism, we demonstrate that the basic problem (and promise) of quietism, in almost any cultural form, is the shocking realization it can occasion that the Real has absolutely nothing to do with the social or with any sort of ethical action. We argue that Jain asceticism cannot function as an adequate resource for contemporary ethics. Our normative concerns lie exclusively with the adequacy of Jain quietism in supporting a stable global community and a sustainable natural environment. One can be mystical without being ethical, and ethical without being a mystic. We conclude that the truths of quietism are both very profound and profoundly nonethical.

Flesh Made Word: Saints' Stories and the Western Imagination

Bynum, C. W. — 2009-03-26

A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances, and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century

Pocock, J. G. A. — 2009-03-26

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal

Frank, J. — 2009-03-26

Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights

Katz, S. N. — 2009-03-26

Russia's Islamic Threat

Cook, M. — 2009-03-26

Stoicism and Emotion

Gleason, M. W. — 2009-03-26

Song and Season: Science, Culture, and Theatrical Time in Early Modern Venice

Gossett, P. — 2009-03-26

Fateful Beauty: Aesthetic Environments, Juvenile Development, and Literature, 1860-1960

Nehamas, A. — 2009-03-26

Books: A Memoir

Tanselle, G. T. — 2009-03-26

Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein

Fagenblat, M. — 2009-03-26

The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat

Krajewski, B. — 2009-03-26

Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry

Allen, B. — 2009-03-26

FROM LEGEND

Haizi, — 2009-03-26

FROM JEWISH ARE YOU?

Nemeth, G. — 2009-03-26

THE HUMILITY OF HYPOCRISY: On the Irenic Illiberalism of Jewish Law

Isaacs, A. — 2009-03-26

Following directly upon an account of the author's personal experiences as a young soldier in Gaza during the course of the first intifada in 1987, this essay is an attempt to "cash in" rabbinic statements that present the entire Torah as a path to peace. The essay suggests that the genre of rabbinic debate—rather than the specific content of rabbinic statements—can be understood as peaceful. The study of halakhic literature, which is generally understood either as designed to clarify and quantify explicit legal demands or as a setting for pluralistic and progressive legal debate, is reevaluated with the purpose of limiting the potential of religious law to justify acts of violence. This reevaluation is founded upon an implicit critique of the "liberal" strategies that have sought to control the dangerous potential of religious law. The author proposes an irenic understanding of the halakha built upon partial and limited evaluations of the law's truth-claims. It argues that rabbinic debating generates multiple understandings for every detail of the law that entangle and conceal any ultimate sense of the law from view. The result is a legal system that is modest about its conclusions—and content to implement them partially—hypocritically. The religious value of such a system is that the truth claims of the law are thus modeled upon—and duplicate—the paradoxical opaqueness of prophetic revelation. Ultimately, this essay argues that this conception of the halakha is inherently tentative and hence peaceful.

ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND THE TEMPTATION OF SHARI'A

O'Neill, A. — 2009-03-26

The question posed in this article is whether Catholics can fully, unreservedly, and conscientiously carry out their duties as citizens and as holders of their various public offices (legislative, judicial and executive) of the State, in accordance with the laws and constitution of the democratic and pluralist States in which they live. My concern—as a practicing Catholic and a practicing lawyer—is that the increasingly fierce Church criticism, which arose during the papacy of John Paul II and now of Benedict XVI, of the perceived trend towards secularization in the social and political mores of Western (particularly European) democracies, and the greater readiness by Church officials to take it upon themselves explicitly to instruct the laity in political matters, puts this whole issue again into question. Should the bishops of the Catholic Church be seeking to use their ecclesiastical authority (over the faithful) to oppose or promote changes in the laws which apply to all within our society and/or to influence the way we might vote or carry out civic duties? This is a big and complex area involving the interplay of politics and theology; of private and public morality. It touches on the role of teaching office of the Catholic Church and the assent (and possibility of dissent) on the part of the faithful. It takes in questions of conscientious objection and unjust laws. It concerns individual conscience and the hope of salvation. It is about voting as sinning. It is about judging, and being judged.

Notes on Contributors

2009-03-26

Introduction: "More Trouble than They Are Worth"

Perl, J. M., Griffiths, P. J., Evans, G. R., Davis, C. — 2008-12-29

This essay, which is the editor's introduction to part 1 of a multipart symposium on quietism, also constitutes his call for symposium papers. The symposium is meant be comprehensive. It is described as political and broadly cultural as well as religious, and in religious terms is said to cover not only the Catholic and Protestant quietisms (most properly so called) of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but also the proto-quietisms of the medieval Western church and reputedly quietist aspects of the Gnostic, Eastern Orthodox, early Hasidic, Shi'ite, Jain and other Indic, Taoist, and Zen religious traditions. This introduction emphasizes the secular approaches, mostly antipolitical or postphilosophical, that wear the adjective "quietist" metaphorically, including the postmodern currents that Martha Nussbaum has named "hip quietism" and the "minimalist" philosophical version developed by Wittgenstein and some of his successors, notably Richard Rorty. This introduction concludes with attention to Rorty's late essay "Naturalism and Quietism," then with a dedication of the entire symposium to Rorty's memory.

THE QUIETUS OF POLITICAL INTEREST

Griffiths, P. J. — 2008-12-29

Quietists aim to bring something to rest, to move it from activity to quiescence. This essay depicts and advocates a quietism of political interest, which is to say a divorce of political action from interest in the outcome of such action. Its principal interlocutor is Pascal, whose 1657 letter to Périer argues, on theological and epistemological grounds, for exactly such a separation. The essay argues that a quietism of political interest has several advantages over ordinary consequentialist political advocacy and action, the most important among which is that the former can acknowledge that in a complex political system we are ordinarily unable to predict the results of enacting what we advocate, while the latter must occlude that fact. Quietists of political interest must replace concern with outcome by something else as a motive or cause for political advocacy and action; and while there are many possibilities here, in the West the only lively form of such quietism has been Christian-theological, in which political advocacy and action are, ideal-typically and sometimes actually, undertaken under the threefold assumption that: (1) advocacy of a political proposal assumes that justice in the political sphere is not attainable but must nonetheless be sought; (2) advocacy of a political proposal assumes that while Christian advocates can act unjustly, they cannot suffer injustice; and (3) advocacy of a political proposal proceeds always without concern for the outcome.

SANCTA INDIFFERENTIA AND ADIAPHORA: "Holy Indifference" and "Things Indifferent"

Evans, G. R. — 2008-12-29

Quietism brought the individual to a state of "holy indifference" where nothing mattered; particularities of Christian belief and practice, pleasures of the senses, personal desires, all vanished in the utter self-abandonment of the soul in the presence of God. The "resigned" soul simply left everything to God. This was a mode of spirituality but also a challenge to the Church and the need for its sacraments. Ecclesiastical authorities of various colors, both protestant and Roman Catholic, found this unacceptable in its earlier manifestations in the later Middle Ages and again in its heydey in the late seventeenth century. Meanwhile in the sixteenth century, adiaphora had become controversial. These were matters of Christian belief and practice about which Christian opinion could legitimately vary and which were therefore "indifferent." This paper explores the ways in which both these controversies rose from the same underground stream of medieval dissidence, discussing the contributions of the leading characters in the story and seeking to describe the common ground of idea and ideology which unites the history and which suggests that Quietism represents an archetype among the great "positions" of Christendom.

"NOT LIKE ANY FORM OF ACTIVITY": Waiting in Emerson, Melville, and Weil

Davis, C. — 2008-12-29

In his meditation on Emerson's self-reliance, George Kateb argues that Emerson's entrance into antislavery politics, particularly his calls for collective mobilization, constitutes a "deviation from his theory of self-reliance, not its transformation." Though Emerson often imagines a self-reliance that can lead to action, his descriptions of the fundamental attitude of the self towards the world suggest passivity, attention, and waiting. Because he rules out logical or teleological sources for inspiration, his conception of self-reliance is fundamentally at odds with progressivist narratives of history. His sense of "entranced waiting" flirts with an anarchic potentiality that he must reject in order to call for social solidarity and progressive action against slavery.

In "Bartleby, the Scrivener," Melville takes the radical outsidedness of self-reliance to its conclusion, transforming Emersonian waiting into Bartleby's catatonic stillness. Emerson's waiting for inspiration becomes the copyist's quiet demand that his employer wait with him rather than use charitable actions to free himself from the burden Bartleby imposes. Bartleby obstructs the lawyer's ideas of improvement as well as his conception of himself as a moral agent in a world of moral possibility.

Simone Weil provides a similar version of a quietist waiting with. To an ungenerous "active searching" she opposes a fundamental generosity, a "waiting or attentive and faithful immobility" through which one is able to recognize "that the sufferer exists." For Weil, as for Melville, there is no passage from such a recognition to a conception of history as progress. The sufferer is not a problem to be solved within a narrative of social improvement but the source of an unlimited and impossible obligation.

THE RED COUNTESS: Four Stories

Muhlen, H. Z. — 2008-12-29

An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions

Coetzee, J. M. — 2008-12-29

Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice

Perloff, M. — 2008-12-29

Forgiveness: A Philosophical Explanation

Bok, S. — 2008-12-29

The Politics of the Veil

Davis, N. Z. — 2008-12-29

LEBANON II

Isaacs, A. — 2008-12-29

This memoir is a detailed and reflective (though highly subjective) account of the author's experiences in the summer of 2006. Starting with the outbreak of the Second Lebanese War, it moves on to describe his call-up and conscription, border service at the IDF outpost in Metulla and participation in the combat inside southern Lebanon. The narrative follows the progress of an infantry unit from its point of entry on the Israel-Lebanese border, through the villages of Raj-A-Min, Sham'a and on to the coastal position it held until the end of the war at Ras-Bayada. The memoir draws particular attention to the paradoxes and ironies of the war from the point of view of a civilian reserve foot soldier and father of five serving in a frontline infantry unit. Significant sections of this narrative are dedicated to the moral, ethical, and religious questions that he grappled with during the war and to the intuitive political and religious conclusions that he reached. It is these intuitions that he refers to at the end "as the rethinking of his religion" that ultimately develops into the suggestion that a softer and more peaceful notion of theology is essential to the acquisition of peace.

Notes on Contributors

2008-12-29

REFOUNDATION AS SURVIVAL: An Interrogation of Hannah Arendt

Kristeva, J. — 2008-09-24

This guest column suggests that we should follow Hannah Arendt in resisting the urge to expound doctrines or systems and, instead, should disclose the processes of our thought as they are "in motion." While we should not hesitate to express judgments, our aim in intellectual work should be to occasion (and experience) surprise. Like Arendt, we should candidly express "the bliss of thought" as we think and write. On this basis, the political arena can become "a space for self-analysis and (by analogy with psychoanalysis) continuous rebirth." And it is only on this basis, Kristeva argues, that reconstruction, after a century of unprecedented destruction, be accomplished without our succumbing to nostalgia. Efforts at reconstruction must be undertaken, as Arendt undertook them, "in light of the history of nihilism" and "in the name of sheer survival." Kristeva joins Arendt in advising against a return to foundationalism while at the same time urging the development of a kind of "re-foundationalism." Kristeva concludes by showing how, in these attitudes, Arendt's thinking was—despite her notorious dismissal of psychoanalysis—in tune with those of Freud.

THE TROUBLE WITH CEPHALOPODA

Bencivenga, E. — 2008-09-24

No other natural kind receives as much abuse in the Aristotelian corpus as the octopus, and an instructive itinerary through that corpus can be constructed by following the manifestations of such abuse. Specifically, the octopus is judged "stupid" and endowed with poor, rudimentary structure; together with fellow cephalopoda and mollusks, it is even regarded as behaving "contrary to nature." The moral that emerges from following this path is that Aristotle may be expressing here a deep conflict between two different models equally present in his work, though they are assigned very different emphasis. Also, importantly, mollusks are said to be "mutilated," which aligns the treatment they receive with the one Aristotle famously reserves for women.

THE CASE OF "THE YELLOW NOTEBOOK": Wittgenstein in Leningrad

Ostashevsky, E. — 2008-09-24

"The Case of `The Yellow Notebook'" contains reminiscences of Wittgenstein's conversations with the philosopher Tatiana Gornshteyn (1904-80) on his visit to Leningrad in 1935. The reminiscences are contained in a document written by her daughter Ludmila. It records a story about a "Yellow Notebook" of his work (in the genre of his so-called Blue and Brown Books)—a notebook that, it is claimed, Wittgenstein gave to Tatiana and was subsequently lost. Attempts have been made to find it in Russia and all have failed. Biographical and historical context is provided in an introductory essay by the translator.

INTRODUCTION: FROM SCRATCH

2008-09-24

The essay discusses the presumption of one's singularity, the uniqueness of one's time, the picturesqueness of one actions, and the capacity of human beings, whether corporately or individually, to begin everything or indeed anything again from scratch. Such presumptions are indeed present in some varieties of contemporary fanaticism, but, more to the point, it is suggested that the feeling of doing something for the first time is the oldest feeling in the world.

MOVING CONSTANTS--IN THE WEST: A Response to "Change at Ise Jingu"

Andersen, W. — 2008-09-24

This essay forms part of an "elegiac symposium" on "what gets lost during paradigm shifts," and it replies to an earlier contribution to that symposium, "Regarding Change at Ise-Jingu" by Jeffrey M. Perl (14, no. 2 [2008]: 208-20; DOI 10.1215/0961754X-2007-069]) . Andersen argues against or supplements Perl's contention that Japanese attitudes toward change differ radically from those that are standard in the West. Andersen expands on arguments made by Roland Barthes—an explicator and partisan of Japanese thought—to show that at least one Greek myth (that of the unchanging ship Argo) deals with change, originality, updating, fakes, and replication in a way similar to those standard in Japanese culture. Andersen then pursues his argument, as well, with respect to works by Rodin, Sade, and Leonardo da Vinci.

AN ELEGY FOR NITI: Politics as a Secular Discursive Field in the Indian Old Regime

Rao, V. N., Subrahmanyam, S. — 2008-09-24

The essay reflects in an elegiac mode on a now largely forgotten (or effaced) body of literature from precolonial India regarding the art and business of politics. This body, known as niti, has classical roots in Sanskrit but came in particular to be popular in peninsular India between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries in vernacular languages such as Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi. Secular and this-worldly in orientation, it can be broadly contrasted to the far better known body of texts on dharma, which are concerned to preserve a normative, ritually and religiously sanctioned, order based on strict adherence to caste and gender roles. We first trace the classical roots of the tension between dharma and niti and then set out how these two bodies of texts came to play distinct and evolving roles in medieval and early modern south India. We argue further that under the early phase of colonial rule, East India Company officials misunderstood the nature of niti texts and that this has led to a persistently erroneous view of their role and content. We conclude by noting, however, that some astute modern observers of and participants in Indian politics, such as B. R. Ambedkar, have understood the part that niti might play for the development of a secular language of politics in modern India.

What Giordano Bruno Left Behind: Rome, 1600

Rowland, I. D. — 2008-09-24

Burned at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600, the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was the first modern thinker to propose that the universe contained an infinite number of planetary systems revolving around individual stars. He announced his startling propositions at the moment when European explorers were beginning to reveal the real size and complexity of earth itself (indeed, Bruno also spoke forcefully against the violence and profiteering of Spanish colonial efforts) and when natural philosophers had begun to dispute about the very structure of the universe. It may not be a coincidence that the religious troubles of sixteenth-century Europe arose at a time when humanity's very place in the world and the cosmos no longer seemed certain. In Bruno's case, pursuit of his ideas compelled him to leave behind not only the security of his Dominican convent in Naples, but also, and more radically, the security of a traditional sense of who and where he was. His infinite universe terrified a thinker as unconventional as Johannes Kepler, and still more it terrified the Inquisition. For Bruno himself, the excitement of this infinitely expanded vision of the cosmos was usually enough to overrule any doubt, but when Kepler compared living in Bruno's universe to permanent exile, he captured an essential quality of the Italian philosopher: an intense solitude, a solitude for which his philosophy was only ever a partial cure.

MISSING YEARS: On Casualties in English Literary History, Prior to Pope

Hunter, J. P. — 2008-09-24

The third of a century between the late 1680s and the early 1720s—a time when a vast number of prolific poets flourished—is almost completely overlooked in literary history, perhaps because there was no single poetic leader and no dominant direction in the poetry. But it was a very fertile period in poetry, with many talented poets and many potential directions that did not develop into dominant trends. Because literary history almost inevitably looks at dominant directions, it tends to pass over not only individual poets who don't quite fit, but also poetic kinds and directions that don't turn out to be the winning ones. One valuable poetic mode in this period is what we might call the fallen, or disappointed, or misdirected lyric—exemplified most notably by Matthew Prior but also created by a host of other poets (Egerton, Chudleigh, Dixon, Hill, and Swift, for example). "Lost" years between distinct eras or directions also raise larger questions about the premises and practices of literary history itself.

MODERNISM'S LOVE CHILD: The Story of Happy Architectures

Wong, Y.-S. — 2008-09-24

According to Thomas Kuhn, the entrenchment of a paradigm, especially in the critical stages when facing anomalies, requires the further suppression of competing ideas. This essay addresses the unconscious entrenchment of European modernist aesthetics in the everyday, especially in the American suburbs of the 1950s, and its popular and cultural manifestations. Taking Levittown as a starting point, modernist architectural principles have since its construction radiated into the mass-housing market and materialized in housing development projects that have led to the rise of suburbia and, more recently, the New Urbanism. Despite the conventional separations of modernism from the more criticized mass-housing development, the same principles of security, shelter, community, and utopia are present in each. Presented by some architects as a postmodernist aesthetic, the central tenets of modernism are still pursued and reimagined as timeless principles in the building of new housing communities, recycled and reconstituted to meet the dreams and desires of the public—a utopia that is both avant-garde and kitsch.

MORE NOUVELLES

Feneon, F. — 2008-09-24

FIVE POEMS

McHenry, E. — 2008-09-24

The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama

Isaacs, A. — 2008-09-24

What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe

Pocock, J. G. A. — 2008-09-24

The Political Imagination in History: Essays concerning J. G. A. Pocock

Burke, P. — 2008-09-24

Editing Early Modern Texts: An Introduction to Principles and Practice

Tanselle, G. T. — 2008-09-24

Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky

Gossett, P. — 2008-09-24

Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror

Hamburger, J. F. — 2008-09-24

The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West

Constable, G. — 2008-09-24

William James in the Maelstrom of American Modernism

Hollinger, D. A. — 2008-09-24

My Unwritten Books

Perl, J. M. — 2008-09-24

Science without Laws: Model Systems, Cases, Exemplary Narratives

Daston, L. — 2008-09-24

Vital Nourishment: Departing from Happiness

Plaks, A. — 2008-09-24

Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution

Malamud, R. — 2008-09-24

Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine

Bar-On, M. — 2008-09-24

Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence

Lerner, R. E. — 2008-09-24

War in Human Civilization

Konstan, D. — 2008-09-24

Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909-1939

Chace, W. M. — 2008-09-24

The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution

Sullivan, C. R. — 2008-09-24

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow

Weber, W. — 2008-09-24

James "Athenian" Stuart: The Rediscovery of Antiquity

Jenkyns, R. — 2008-09-24

Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow

Allen, B. — 2008-09-24

On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word

Mao, D. — 2008-09-24

Pots and Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-painting of the Fourth Century B.C.

Boardman, J. — 2008-09-24

Hellenistic Egypt: Monarchy, Society, Economy, Culture

Stephens, S. — 2008-09-24

Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations

Shweder, R. A. — 2008-09-24

The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals

Allen, B. — 2008-09-24

Planet of Slums

Offer, A. — 2008-09-24

Notes on Contributors

2008-09-24