Author: Ariel

Review of "Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ"

In trying to come up with a reading list for a Nietzsche seminar that I imagine teaching at some point in the future I read Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. An astute thinker need not be aware of Nietzsche’s compelling style to to ask why read secondary literature when his own work is available. Answering such a question bespeaks one of the general problematics of Nietzsche scholarship and presents an excellent manner of opening to Kauffman’s account of Nietzsche.

In contradistinction to the manner in which Nietzsche desired to be read, Kaufmann presents a systematic approach of his work. Nietzsche himself did not write this way, instead he adapted his earlier thoughts to new considerations rather than simply refuting old ones, he posed what he saw were the most important questions and sometimes was only able to come up with partial answers, he wrote beautiful aphorisms using rich symbolic language which was to be appreciated and considered for it’s pith, beauty and the readers resonance with it rather than constructing logical edifices. This is not said to give traction to the claims of some readers of Nietzsche that categorize him as an irrationalist – but to show that the project of coming to grips with his thought requires a similar amount of patience and dedication that one would give to a sage. He wants you to read his entire work, slowly, and then start to respond to him. This is just one of several aspects which make Nietzsche difficult to approach in a classroom setting unless one is to read all or a majority of the Nietzsche books and essays. To give a real-world example of such difficultly in teaching Nietzsche, it’s worth mentioning here is that while taking a course on Nietzsche at NYU with Dr. Friedrich Ulfers our assigned reading consisted primarily of sections from The Will to Power as well as a number of essays written by the professor. Having read most of Nietzsche’s work on my own prior to this I found the course reading list appropriate, though it was clear from the questions asked by participants that reading selections and The Will to Power left them with gaps of understanding.

One of the admirable traits of Kaufmann’s work in this book is his scholarship. There are never claims that aren’t densely contextualized, different positions than Kaufmann’s own are explained and then shown to be risible concepts that are only the other author’s attempt to co-opt. Nietzsche That said, in many an academic circle Kaufmann is seen as a tamer of Nietzsche. I think this is a fair assessment, though I don’t think that this devalues his points of exegesis. In this book specifically he is interested in dealing with three major themes of Nietzsche’s work – his particular contribution to philosophy, his depth analysis of the human spirit and what it means to Nietzsche to be an “Anti-Christ”. Put more simply, the books is concerned priorly with Nietzsche’s thought as it relates to Psychology, Philosophy and Christianity.

As it relates to psychology, Nietzsche is widely recognized as the first depth psychologist. His character studies and examinations of history led him to understand the individual as being motivated not only by the desire for peace or pleasure but also power. Power as a motivating force may not be the one that leads the individual into a quiet life but this, Nietzsche states, is not always desirable or laudable. Kauffman shows how it is that Nietzsche holds the difference between great men and men to be of a greater degree of difference that that between an average man and an animal. The reason for this is that those that are merely acted upon and are unable to make themselves are just like the animals while those that are able to manage their passions and organize them in an artful way are the true inheritors of the divine potential within all. The ascetic/philosopher, artist and politician are the primary persons able to actualize this and they do so via “… the sublimation of their impulses, in the organization of the chaos of their passions, an in man’s giving “style” to his own character.” (252). Accomplishing this includes ridding oneself of erroneous thought as well as drastically limiting oneself by uniting the spirit and letting go of debilitating beliefs. While his deference to Aristotelan notions of habit and being prevent him from becoming a total vitalist, it is clear that his understanding of the potentials of humans is great should they truly make the decision to be so.

One of the things that I particularly like of Nietzche’s thought, upon which Kauffman makes a point of in the section on Sublimation, Geist, and Eros is the ridicule of the “pure spirit” that is supposed to exist after the body has died. He ties this connection of the pure spirit to a distrust or denigration of the human body and the willingness to subsume rationality, to castrate the mind in favor of an dangerous idealism. This is important as is bespeaks his deep concern with human self-realization and is connected to his notion of Amor Fati. Amor Fati, or love of one’s fate, is a formula which, paraphrasing Ecce Homo, holds that nothing that is may be subtracted from one’s self and that nothing is dispensable. Including every element in the material past which lead to the construction of the self up until the present one is better able to intellectually and totally sublimate oneself. Using faulty steps leads to a poorly integrated personality. The Overman does not hold mystical notions as he is content with the facts, as sublime or horrendous as they may be, as the manner in which he will actualize himself.

While Nietzsche is oft-quoted, mistakingly, as originating the quote “God is Dead”, his actual relationship to Christianity is much more complex than a simple repudiation of it as a mythical system created by a once nomadic tribe of people occupied by an imperial power.Towards the end of his life he signed his letters “the crucified one” and his contention with Christianity has more to do with the hypocrisies of the adherents rather than the distaste for the man. Christianity ethics as such he holds as being resentful, but he sees greatness in Christ who is in many ways similar to the other spiritual ideal which he respects, Socrates. Both were combatants against the prevailing statist logic that degraded the human spirit, a tradition which Nietzsche places himself in.

As a philosopher Nietzsche styled himself in opposition to another German philosophical giant, Hegel. Kauffman in this and his work on Hegel, however, points out that the two were often in agreement on many things despite purported fundamental differences. The holist-perspectivistic duality is something that, at least accord to Nietzsche, cannot be crossed however Hegel’s recognition of it is important to qualifying some of Nietzsche’s more bombastic claims. Also worth mentioning, thought not addressed in the book, is Nietzsche’s lauding by left and right political philosophers. The American anarchist Emma Goldman lectured extensively on him and as Corey Robin’srecent article illustrates, his writing also had a profound influence on the Austrian Right.

Review of "The Best Transportation System in the World"

Mark Rose, Bruce Seely and Paul Barret’s book The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines & American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century limns the development of these three modes of transportation in America, and to a lesser extent waterways, to illustrate the federal government’s role in the formation, regulation, maintenance and segregation of these industries.

As transportation of goods for trade is one of primary importance for capitalist development, these four industries were of highlighted as of particular concern to American politicians seeking to increase the country’s wealth. Stoppages or bankruptcy would lead to negative effects rippling throughout the economy, as primary and manufactured goods would cease to circulate and capital would stop flowing. To prevent such economic vicissitudes from occurring, railroads increasingly had their capacity for free action limited by government. Committees such as the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Department of Transportation were formed to contend with these market forces and encourage the development of the nation’s industry through capital outlays, loan co-signing and regulatory oversight. These oversight and advisory boards, however, had limited capacity to influence business or enforce the policies stemming from their research.

One such example of this that I found particularly interesting was the manner in which national or regional planning was a solution continuously developed and promoted by every single professional studying the situation in an advisory capacity. Railroad consolidation was first promoted by transportation economists such as William Z. Ripley as a panacea to railroads competitive waste and fluctuations. Though it was not until the 1970s that this was able to gain political traction, and even then not in the manner envisioned by these professionals the authors make it clear why this is so: the various transport regimes desired to limit competition to increase profits and provide a modicum of stability in fluctuating, artificially isolated markets.

When one additionally factors in the high entry costs of these industries and the pressures to upgrade machinery following post-war technological developments, it becomes more understandable why the government would wish to partially subsidize them. One of the best examples the authors give to illustrate the governments overarching concern with stability and the manner in which government subsidized transport regime is in the airline industry and the variations they tried to create a efficient system. In this industry, the authors are concerned with illustrating that in the decision making process that to lead specific public policies political considerations was the driving force and not the promotion of capitalist rights. Regions with small populations that might not be profitable for companies could not be abandoned according to the regulatory regime but instead had to be included and the costs deferred amongst passengers taking other routes. This of course had pricing effects which the authors illustrate via reference to promotional, student and business fares.

With its tight focus on business history, public policies and the development of the “presidential state” to regulate and later deregulate these industries for increased capital efficiency through a vast number of primary sources, there are few things with which one can find fault. The only thing I believe could strengthen it the book, recognizing my own biases behind such a statement, would be a short narrative of the railroad conditions prior to the 1920s as the political actors from that time to the 1980s repeatedly use that epoch as a rhetorical device, much like the phrase, “the best transportation system in the world,” to mobilize political actors. Doing so would provide greater clarity as to why it was that such restrictive and at times seemingly counter-intuitive policies were implemented.

Review of "The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times"

The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times by Orne Westad takes together a dauntingly large number of documents released or unclassified by governments to provide a narrative of what happened when the post World War II global powers, the USSR and USA, intervened in the third world, “the former colonial or semi-colonial countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that were subject to European… economic or political domination” (3).

Westad opens by contextualizing Soviet Socialism and American Capitalism as ideological conceptions of socio-economic relations that represent different variations of modernism. Both powers saw themselves as embodying the natural trends of development and subsequently sought to obtain security from the other via weapons development and alliances. Additionally, he is keen to point out how in this post-colonial period: “Moscow’s and Washington’s objective were not exploitation or subjectification, but control and improvement. While this distinction may be rather ethereal seen from the receiving end, it is crucial for understanding the Cold War discourse itself: while imperialism got its social consciousness almost as an afterthought, in the Cold War it was inherent from the very beginning” (5). In this regard Westad writes to correct post-Soviet collapse revisionists who see the struggle between the two as emanating primarily from the machinations of the Evil Empire. Quite often, Soviet influence sought to counterbalance the relationship of “guide” and “ward” that the U.S. had imposed. Towards this end he provides a short but compelling account of American’s continuous aggression towards collectivists domestically and international and points to it’s intervention immediately following the Russian revolution in October as a sticking point for the newly self-proclaimed Socialist government.

The first chapters the book limns this account in detail while the second delves into the evolution of a United States ideology that increasingly viewed itself in a paternalistic mold. The Native American, Philippines, Mexico and many other countries felt the hard hand of America as they attempted to express faith in something other than market rationality. This form of emancipation at gun barrel point lead to agendas of “nation building” and “development” that would later be seen if not the models that at least the precedents for subsequent third-world intervention. Following this outline of American ideology and how it played out the third chapter begins by providing an account of the Soviet model for development and intervention.

Westad outlines the variations found in Marxism’s relation to anti-colonial practices within the third world. Significant factors, such as level of economic and bureaucratic development are analyzed and how it was that the United States sought to develop it’s own form of scientific modernization theory in an effort to combat the Marxian model gaining traction in these countries eager for development but seeking to avoid the pitfalls of exploitation by their newly empowered countrymen. Insistent on the post-Enlightenment connections of these two forms of historical experience that laud science, education and technological development and seek to shape the world in it’s own image, Westad presents them in an almost evangelical sense.

From here the last two hundred and fifty pages give account of the many “hot” conflicts in the Cold War. Westad gives background on the major players within the conflict and details the fighting and diplomacy involved in the struggles in Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and the Horn, Southern Africa. There are of course monographs on each of these conflicts however, to my knowledge, they do not limn the links between all of them in the manner in which both governments did.

The Soviets vacillating enthusiasm for their intentional projects at the cost of domestic growth is a recurring theme, as it the inability for the United States diplomatic core and intelligence services to provide an accurate telling of events to the policy makers. This latter point also obscured the manner in which the U.S. helped create the situation that would later be classified as under-development in world-systems theory. While this might be construed as a particularly academic concern, when considering that such theory influenced the U.S. decision to mobilize against democratic movements in Latin America it’s significance shines through. Also worth mentioning is that this should not be seen as a specifically American flaw, as similar modes of wishful thinking was occurring on the Soviet side as well. Westad develops this particular theme most forcefully in the various responses to the Afghan revolution and their calls for assistance. In the tension between these two super-powers Westad is also keep to illustrate how their policies helped facilitate the growth of radical Islam as a counter-balance to their attempts at extending into the Muslim world. Westad ends with a general call to non-violence in the political process in the understanding that as long as capitalism continues to cause the crises that lead to calls for revolution, Marxism will be a viable option for the dispossessed. The wars that he just described will continue, but need not.

Let's Talk About SACS, Baby!

Since returning to South Florida one of the inevitable questions I’ve been asked by friends and family is “Where are you working?” and my response has been “Right now, I’m not because I can’t. I re-enrolled in graduate school so I can.” While I’ll not go into the reasons why I’m not pursuing non-academic career options right now, suffice it to say people are confused by this response as I’d received a Masters degree from N.Y.U. What I want to accomplish with this article is explain to in some detail why this is so and to mention an objection to the new regulatory framework outlined by the Department of Education (D.O.E.) as manifested in the form the Southern Assocation of Colleges and Schools (SACS) that has resulted in my inability to obtain a position in Florida.

At the beginning of my second year at NYU, in 2010, the hiring guidelines for university professors that had held across America for more than seventy years was changed. As I was focusing on my graduate studies, I was unaware of its adoption. In a largely unreported policy shift, colleges across the country were given two years to align themselves with the new guidelines and those that failed to comply to them would result in punishment appropriate to the severity of the infraction. A warning could be given for something small or DOE accreditation could be revoked for something large. Schools not yet accredited via DOE affiliated institutions or who have had their licensure revoked, it should be noted, are ineligible for government funding. Ostensibly, lacking the ability to directly impose it’s will upon state and local educational institutions, the federal government threatened to starve those that did not comply. The new regulatory framework was not overly drastic nor contemptible, but this does not mean that they are insignificant either. In fact for students, professors and administrators there’s a whole lot that has changed.

For one, the passing of the reforms backed by the Obama administration resulted in the consolidation of various collegiate accreditation agencies by stating that only a few of them would be eligible for federal funding. The quasi-governmental bodies which report to the Department of Education were reduced in number to regional bodies, which would now be in charge of all the schools and universities in their district. There are several reasons for doing this, the most obvious being a reduction of redundancy as there are a large number of institutions that deem themselves licensing agencies for colleges and universities. Examples of these could include the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the Commission on Collegiate Nursing (ABN), the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE), the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM). While previously each of these would have been involved in the accreditation of a college or university’s Nursing School or Business School – their pre-existing requirements are now subsumed under the policy guidelines of the regional commissions on colleges. Those schools must follow these guidelines as well as those of the regional Commission on Colleges.

Creating a set of guidelines which applies to these various enterprises doesn’t mean they have been divested of crediting power, but simply increases standardization of grading for schools across various regions. This policy thankfully provides increased ease for students wishing to transfer credits to other universities. With curriculum and standards at one university basically aligned with others there is less likelihood that transfer credits would be denied, thus making credits received at a community or state college valid at another should a student decide to transfer to a state or private university.

While I’ve had no personal experience with this, my wife’s dual-enrollment experience is illustrative of the problem some students have faced. While in high school, prior to the adoption of the new SACS standards in 2010, Josselyn entered a dual-enrollment program at Broward College. She received twenty-four university credits while enrolled, but was unable to use only nine of these credits when she transferred to Nova Southeastern University. The time that she had spent in attending and studying for the classes and the money spent by the state for her education were, in essence, wasted as she was forced to retake those classes which she had already passed.

Today, this would not happen due to this form of stronger consumer protections. Also worth mentioning in passing is the additional function the new regulatory regime has is: giving it the power to prevent schools not authorized by the DOE from advertising that they are an “accredited school”. This is in large part a response to the proliferation of online diploma mills that have hoodwinked those that paid for courses and received degrees which other, more reputable and established accrediting agencies don’t view as valid. To accomplish this type of academic credit compatibility amongst the universities requires a degree of standardized hiring practices and movement towards a uniform curriculum. If this process sounds familiar, it should. The consolidation of regional values and goals into a singular, national pattern is based on the federal government’s initiation of K-12 school curriculum standards and learning goals.

In my discussions with university representatives on Broward College, Palm Beach State College and FAU, I’ve learned that many of the professors in the humanities were dismissed prior to the start of this academic year because their academic record was not on par with the newly adopted SACS rubric. Professors that had been hired to teach American political science on the due to their having graduated law school rather than an M.A. or Ph.D. in that field have been let go. History professors who were teaching introductory level political science classes without 18 graduate credits in that field were cut – even if they’d taught the class any number of times before. Speaking with professors, those that have degrees specialized in a certain area are no longer allowed to teach classes on something else.

This means that someone like me, who focused their graduate studies on political science and history (24 of 32 total graduate credits plus my masters thesis) but did not have 18 credits solely in either are not eligible to teach either. While I do find the situation I’m in loathsome, I am generally in favor for such a model of credentialing as subject area expertise emerges from a significant amount of field research and those that are only partially familiar with a subject should not be passed off as someone that has mastered the material and is thus able to teach it. What I do take issue with these standards for accreditation are the certain ambiguities of assessment not addressed by SACS or the COC. Simply put, people who actively pursue academic careers do not just read field literature for credit but as part of an ongoing enrichment process and the current model doesn’t account for this.

On average, I read from three to seven books a month and according to these new standards, my “personal research” isn’t within the framework of SACS credentialing and are thus are not “credited” to me. It is this situation that has caused me to start writing responses to most of the books that I’ve been reading in the past several months.

With this in mind I feel that there needs to be other options for university professors to develop their professional standing without being forced to pay for courses in or out of their field – especially at a time when the humanities are under attack and thus the options available for “crediting” via free tuition benefits are reduced. If this seems somewhat abstract, let me give you an example.

Because of their historical and political relevance to my own field of expertise, I’ve read quite a large number of utopian and dystopian novels as well as the historical context of their emergence and comparative literature responses to them. While I wouldn’t qualify myself as “comparative literature” professor per se, I would not only feel comfortable leading a undergraduate level class on this topic but would do so without any sense that I was providing them a sub-par education. A similar standard holds true to Nietzsche’s philosophy, Marxian interpretations of society, etc. and especially in the situation I find myself in now where I have to take more credits to become a SACS credentialed history and political science professor.

Now I don’t know whether or not SACS will make room for this in the future, but I would imagine that as they are still coping with the transitions of the new regulatory frameworks I don’t think it will do so soon. However I do think this is something to be considered seriously now rather than seventy years down the road.

Review of "A New Earth"

There are few books with which I have had more difficulty in getting through than A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. It was not the density of his prose, my inability to grasp what was being written but that I was constantly writing critical comments in the margins next to absurd propositions conceived of as esoteric nuggets of wisdom and my constant state of surprise at the logical leaps that he made, not to mention it’s lack of academic rigor. While adherence to generally standardized regulations for intellectual compositions aren’t something most people use when making value judgements about what they are reading, especially in the realm of popular literature, caring more for the “feelings” it gives them instead, it is worth noting those objections in order to better ascertain the validity of Tolle’s position.

There are a total of thirty citations found in the Notes section of A New Earth and of these there are a total of twelve different texts. 19 of them are from the New Testament, two are from Shakespeare, and there is one each from works by Hafiz, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Lao Tzu, one of the Upanishads, A Course In Miracles, a New York Times article and a statistic for the U.S. Department of Justice. While it is common to relate one’s own positions to the literature which came before it in order to show knowledge and mastery of material – we see here that Tolle doesn’t do this and that one of the intellectually troubling aspects of the book is in its use of other people’s perspectives to justify his own position when they fundamentally disagree with him.

One such example of this occurs on page 235, where Tolle quotes Nietzsche’s book Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “For happiness, how little suffices for happiness! … the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye glance – little maketh up the best happiness. Be still.” Just as there are lies, dirty lies and statistics – any person who has been trained with high standards of academic discipline will tell you that it is quite easy to misrepresent someone by decontextualizing a quote. This Tolle does by saying that this is evidence that Nietzsche, a seminal authority on human thought as the forefather of depth psychology, justifies his position that it is the simplest things in life, like nature, which lead to the greatest happiness.

For one, there is the explicit claim that a character through which Nietzsche used to clarify some of his own positions, Zarathustra, is in fact Nietzsche himself. As a variation of the bildungsroman and as other scholars working of Nietzsche’s oeuvre have noted, it is clear that all that Zarathustra says is in fact not meant to indicate Nietzsche’s final position as it evolves over the course of his life any more than we are to take Werther to be Goethe, or Kierkegaard to be any of his many pen names. This is not to say that Nietzsche did not use Zarathustra as a mouthpiece for some of his ideas, but Nietzsche’s use of irony and writing style defies any such cut and paste hermeneutics. We able to discern this not just through Tolle’s misattribution of who spoke the text but by looking further in his work to see if the two actually share the same notion of happiness.

It is widely noted by Nietzsche scholars that as a result of his philosophical and psychological investigations he did not propound that the type of “happiness” which Tolle describes (and ascribes to Nietzsche) was the ideal to which human being do or ought to aspire. As noted Nietzsche scholar and translator Walter Kauffman puts it in Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, in a statement that seems almost to anticipate Tolle’s misreading: “Every pleasurable sensation, however trivial – the smell of a flower or the taste of cold water – is valued for his own sake. The indefinite addition of such pleasures, however, does not make for happiness…” (Kauffman 279). The dissonance between their notions of happiness is not unique and there are many other points of departure.

In addition to this quote used by Tolle, there is other evidence of his misprision of Nietzsche as a supporter of the “inner space” happiness that Tolle claims is a state to which people should aspire. Shortly following this quotation, Tolle writes that people should focus just on the “being conscious” and “add nothing to it” so that all of the physical attributes fall away and you thus connect to the “spacious womb of creation (Tolle 236). While Nietzsche recognized that one could attempt to negate oneself though such a practice, he felt that doing so was not a sign of spiritual strength but of weakness. Tolle wants to negate conflict and drama, whereas Nietzsche sees these as the human, all to human qualities which can lead people to greatness and self-overcoming. The areas of divergence between the two are myriad, yet the reader uninformed of them reads not of it and thus assumes that the two are in agreement on this point. Unfortunately Nietzsche is not alone in receiving this type of aggressive misreading that Tolle imposes on them in order to justify positions that is fundamentally at odds with their own work.

While I’ll not speak on behalf of Tolle’s biblical scholarship, suffice it to say it’s worth noting that Richard Abanes published A New Earth, An Old Deception: Awakening to the Dangers of Eckhart Tolle’s #1 Bestseller in order to delineate Tolle’s perceived misuse of the Bible. While I’m not qualified to comment on it as Biblical exegesis is not my specialty nor have I read Abanes’ criticism, something that does strike me is his use of Jean Paul-Sartre. Before I speak on this, however, I must contextualize A New Earth so that I don’t give Tolle the same foul treatment that he gives others.

If one looks to find examples of human history on earth in A New Earth, one will find a dearth of them. Discussions on history and social policy are almost staggeringly absent. Tolle claims that because the Now doesn’t have any history it’s not necessary. I would provide the counter-interpretation that as Tolle simply doesn’t know much history, he de-emphasizes it to the point of insignificance. What replaces the struggles for social, racial, ethnic and economic justice are instead comments stating that once enough people get in touch with their inner space and find purpose everything just “gets better”. Be Scotfield’s article Why Eckhart Tolle’s Evolutionary Activism Won’t Save Us at Tikkun presents a number of insightful criticisms on Tolle’s model of social and political change that are worth reading. While Scotfield’s incisive comments focus on a small number of the many errors he makes, he is quiet on the points where Tolle addresses what he cites as an alternative to his own conception of how to bring about a better world: socialist politics.

In the few historical descriptions Tolle writes in a New Earth, no other class of people receive the same sort of haughty disdain as Socialists and Communists. On page thirteen Tolle writes: “The history of Communism, originally inspired by noble ideas, clearly illustrates what happens when people attempt to change external reality – create a new earth – without any of the prior change in their inner reality, their state of consciousness. They make plans without taking into account the blueprint for dysfunction that every human being carries within: the ego.” Tolle later goes on to cite Pol Pot and Stalin, two figures renowned for the blood they’ve shed, as examples of applied Marxism and thus evidence of it’s ideological paucity. While no apologist for either of these figures, no historian who has been presented with the evidence would claim that their actions was simply a result of ideas in their head. As it unfolds, for Tolle, Marxism, socialism, communism is just a “materialist” straw man with which to counterpose his amorphous, “spiritualist” enterprise.

Now how does all of this relate to Jean Paul-Sartre? Quite simply, he was an anti-imperialist, reconstructed Marxist. Sartre wrote extensively on how his entire existentialist project was but an offshoot of Marxist models of historical materialism and stood in opposition to the violent excesses of Stalin. Tolle uses another decontextualized and unattributed quote by Sartre to deconstruct Cartesian dualism. However after doing so he then does away with “Sartre’s Insight” a few lines later by claiming that Sartre was unable to perceive the awareness of awareness. He does this to buttress aspects of his intellectual edifice, if one could even look beyond it’s shoddiness and call it that, by saying that following this there is a “new dimension of consciousness which is “awareness of that awareness”, the “egoic mind” defined as it is by a “pain-body”.

Unfortunately, I do not have all of my personal library with me at the moment to pull quotes from Sartre or about him to prove that such a reading of Sartre is false.
Suffice it to say Sartre’s range of concepts, being in an intellectual tradition which includes Marx and Hegel, certainly includes alienation, perspectivism, individual and social consciousness, resentment, different levels of abstraction, etc. In fact not only did they recognize such aspects of the human condition, but they did so while maintaining a position that was deeply at odds with Tolle, thus disallowing any grace to Tolle for his misrepresentation of Sartre due to their valences being different. Where Tolle reifies space and nothingness as the ideal inner state to direct one’s being as according to him it is the only one that brings peace, the philosophy of historical materialist seeks to instrumentalize individual and collective historical agency to bring conflict to a state of peace.

Tolle says people suffer because their “pain-body” sustains injuries due to it’s identifications with the body or ideas at the level of personal experiences or inherited narratives, whereas materialists say that they sustain injuries due to limited access to affordable health care, genocidal policies to dispossess people of their tribal lands and capitalist social relations, etc. As I said before, Scotfield’s article goes into some criticism of this so I won’t repeat them here.

What I will say is that for the above reasons I believe it’s important for readers of Tolle to be aware of his intellectual heritage. His year of graduate studies at Cambridge University was in Latin American literature and what research I have been able to garnish from online articles his emphasis is on ancient and medieval spiritual leaders and mystics. As is clear from the above quotes that I’ve analyzed, if he is familiar with post-enlightenment philosophies, it is only tangentially so and his understanding of them is not just weak but fundamentally wrong. This of course begs the questions as to why it is he would avoid such people considering the giant leaps in human consciousness and experience that have occurred since then. If forced to make an estimation why this is so, and why it is that so many people have taken to Tolle’s A New Earth is not because they want to better know themselves, but as they want to avoid knowing themselves too well for according to Tolle, peace is preferable to drama.

Review of "A Government Out Of Sight"

Brian Balogh’s A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America illustrates how contrary to popular conception of the first century of American as defined by laissez-faire policies, the Federal government used much of it’s purchasing and administrative power to help build the American market in a manner that was largely kept out of sight. The manner in which this was accomplished was through subsidies, legal rulings, injunctions, contracts for labor and goods, the use of the military to encourage western settlement, import taxes and the use of state and local governments as a mediator of Federal policy.

Balogh frames the evolution of the American government as emerging from ideological debates stemming from the Federalist and anti-Federalist political campaigns. Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams on the national level and many others on the state level attempt to govern using classical, small state Republican ideals. However in a vast expanse of land settled by people with tenuous allegiance to the government the appeals to virtue and affect often fell on deaf ears. As they wrestled with traders and settlers who held no or only a tenuous allegiance to the new general government, these leaders found themselves in situations that forced them to adjust these a priori valuations to the matter at hand.

One such example of this given by Balogh is in the years immediately following the revolution. “Tanners, hatters, glass manufacturers, and manufacturers of cloth all clamored for protection against foreign imports. Ever with such protection, they faced competition from better capitalized British agents” (174). Such a policy in favor of national manufacturing, however, was not desired by the much wealthier, aristocratic mercantile elite. In a period of conflict with Britain these interest groups has their greatest wish granted by Jefferson when he declaimed an embargo, however the mercantile interests all but ignored them. Lacking the popular support, military powers and desire to potentially reignite direct conflict – such a policy was dropped. The lessons learned from such an experience were not missed and led to policies oriented towards personal interest and the growth of military capabilities justified perhaps most pithily in the modern context by Thomas Freidman who said that “McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas”.

It was in this context of competing allegiances, to the Republic and to personal interest, that the judiciary began it’s transmogrification of a set of juridical beliefs premised on the commonwealth notion of governance inherited by the British to one of natural rights based individual personhood. As business and government pushed for development of the interior, the value of the “people” was diminished to make way for an increased conception of rule of law and private property. In this context Balogh insightfully points out that states and local governments often fought and won the right to direct development inside the state. It was in this was that the state were able to replace or reform the designs of northern capitalists that sought to specialize farming or manufacture in areas they deemed most fitting to their needs rather than according to those that lived there. Thus while Balogh describes the effects that the economic power of the railroads, the need for greater capital investment for machinery, farmers transition from partial self-sufficiency via crop variety to monocultural practices totally dependent on the market has, he simultaneously seems to ignore the wider implications of having more people involved in market transactions defined by an international scale.

A recurring theme that Balogh references frequently is that much of the taxation powers of the government weren’t “seen” by the people of the time as it was hidden in the price of the imported goods they were purchasing. While during normal times this wasn’t a contentious issue, during periods of conflict with other nations the federal government suspended this “invisibility” and that this was met with opposition and later, during periods of Federally sponsored development the states would assert their prerogative as those knowledgable of a given area to contract out work.

One point that relates to my historical research is the development of the American identity as opposed to the regionally defined one as well as the ideologies and policies of early American Socialist parties. The Knights of Labor are mentioned in passing during the period of the “amorphous stage of the labor movement” however Balogh gives them and their later off-shoots any mention in depth (317). I do not fault him for this as his concern is primarily with demonstrating the manners in which the Federal or “General Government” has consistently played a role in the development of markets and the regulation of commerce, however as his history is institutional and top-down he overlooks how it was that political actors/workers at the time recognized the role the government was playing and desired to take it over to change the tempo of development. Additionally elided are the private corporate security forces such as the Pinkertons whose policing role was in later taken over by national guardsman.

In his concluding section, Balogh lauds the renaissance of an associative order of para-states as being both more pragmatic and attuned to the historical circumstances of America. He sees the attempt of socialists or liberals ignorant of the historical failures of such a policy whereby government takes a more energetic role bound to failure by citing the “spontaneous” growth of professional institutions as regulating bodies. Presumably, all that is needed to counteract the effects of the carceral state and vast economic disparity are paternalistic organizations (which can appeal for federal aid) that redistribute wealth and attempt to alter legislation rather than a government or political party that takes the general welfare clause to signify that it actually cares about the welfare of all the people rather than putting primary concern on it’s corporate citizens. Considering the account that he just wrote that explicitly shows that such organization flourish only on the largesse of business this seems surprising, but as his concern is primarily with the captains of industry and their political counterparts it is less so.

Review of "El Filibusterismo"

I approached El Filibusterismo knowing that it and Noli Me Tangere’s publication was the legal justification for the judicial execution of the author by the Spanish government. Incidentally the site of the execution was a ten minute walk from my apartment in Barcelona. I’d previously read Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination for my Global Histories course at NYU and was fascinated by the life of the author. After being so close to his execution site and having seen his former student residence while exploring the streets of Madrid, I decided that after I returned to the States I would finally read it. After having read it, all I can say is that it is possible that due to the working up of it in my mind of the novel that it wasn’t able to fulfill the expectations that I had of it. I wouldn’t say that it is bad, but more so that its emphasis of the political level tended to overwhelm the aesthetic dimensions of the novel, which while present aren’t given the same sort of attention. In stating this I know that I am not alone, as surely the Spanish government must have felt this way as well and am aware that this has much to do with Rizal’s changes in the urgency of the need for political change in the Philippines.

El Filibusterismo picks up the general narrative development from where Noli Me Tangere left it 13 years later and in such a way that the one misses little not for having read the first one. All we need know, and this is illustrated in the book, is that the innocent love of Ibarra has turned into a obsessive hatred against the Spanish colonial government. Rather than plan an outright guerilla rebellion himself, he seeks to pit foes against one another, defrauds the colonial powers and later attempts but fails to bomb a number of the government functionaries.

Some of the novel’s greatest prose comes from Ibarra, who in his new guise goes by the name of Simoun, when he describes to Basilo his rationale and plans for attack, and the conversations amongst the priests and students. The attempt by the students to use their own rhetoric of universal human brotherhood and various legal proclamations against the friars is met with the sophism that devolves into naked power games. The numerous Philippine youths that are attempt to play a positive role in the direction of their country are one by one put in a situation that forces them to kill themselves, be killed by the army or self-emasculate themselves to save their lives and futures.

Rizal’s criticisms of the colonial friarocracy are devastating. The educational system is shown to be a not only a farce but a true barrier to the proper education of it’s pupils, native women are sexually preyed upon by the friars – who are constantly trying to increase the extracted amount of forced labor or goods from the population. The image of the populations poverty and impossibility of upward mobility or peace due to these friars is indeed serious and Rizal shows that though there are bureaucrats that are willing to side with justice, with the natives, they are placed in a situation that to do so openly is conceived by the power apparatus as to be a traitor and cause for dismissal and immediate exit from the country. The flip side of this is the constant production of rebels, such as Cabesang Tales and the group of bandits that he soon turns more political, that must be continually fought against. Spanish colonialism is constantly shown to be a cancer on the native people. Despite all of this, Rizal manages to intersperse enough comedic phrases that it is not all moribund and depressing for the reader.

Humorous comments alight on the peculiarities of the Chinese living the Philipines, the intellectualism of the friars that is sizable only in this colonial provinces and shrinks to nothing once moved to the cities of Europe, the near autocratic powers of friars that have in many respects the same sociopathy of children and many more.
One of the jokes that I found particularly amusing occurred when a group of Friars decides to go visit a fair. Amongst the carved goods of people typical to the area is a statue of a one-eyed, disheveled woman holding an iron with puffs of steam coming out of it. What is the carving of this woman supposed to represent? The Philippine press.

As a novel which praises suffering for a righteous cause in the face of a greater force than oneself, in it’s criticisms of Spanish rule, documentation of the immorality of the friars and call for action towards a national renewal that will eventually lead to their expulsion by any means necessary El Filibusterismo makes a political tract into a narrative. While to be sure it has it’s moments of description rather than narration, to use a literary distinction coined by Georg Lukacs, it is as the whole telling the story of the Fillipino, their enemies and hinting towards means to get them out. While Rizal doesn’t present a character in the book that it meant to substitute for his particular beliefs, but having so many characters in there that repent then prevalent political tendencies, ideas and showing their interrelation he is able to present a compelling piece of historical literature.

Review of "Hegel: A Reinterpretation"

Walter Kauffman’s Hegel: A Reinterpretation provides a wonderful assessment and contextualization of the Hegel’s entire work. Unlike The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, which I read for my course on Hegel with Avital Ronell and Slavoj Zizek, the book does not focus on a few keys philosophical concepts but provides an overview of his entire work with critical commentary and contextualization of Hegel’s intellectual and historical milieu. Kauffman’s stated intent in doing this is to act as a corrective to what he calls “lazy scholarship,” a trend which he sees as creating a poorly distorted image of his thought.

Kauffman opens with description of the ambitions, atmosphere and main concerns of German romantic literature. He delves into some of Hegel’s contemporary influences, Goethe, Kant, Schiller and Lessing, in order to show the evolution of their projects as well as the manner in which Hegel formulated his own ideas in response to them. Primarily, these thinkers were looking at the social and individual effects of incipient industrialism and the increase of capitalist work relations and expressing disdain towards it. To them, and Hegel, the increasing commodification of social relations led to a decrease in individual’s autonomy and general social unrest. Their skepticism, however, was not of the prevailing British variety but that found in several of the schools of the ancient Greeks, which was distinct by it being not only destructive of values but also able to construct new ones. The restoration of the values that made the life of the Greeks so appealing to all of these German intellectuals, however, was to be “shipwrecked by the conditions of modern life” leading to the restoration “fleeing into the form of idealism, into the form of philosophy” (83). Hegel’s philosophy, however, was not going to merely cobble together several intellectual pleasing aspects he found but to address the conflicts within these schools as being a part of a cumulative process of continual unfolding of the truth. Thus, even prior the Phenomenology, he was concerned with the sectarian criticisms and contextualizing them in such a manner as to avoid repeating the mistakes.

The extension of this preference for the Greek model of spirituality implied a corresponding degradation of the Christian one. These criticisms, collected in T. N. Knox’s collection of Hegel’s Early Theological Writings, were never published in Hegel’s lifetime. Kauffman differentiates these writing, characterized by their clarity (a quality lacking in his later work), psychological insight and criticism of Christianity to such a degree that he thinks it surpasses Nietzsche’s writing on the same themes in The Anti-Christ. However, for Hegel, this is merely the exposition of viewpoints that were to be refuted and transcended by Hegel. Quoting material from his unpublished notebooks, Kauffman shows how Hegel conceived of these being written so that he could overcome them. While Hegel’s positions of non-separation from God, the desirability of a strong, coherent community of peers, etc. are still seen as praiseworthy, many of these soon become transmogrified into the radical, crypto-Protestant theology that would later be remixed by Marx into socialist ideology. Thus his ethical foundations based upon the possibility of a beautiful, harmonic order remains within the concepts of the Greeks, specifically Aristotle, yet adjusted itself to the conditions of a “modern society”. One such conceptual result of this is the prioritization of the ethical realm, exemplified by art, religion and philosophy, over that of the state. Another important result of taking such a position is the conceptualization of philosophy as therapy – something found in the Stoics and Spinoza.

In the section on the Phenomenology of the Spirit, Kauffman mobilizes a wealth of close reading against those who would call Hegel as an idealist or simply a German Metaphysician by showing how he did not merely consider the content of consciousness in the abstract but was concerned with discerning what type of human spirit would hold such propositions and what were the preconditions of their evolving into something else. As Kauffman words it “Every outlook… is to be studied not merely as academic possibility but as an existential reality” (115). Kauffman shows how the spirits in the Phenomology are in fact a number of people, the text is highly allusive and that there are many insights and that are still quite worthwhile. This is not to say that Kauffman is all praise. For one he does not find Hegel’s developmental process as being necessary, inclusive of all the positions of consciousness that are possible and being extremely difficult to read. Kauffman cites last aspect as something that sharply contrasts with the introduction to the Phenomenology. All of the positive aspects of the Introduction, such as clarity of terminology and rationality of development, Kauffman sees as not being as present in the rest of the text – which as someone who’s read it I would energetically concur.

One of the key terms of the Phenomenology that Kauffman highlights is the “dialectic,” as it is a term that has gained wide currency despite Kauffman’s belief that it lacks definition and major significance in this or any of his works. For Kauffman, while Hegel used the term, there is no “Hegelian dialectics” and Marx’s claim that he was able to turn this method on it’s side in order to arrive at the form of analysis called historical materialism is simply false. He does admit to the primary role of struggle amongst positions and forces passionately propounded by people in Hegel’s writing and says that this is in fact the Hegelian dialectic. The natural course, which Kauffman follows, is an examination of the categories and claims found in Hegel’s logic which on the whole is seen as highly satisfying. In his Logic, Hegel shows the absolute intellectual bankruptcy of positivism and, before this became a trend in universities, illustrates how the segregation of academic fields is a specious process.

One of Hegel: A Reinterpretation‘s strengths, and at times point of excessive flight, is its engagement with Hegel’s lifeworld. Hegel’s personal and professional relationships of course played a large factor in the development of his thought, however at times Kauffman can get sidetracked in explaining minutiae that, while tangentially important to the matter at hand, can take away from the flow of intellectual analysis. One such example is in relation to the long explanation of all the stressors that Hegel was dealing with while writing Phenomenology and thus led to it being a rushed work. Where a list would be sufficient to get the point across, Kauffman takes several pages to do into details related to the development and effects of personal (H’s procrastination in writing, having a child out of wedlock, etc.) and political (Napoleon) upheavals.

Though Kauffman does not shy away from exposing what he sees as Hegel’s weakness, for the most part he views him in a positive light. For one Hegel’s embrace of passion as a motivating factor in human behavior and history is lauded as a welcome inheritance from Goethe. Additionally he states that Hegel’s developmentally oriented metaphysics provides the meaning and content for the best philosophers today and acts as a significant corrective to the positivistic categorizing that goes on in various humanistic discourses. While he only makes passing reference to the fact that it is Hegel’s Logic that laid the foundation of subsequent discourses such as sociology, psychology, and ecology (as evidenced by Engels book Dialectics of Nature) the recognition is present and thankfully I’ll be able to read more about this in the next book in my Hegel studies series Gillian Rose’s Hegel Contra Sociology.

Review of "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life"

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter was the 1964 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction and illuminates American historical responses to issues of intellectualism. Rather than being a sustained examination of a particular period, Hofstadter instead writes on issues that have particular significance in a time after Joseph McCarthy has died but his legacy still had legs.

Intellectualism does not have a specific ideological composition but is determined by specific habits and attitudes, most typically defined as a mindset that takes joy in depth analysis. Genteel, ante-bellum southern intellectuals lamenting an advancing industrialism’s degenerative social effects on a once agrarian economy are thus as much intellectuals as the socialist writers at The Masses in the Lower East Side. Intellectualism (and intellectuals) are defined in contradistinction to intelligence which is viewed as inherited, traditional manners of analysis that only concerns itself with the practical. Hofstadter’s distinctions between those that are in the professional, white-collar classes and intellectuals is also noteworthy. He points out that an advanced education, say leading one to be a member of a legal profession, doesn’t necessarily make one an intellectual as this is just technical training. Intellectuals devote their free time to personal edification and wrestling with problems however they are not, according to Hofstadter, allowed to become devotees to any particular idea. I am somewhat ambivalent about this aspect of intellectualism as it seems to give the credence to the idea that – using Hofstader example – that anyone staking a solid position aren’t intellectuals but fanatics. I think that capriciousness is definitely an aspect of intellectualism, but I think to disregard those that stake out a position (that may be informed by contrasting views!) continues some of the anti-intellectualist McCarthite legacy that he seeks to throw in disrepute.

One of the first and most oft recurring themes Hofstadter identifies in American consideration of intellectualism is this conflict between conservative and religious groups to liberal political philosophy. For the former, intellectualism is dangerous as it’s quest, to paraphrase Marx, for a ruthless criticism of all things existing without fear as to where the conclusion will lead is disruptive to existing social fabrics. Their overriding antagonism stems from what they perceive as a lack of moral foundations in intellectualism. Such a sentiment does not, however, come ex nihilo and Hofstadter shows how this is closely tied to the early settler conditions, low levels of formative education, foreign immigration, revivalist preachers and resistance to foreign religious institutions like the Catholic diocese and Anglican church. One Georgia pastor states that there are only three books that should be read by people, the Bible, the hymn book and an almanac, as anything else will turn people “bad”.

For the politically conservative, intellectuals were weak-willed, effeminate intellectuals. They had book knowledge, but not knowledge of “how people are.” They were good at thinking, but not at doing. They were too quick to experiment with new solutions to social problems and not let the time honored traditional way of dealing with things work. As a force in electoral politics, Hofstadter shows how this first manifested in the Federalist and anti-Federalist debates with Jefferson playing the role of an intellectual devil inspired by too much French philosophy. Connected to the myriad slurs both sides produced about each other are concerns about the increasingly depersonalized nature of government that are still voiced today. The growth of a professional governmental bureaucracy and their role in establishing and perpetuating norms played on the anxieties of a recently “free” people that were afraid of a return to despotism. Most interesting in this period of anti-intellectualism is that as mass consumer culture increased, the native intellectuals – the “gentleman of good breeding” – soon left politics as they were yelled down by a new group who had no qualms about making barker-like appeals to emotions.

The political classes were not alone in their fear of intellectual, the small-holdings farmer often contributed his own perspective to the situation. At a time when America was largely agricultural, the small-farmers resisted the knowledge attempted to be brought to them by the universities. This was both as they resented the expert who had, at least in their mind, not put in the same sort of manual labour dues as to be called a farmer and as the large amount of cheap land made speculation on prices more profitable than working on it. This mistrust of the outside “intellectual” makes it’s way over into the labor unions as well. Samuel Gompers was notorious in his disdain for “idea men” and actively sought to emulate the values of the possessing classes. He actively fought against and decried the large number of socialists, communists and syndicalists which sought to turn the union into a larger instrument of social regeneration and instead propounded the bread and butter policies that would eventually become business unionism.

All of these social pressures could not, however, counter the power given to intellectuals during the period leading up to the New Deal. As the status quo become an untenable one, it had a tremendously revivifying effect for those intellectual specialists previously marginalized into small academic spheres. Now their proclamations were, at least in part, being seriously considering as being “the gospel” of how to proceed. The political and social institutions that were set up according to their outlines was not without nay-sayers, and often times the final result was a shell of the original plan, however once university professors and scientists came to play a role in the hall of power it was impossible to take them back. Hofstadter shows how one of the major driving sources of antagonism stemmed from businessmen combating the intellectualist attempts to insulate people form the vicissitudes of the market economy by supporting workers movements for greater on the job safety and general economic planning.

In the section on schooling, the anti-intellectualist animosity takes on the flavor of “life adjustment.” Here classes on how to master mundane tasks and how to develop one’s emotional intelligence are seen as preferable to classics and modern novels. While there is not the sort of depth into the reforms of Horace Mann and the conditions of teachers as I expect Dana Goldstein will be going into in when her book is published, the brief history of schools at the beginning of the 20th century shows the many deficiencies that would make today’s nay-sayer on the state of public education go into shock. For instance, it was an almost common practice for school masters to be Shang-Hai’d into the position and teachers to frequently leave without warning. This is understandable as their pay was so low and social regard for teachers differed drastically from the traditional Europeans recognition of them as having an important role. One of the aspects that I found to be somewhat surprising was Hofstadder’s silence in regards to the Modern School movement’s origin from libertarian, not liberal, traditions. The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States by Paul Avrich is clear in illustrating how much of the educational concept and theories which later came to form discourses on teacher-child relations and pedagogy in fact originated from Spain. The later philosophical contributions of John Dewey, while politically at odds with the Spanish anarchists, has several significant overlaps including their similar views that schools are society inchoate, that book learning isn’t as valuable as being well-rounded, that a spirit of social service ought to be instilled within the co-operative structure of the classroom. I would attribute these as stemming from Dewey’s debt to Hegel, especially as Hofstadter states that Dewey’s writing is so vague that it caused his supporters to form into different camps based upon their interpretation and that the high level of abstraction which he wrote often made it problematic to turn his pronouncements into policy.

The closing considerations on the then current place of the American intellectual is primarily on the relationship between intellectuals and political power. Using a series of articles published in The Parisian Review as a point from which to discuss the changes in alienation felt by those on the social-democratic left, intellectuals are here shown as splitting between those that are able to accommodate themselves to the needs of power and those that resist it. Hofstadter doesn’t claim that these are the only two roles possible, but sees them as existing on a continuum tending to the extremes. While not tarrying with it here, I think it would have been worthwhile to then analyze the claims of the Left intellectuals more. As a social democrat he seems to be sympathetic to them, and it makes me wonder what he would now think of human terrain teams, but like stakes a positions that is the very self-same definition of intellectualism he gave earlier – ambivalence.

While I don’t think that some of the trends which Hofstadter comments on, such as the business world’s ambivalence to math and science continue per se, it does take on a different form. Rather than supporting community schools, the current trend towards supporting privatization is anti-intellectual in that it is part of a broader movement to undo the welfare state. The increased availability to use foreign-born specialists in this post-industrial atmosphere allow for an intellectual environment that is increasingly without defender. Intelligence, yes, but even then only with limits.