Book Review – Page 19

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.

Review of "Autobiography of a Yogi"

One of my supplemental readings for my F.I.C.A.M. courses was Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, which from a quick Goggle search I learned that the book is listed as one of the top 100 most important books in religious literature and was re-read annually by Steve Jobs. Of all the lives that one could read about, be it famous artists with rich and illustrious personal lives, great leaders who play decisive roles in world-historical affairs, etc. the one of a guru is perhaps not the most immediately interesting due to the strict personal discipline required of such a life. Rather than a boring tale, however, Yogananda writes compellingly on his spiritual journey and the wealth of insight and beauty that lay underneath the surface of his life. These words are as deep as those found in the Upanishads, and due to the story which frames it helps show how these ancient Vedic insights are still pertinent to living a fulfilling life today.

Overall I was impressed with the book for the insight that it provides into religious attitudes in India and ashram life, the latter of which I have experienced only as an outsider in India for a short time, but it is clear that the reason for the books popularity is it’s constant engagement with Vedantic thought. As befitting someone that has devoted their life’s work to the propagation of such knowledge, the book is littered with aphorisms and reflections that would cause a good reader to question the assumptions upon which they live and to at least get a glimpse of the profound peace that is possible by becoming master of oneself. Because of this it is impossible to separate these two aspects, something that monists like Yogananda would deny is impossible anyway, though I think it is fitting to say that taken solely as a narrative it is uninteresting though as an expository work of yogic thought it is brilliant. Almost every page is adorned with golden phrases giving insight into the human condition and though at times Yogananda seems overly pre-occupied with justifying his thought by quoting or alluding to other thinkers it is never so much that it becomes overwhelming. His meetings with various spiritual thinkers known (Gandhi, Tagore) and unknown (Yukteswar, Lahiri) allow him to put wise and concise descriptions of the Vedic viewpoint in their mouths that, framed as it is as steps in his spiritual development, don’t come off as didactic.

All of these compliments aside, one of the issues with I have with Hinduism in general and this book in particular is the preservation of beliefs and traditions which have been discredited as lacking in any material basis. This criticism applies to most if not all religious dogmas, and in the context of the book it is prominent in several sections where other yogis are described. In a several of the meetings with the “divine personages” Yogananda describes them as having siddhis, or “special powers”. While there are several siddhis that I would categorize within the realm of scientific possibility, there are also those that defy possibility and which for me ends up detracting from the narrative. For instance in Yogananda’s travels in India he claims to meet people that, haven’t eaten food in years, have been able to turn a wild lion into a vegetarian pet, and are able to transport their image over hundreds of miles to relay messages to someone else. Then there is Babaji, not a person but an immortal incarnation of the divine that works in humble obscurity in order to keep the knowledge of yoga alive. I recognize that to focus on this and neglect the other, positive and powerful aspects of the book I described above is to do it a disservice, however an objection to these kinds of miracles must be raised most specifically as their supposed “powers” take away from the significance of the core tenants they are voicing.

Review of "Explosion in a Cathedral"

Alejo Carpentier’s book Explosion in a Cathedral has the distinction of being amongst Lolita and several of Henry Miller’s novels as books which have required me to reference the dictionary in search of rarely used words. It is in these terms for shipping that the layman doesn’t know and in architecture and science terms of the time as well as the gothic descriptions of surroundings that causes this book to be seen as one of the ur-text’s of Latin American magical realism. Set in the island of Guadeloupe during the time of the French Revolution, the novel’s main characters are three wealthy orphans, the siblings Sofia and Carlo and their sickly cousin Esteban, and the adult Victor Hugues. While the youths are fictional, Victor was in fact a historical personage who was the French Revolutionary government’s military leader of the assault to retake the island of Guadeloupe from the British and later Governor of various French holdings in the Carribean.

The novel begins “I saw them erect the guillotine again to-night” and then follows by telling of the death of the family patriarch. The children isolate themselves from the local community and begin purchasing through catalogs the newest literature, scientific instruments and fine arts that they can fit into their house. They amuse themselves with games of the imagination and experiments with the scientific equipment until Victor comes knocking at the door, bringing with him all of the conflict present in this age of Atlantic revolutions. We quickly learn that though a businessman, Victor idealizes the classical Republican conception of virtue. This aspect of Victor’s can be seen in his quotations of Roman orators while playing pretend with the children as well as his stated manner of identifying his motivations as stemming not from private interests that causes him to profit off of others, but from a notion of universal brotherhood. Such a set of beliefs at such a time sets him in league with a number of interesting characters who make brief appearances amidst the turmoil which soon commences. Voodoo doctors with Masonic ties, and a corrupt Catholic executor of the dead father’s estate are just two examples of the island population. In his characterization and description, Carpentier is deft in showing that each of these characters are not simply representatives of fundamental energies of the age but are also individuals. Through this stylization, he is able to illustrate the social complexities of the global system in a very personal manner.

The play that characterizes Victor’s first appearance in the orphans house soon vanishes as rumors strike upon their idyllic shore that those involved in the Masonic lodges may soon be expelled from the French dominions. Forced to choose between abandoning their new friend and going with him and his black, voodoo practicing associate Oge, they leave and begin an adventure that will cause them to be separated for years and mature in ways that they never thought possible. The characters rich internal life that is shown to be constantly at odds with the situations in which they find themselves. For instance Esteban finds himself trying to navigate the dangerous position of being a Guadeloupean working for the French on the border of Spain with Revolutionary sympathies for the party that has just been ousted in the Thermidorean reaction. Though he has been nothing but felicitous to their cause, as he sees the heads start to roll from Paris outward and surveys the task he’s been assigned as impossible, his beliefs are sorely questioned. Sofia, though loyal to the rhetoric that Victor embodies, abhors the violence that comes with it’s ascent and is empathetic with the Africans who now no longer slaves are forced into capitalist market relations with a mother country that has brought them naught but suffering and compulsive labor.

Timothy Brennan suggests in his introduction to the novel that the book was a prescient defense of the Cuban revolution’s values, an interpretation that I agree with. Unlike, the novels by Rizal that I reviewed earlier, as the above should suggest the novel succeeds not only as a thinly veiled defense of Cuba’s new political powers but as an aesthetic work itself. As a defense of the revolution, it constructs the framework of the conflict impelling the youths out of the comforts of their home as originating amongst foreign powers vying for control of islands viewed as little more that rebellious forced labour populations. Lacking the industrial goods and capacity, the population, history of armed self-defense on the scale with which foreign powers could bring to bear upon them – the island of Guadeloupe and the others around it are de facto tributary vassal states. Such a terrain of complex relationships is not something that is not merely described but narrated, to use a distinction made by Georg Lukacs, in such as way that shows the deep historical research that Carpentier put into the book. One of the issues that I have with Brennan’s interpretation in the introduction is his conception of Sofia as the “only positive character” by citing an interview where Carpentier says that she represents praxis. Praxis understood via Marxist categories is something that is broad and applies to all individual and groups actions that are based upon their beliefs and material situatedness. As such she is not the only positive character. Victor is as well, though in his role of cleansing the inherited oppressions and inhumanity by using those same tools he is deeply alienated. Sofia, from the Greek word signifying wisdom, however sees this as both necessary AND horrible and thus represents the second stage of the transition to a new society.

Also worth mentioning is that in addition to the historically veiled defense of the revolution, the book is also a call to the intellectuals of the period to remove themselves from the confines of their houses and studies, which the children were once in, in order to take an active role in the management and direction of the newly created polity, as Esteban and Sofia do. Victor, a charismatic leader, is the point of convergence for Esteban and Sofia’s respective sentiments of admiration and romance and alludes to the many historical circumstances where intellectuals have rallied around an energetic leader that seeks to level the inherited norms to make way for greater material progress.

One of the methods that I have for a novelists in determining how good a book is if after reading it it makes me want to read their other works, in this case it’s a resounding yes and as soon as I make my way through the other books I have on my list I’ll definitely make an effort to pick up Carpentier’s other renowned novel
The Kingdom of This World.

Review of "Why We Love Sociopaths: A Guide To Late Capitalist Television"

Why We Love Sociopaths: A Guide To Late Capitalist Television is the most pleasurable works of contemporary cultural criticism that I’ve read in long time. Some of this pleasure is in knowing most of the television references that Kotsko uses, such as The Wire, Dexter, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and House, while the other is the fact that he foregoes the baroque terminology and labyrinthian logic found in other words of this type I’ve read. Rather than excessively quoting or citing seminal thinkers for justification of his thesis, he relies upon the strength of his argument alone. If this seems unusual to add in a book review, I’ll explain at the end.

Kotsko opens by defining and illustrating a particular character type found within group and social relations: sociopaths. He describes them as amoral, adept manipulators of social conventions that don’t, at least on the surface, fully identify with the social structure of which they are presumed to be a part. Whether or not we are to love, loathe or be ambivalent about sociopaths thus hinges on our understanding of society. Kostko states that a vast majority of humans interactions are scripted in the sense that that they are designed to smooth, ease or otherwise engender a sense of comfort and predictability to our daily patterns of living. Such unwritten rules of behavior structure of our social sphere and can be as simple as not cutting in line, asking a persons level of income and avoiding confrontation. The problem with these rules, however, is two fold. One, there is not unusually a prescribed means for correcting anti-normative social behavior and the social order doesn’t always fulfill the purported function of allaying anxiety and can instead act in a personally, socially and professionally repressive manner. By pointing out the failings of the overvalued social order, Kostko thus provides space for sociopaths to receive a more positive valuation. He then proposes, I believe rightly, that this is part of their appeal to television viewing audiences. Sociopaths may be classified as morally ambiguous or inferior due to their willingness to break conventions, but they are also attractive in their ability to effectively instrumentalize themselves to obtain their desires. It is sociopaths recognition that mores simply perpetuate a specific social order rather than productively provide shared goals and their ability to achieve their goals that makes them attractive to audiences, even if their desires are dubious or in the end don’t give them the satisfaction that they expected.

The flip side of this is ability to mobilize or discard at will social conventions for one’s purpose is found in the category of awkwardness. This has been further described in Kotsko’s book Awkwardness, which I have not read but plan on now that I’ve read this work. In the shorthand explanation Kotsko provides here, Awkwardness occurs in situations where the cultural norms of interactions are unclear, have broken down or don’t exist. Lacking “scripted” socials strategies to follow people feel anxious at the fact that they must exist even only for a few short moments according to their own rules.

Kostko then categorizes different examples of them into three classifications: Schemers, Climber and Enforcers. This tripartition functions more as a continuum from lower (schemer) to highest (enforcer), to allow for some of the sociopathic characters he categorizes as occasionally displaying the traits of others. For instance Gregory House is classified as an Enforcer in the text, however in the show he also is depicted as constantly playing pranks on his colleagues. The classifications themselves relate primarily to characters desires and their perception of barriers to them. Schemers are trying to obtain something they don’t have, climbers are trying to get more of something that they already have, while Enforcers have something and they are trying to keep it.

If this sounds overly simplistic and lacking depth, that’s because it is purposely so as it would defeat the purpose of this review to go into any kind of sustained restatement of Kostko’s analysis of the classifications of sociopathic series protagonists both as I am in accord with them and because of the books relatively short length to do so would give away too much and discourage you from reading something insightful and enjoyable yourself. Instead, I’ll note that the interspersed throughout andante especially towards the end are some devastatingly insightful criticisms, such as how: “our culture-wide fascination with these sociopaths is not sophisticated or rebellious or counter-cultural – rather it serves only to reinforce our collective Stockholm Syndrome” (77).

The conclusion of the text points to the profound social dissatisfaction felt in “late capitalist” society and then illustrates how the listed sociopaths manipulation of the system is insufficient for their goals. Violations of social law are often for the very sake of that law that was broken.For instance Dexter from Dexter, McNulty from The Wire and Jack from 24 all break the law for the sake of the law that is, according to it’s current incarnation, unable to fulfill the promises that it was formed to realize. Kostko’s call for an ever more radical sociopath that “combines the joy of the schemer and the single-mindedness of the enforcer with the creativity, persuasiveness and unsentimental outlook of the climber” is provocative but not simply for the point of being shocking (99). He points, I think correctly, to the manner in which familial and culturally instilled timidity allows for the continuation of a fundamentally anti-social order and the need for people to do more than further it for their own cynical betterment but change it at the root.

Review of "Freud, Adler, and Jung: Discovering the Mind Volume 3"

As Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit was the summation of all philosophy up until that time, and in many ways held criticism against those that made the similar intellectual errors mistakes that he himself or others made, Walter Kauffman’s “Discovering the Mind” trilogy has the same function. The last part of the series, Freud, Adler, and Jung: Discovering the Mind Volume 3 focuses strictly on Freud’s development of psychoanalysis and the developments that followed from his disciples.

For Kauffman Freud is like Abraham. Rather than leading people into the promised land, however, he brings them to an understanding of themselves that can lead to increased self-knowledge and self-actualization should they work towards foregoing self-deception. In the reconstruction of the Freud’s development
of a poetic science that could benefit humankind’s aspirations for greater autonomy, Kauffman shows how it is Goethe’s conception of science that Freud replicated in psychoanalysis and how this means that he is a major contributor to the discovery of the mind.

Freud’s discovery of the importance of sex, his discovery of the importance of childhood experiences for character development, his new therapy, his interpretation of dreams, his psychopathology of everyday life, his interpretation of mental illness, his interpretation of jokes, his analysis of literature, art and religion and even his personality are cited by Kauffman as his key achievements in the discovery of the mind. In each of these sections he clarifies terms of Freud’s that have entered into the everyday vocabulary in order to bring attention to the originators understanding of them rather than watered down popular misunderstandings of them. He does this on the larger conceptual level too, for instance pointing out that Freud never endorsed his patients to decline responsibility for themselves in order to blame their parents, society or religious upbringing. While Freud would say that these factors helped bring about a certain neurosis, this sort of self-victimization was anathema to him. Kauffman also highlights examples of lesser known terms, such as “mischievement”, that ought to enter into our vocabulary and thus help us analyze our life and lead to insights that thus applied could batter our self. Kauffman also points out how it is that certain terms of latter commentators or practitioners of psychoanalysis, such as Thanatos, did not originate from Freud and how he thought that these words obfuscated the object of their description.

Besides the recreation of Freud’s intellectual development and exegesis of some of it’s major components, he is defended by Kauffman from other informed commentators such as Sartre and Popper as well as popular misprisions of his ideas. In brief Poppers criticisms are shown to be coming from the school of science that values only quantitative methods, a methodology that disavows the qualitative development of those under analysis while Sartre’s desire to form an existentialist psychoanalysis based upon the total translucency of consciousness is shown to be out and out baseless when presented with case studies. Rather than using unadulterated rationalism and defending himself dogmatically, we see that Freud consistently based his theories on the empirical situation and revised them when necessary. One of the prime examples is in relation to expanding the source of much human motivation from just the libido to include the aggressive drive.
For doing this and in many other ways he is repeatedly praised as one of if not the most honest man that has lived. Kauffman relates these contribution in a biographical fashion in much the same way that Freud understood himself – it was his outsider status as a Jew in Vienna and his incredible love of literature that helped him to discover a talking cure for people’s neuroses.

In this series thus far, this book is the longest and also the most tedious however this is because a majority of the subsequent analysis devoted to Adler and Jung are concerned with correcting the well-documented but oft-misunderstood breaks between these two with Freud. As Kauffman amply documents, the decision and strategy pursued to achieved personal and professional separation from Freud by these two is intimately connected to the form their intellectual work took. In short Adler and Jung are disparaged for providing no redeemable insights into the human psyche or society and their behavior is shown to be equally opportunistic, uninformed, ignorant, or out and out disturbing.

Adler is shown to be a poor writer that is overly-concerned with escaping the shadow of Freud and establishing himself as a professional by heaping personal insults on him instead of producing work which shows failings, a poor thinker that makes no great effort to understand Nietzsche yet uses a poor approximation of his though in his own work, a man unwilling to revise his theories in the face of new evidence, a man afraid of “idea theft” rather than research and someone that wants at all costs to stay within the bounds of then-current social conventions rather than work towards developing a science that leads to greater knowledge. After the devastating account of Adler, one would assume that Jung could not possibly come off worse, however we see that this is not true.

Jung repeats several of Adler’s qualities such as poor writing skills and the inability to think with a scientific rigor, and adds to it a strange penchant for taking upon the role of guru. Besides deracinating the notion of extroverts and introverts, something that is clearly absent in Freud and is suitable only for positivistic physical sciences and not that of the mind, he examines Jung’s notion of archetypes – probably due to the then ascending influence of Joseph Campbell, parapsychology and occultism. The reasons why this is specious, both on the historical and personal level, are readily apparent and yet still have credibility for a reason that Kauffman is wise to point out – it allows for patients to skip deep personal analysis and instead play with symbols that are magically inherent in the consciousness as a means for self-growth. Here, Kauffman’s differentiation between scholarship and erudition is important to recall – the former being intellectual self-discipline that involves the scrupulous consideration of objections and alternatives while the later is mere book knowledge.

If I give Adler and Jung only a little attention and don’t bother to go into all of Kauffman’s criticisms of them and their work, it is because they serve Kauffman only as negative counter-examples of what self-knowledge looks like. These were men deceiving themselves and others and produced works we, after having placed them in a wider intellectual web, can now leave them behind much in the same way that Kant and Heidegger were in the previous two books.

The closing chapter of the book, titled Mind and Mask, gives a moving summation of what was to be Walter Kauffman’s last project before his unexpected death. Throughout his life Kauffman sought to bring attention to the creative and scientific works that could ennoble a caring reader. This section does not give a distilled, singular method for achieving this, a task that would have been anathema to Kauffman’s method of thinking, but instead presents a series of philosophical precepts, considerations and attitudes that lead to a honest, productive life. Indeed, I dare say, a good life. In this manner Kauffman is reminiscent of Epictetus, who sees the study of philosophy as the means which one orients oneself to a flourishing life. We can say than that intellectual exertion is not enough, but action and embodiment of these qualities are required if we are to life the best possible life of the mind.

Review of "Nietzsche, Heidegger and Buber: Discovering the Mind Volume 2"

Continuing my research into secondary literature to assist forming a course on German philosophy with specific emphasis on psychological tenors I read the second of Walter Kauffman’s trilogy on the discovery of the human mind Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Buber. Given Kaufmann’s widely recognized credentials as a superb teacher and the writer, I was again rewarded with insight in how to make choices for texts to require and those to ignore especially so in this case as Kauffman personally knew Heidegger and Buber, has been widely acclaimed for his translations of Nietzsche and Buber, and is thus in a unique position to weigh the contributions of these three thinkers.

Kauffman, unsurprisingly given his previous writings on Nietzsche in, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, devotes most of the book to laying out the case for Nietzsche’s contributions to, if not founding of, depth psychology. He relies not only on quotes from people such as Freud to demonstrate that he was one of the most self-aware people of his time, but also shows this via his identification as a psychologist (which is not necessarily an indicator of self-knowledge, though in his case it is) that he was concerned with wrestling with the dominant, moralistic and hedonistic assumptions of his age.

Kauffman does to great ends to disabuse many of the misinterpretations of Nietzsche, which abounds due to the style in which he wrote by doing what his detractors have not done – specifically giving contextualized, extensive quotation. Kauffman highlights the psychologically emancipatory aspects of Nietzsche, such as his encouragement of reflective writing practices, his hypothesis on the will to power, his theory of masks, his recognition that not only “philosophy” enriches the study of the human mind but art, literature and religion as well and does so while also noting the problematic aspects of his body of work. While many of Nietzsche’s claims at the time of their publication were considered revolutionary, many of them now seem almost commonplace. Stating that consciousness is a surface that sometimes resists the truth, experiences aren’t absolute but determined by frames and moods, body and spirit are not divided, it is important to to identify one’s heroes and villains to better define oneself now seem platitudinous. However as the first psychologist, and indeed the first psychohistorian, Nietzsche’s contributions to the study of the mind are legion. Just as important as demonstrating Nietzsche’s positions, Kaufmann complicates them and other’s criticisms against them – a practice that he inherited from Nietzsche.

One of the more rewarding sections for me was this second section on Martin Heidegger. During my time as an undergraduate and graduate student, I’d formed a dismal view of Heidegger due to his enthusiasts and the reasons why this was so is explained in Kauffman’s criticism of him. In a few short words Heidegger is shown to be a theologian, a categorization that Heidegger himself claimed and it’s shown that his approach to texts is not so much a matter of interpretation as that of placing his ideas, largely taken from others, onto the text. Kaufmann focuses his reading on Being and Time as this is widely regarded by man, including the author, to be his masterpiece. In the analysis which follows we see that Heidegger’s (1) “existential ontology” is dubious anthropology, (2) his thinking is deeply authoritarian, (3) Heidegger’s analysis of authenticity and inauthenticity is shallow and Manichaean, (4) Heidegger neither solved important problems nor opened them up for fruitful discussion but covered them up, (5) Being and Time belongs to the romantic revival in Germany, (6) Heidegger secularized Christian preaching about guilt, dread, and death but claimed to break with two-thousand years of Western thought, and (7) he blamed his own shortcomings on our “paltry time” rather than take responsibility for himself.

Kaufmann, not one for the same type of inflammatory invective used by Nietzsche, closes his analysis of Heidegger by stating not only that those who look to him to answer important questions due so out of a religious need but also that “he is a false prophet” (238). If this seems out of place for an academic text, one need only look to the above criticisms to see why this is so – or look at the picture included in the text where Heidegger wears the Nazi Party symbol and has the same mustache as Hitler.

Martin Buber is given a very short treatment in the book, a mere 37 pages, for reasons which Kaufmann makes clear as soon as he is introduced. Specifically that even though his major work I and Thou is widely regarded as his “classic work”, it is quickly dismissed as untenably dualistic. While Kauffman admits that it hints at profundity in it’s recognition theory, it is only speciously so and this is why Buber never finished the other books that he planned would build off of this framework. Classifying Buber’s philosophical writing as a conscious variation of Hegel’s early desire to create a rational folk-religion< Kauffman finds Buber's redeeming qualities in his theories of interpretation and re-writings on the Tales of the Hasidim - which he acknowledges as a classic of modern religious writing and wisdom literature. In these latter writings he rejects the theological notion of God which typify exegetical thinking and instead places it within the context of living communities. In Buber's theories of translation, Kauffman points to his recognition that to translate one had to make great efforts to know the author, and that this growing knowledge about someone else enhanced the knowledge of the self. This respect for the other which is also the self is a prominent value and gives insight into how we are to best approach others, as well as ourselves, should we wish to gain deep knowledge.

Review of "Art of Living"

The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness is practical codes for living a good life according to the ancient Greek stoic and sophist Epictetus. While the translation by Sharon Lebell is quite free in its adherence to the original text, hence her deeming it a “new interpretation”, this is not a weakness as the book contains a good amount of pithy insight that can be used as a guide for positive living.

Advice such as “Avoid making idle promises whenever possible, ” “New experiences are meant to deepen out lives and advance us to new levels of competence” and “Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people’s weaknesses” are somewhat platitudinous, but they are nonetheless important reminders as to how one can live a life of character and integrity while adhering to one’s specific life goals. I read this particular translation for the first time as part of research for a course on classical Greek philosophy and drama that I would teach as a F.I.C.A.M. elective. I will be pairing this with selected works of Plato, Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics and some plays by Euripides and Sophocles. What is perhaps most interesting about the book is that much of the self-help literature of today is so similar to its message with the exception that the style of the writing, eighty or so short messages, that it evades the need to present an overarching, developmental thrust.

In this regard I find it difficult to delve into too much analytical depth as to do so would be to engage each brief message directly. What I can say as that even though there is much good here, there is also an element of political quietism to it that those in the modern context and not in the “elite” a fact already recognized by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit. Despite this, however, it is an important read and so short that it begs to be repeatedly read or referenced at random by seekers of inner peace.

Review of "Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right"

My sense of irony compelled me to read Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Anne C. Heller after having just finished Marx’s biography. Especially considering that both of these thinkers have an upsurge in their popular reference in discussions on the current state of the economy, I think it’s not just amusing but fitting. I’d read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead a few years ago and found myself impressed and underwhelmed. Impressed at the creation of true heroes without some sort of existential angst, the self-help aspects inserted amongst Rand’s prose and defining her characters as well as her ability to tightly plot a novel of ideas such that it wasn’t completely boring, but also critical due to it’s highfalutin style, one dimensional characters, and the dangerous potential for readers to deploy a mimetic adoption of a character’s qualities via worship of them without incorporating a properly developed critical, historical consciousness. Thus while I am empathetic to Whitaker Chamber’s review of Rand, I also see several positive aspects worthy of recuperation.

Heller’s biography of Rand starts by immediately peeling back the aura of mysticism around her philosophy. Attending to her early childhood, we learn Rand experienced similar dynamics as other Russian exiles, such as Vladimir Nabokov, that led them to rail against the system of social relations in Russia following the end of the civil war once they’d moved to America. The privations created by civil war and the repressive political environment it created, crop failure, brain drain, trade embargoes and experimentations in production processes led those who fled to holistically decry the new Soviet state. This position is completely understandable: When market forces aren’t abstracted into an invisible force and cited as the justification for the behavior of police agents upholding “property laws” but are instead decided by a centralized planning authority and it’s agents one comes to resent the government for causing shifts in relations that lowers one’s status. This aspect of Rand’s history in Russia is then expanded by examining her first forays into philosophy. By quoting her notebooks, we see an early Rand who was wrestling with Nietzsche’s celebration of the aristocratic – something that a highly cultured, intelligent, secular Jewess with upper class upbringing would have easily identified with. It’s also worth noting that during her time enrolled in university in Russia she was given an elementary education in Marxism, reading such works as The ABC of Communism and found the logic of Aristotle to be particularly attractive (in fact “A is A”, a logical presupposition popularized by Aristotle, would later be the name of a directory for Objectivist oriented projects). Also in Russia we see Rand, like so many other people across the globe following the second world war, absolutely enthralled by Hollywood cinema. She watches them and loving them so much considers going to Film School, but knowing that this would mean she would create Soviet propaganda, decides to escape to the USA via an educational visa and then breaks ties with her family.

Once Rand makes her way to L.A. after a brief stay with distant family relatives, she reads Nietzsche more and begins writing using many of the the themes founds in his writings, even attempting to adopt his aphoristic style. She gets film work by being in the right place at the write time and soon starts to see “pinks” and “reds” everywhere and decides that it is of the utmost importance that the United States doesn’t go down the collectivist path of Russia and so writes and donates her time to fight this. It is this activism that starts to expand her view, albeit slightly, in the realm of political economy and more so in the way of America in general. Rand, in contact with several prominent intellectuals, is shown to repeating a similar process throughout her professional life. At first a connection is made between points upon which Rand and this other person agrees, Rand then goes through an almost Socratic like process of finding out their “premises” and then berating the other person each time theirs differs from hers, even if in the end they are at a similar position, and then tries to show them how they should adopt her position wholesale. This is the case both with her friends, such as Isabel Paterson, her “false friends” (conservatives that used the rhetoric of altruism or pragmatism to justify their positions) such as F. A. Hayek, and the people whom she wanted intellectual recognition from such as Sidney Hook. Indeed to a large part the biography is a retelling of two major themes: how she personally kept pushing people away from here that were able to intellectually match her and keeping around orbit younger people that were more open to her influence and how she would get involved in an organization and due to one issue or another denounce it as insufficiently “reactionary”, a term she used with positive valuation as she saw those that would restrain capitalism, the ideal economic system, as evil people.

One of the biography’s more interesting revelations to me, which speaks to this very process of alienation, was the fact that Ayn Rand was addicted to benzedrine. While the amphetamine was prescribed to her, Heller shows how it was this drug that fueled her late night discussion sessions, gave her the energy to write sometimes for over 12 hours at a time, kept her thin, and assisted in her habituation to a two pack of cigarettes a day habit (which according to Rand wasn’t unhealthy as the doctors weren’t trustworthy as they used statistics to provide their evidence, a fact that Rand’s lungs must not have been aware of as she died of cancer). I find this especially interesting given this similarity between her and Sartre, who she despised and who also ruined his health with uppers while writing Critique of Dialectical Reason at the time as Rand was ruining hers writing Atlas Shrugged. This clearly had a role in intensifying Rand’s negative personal characteristics, but also assisted her when she held court amongst her disciples once she decided to turn her own though into a school as the universities weren’t giving it sufficient attention.

Once Rand has finished her fiction and she devotes her time solely to essays, she also focuses solely on maintaining the apparatuses that she helped build with Nathaniel Branden. Thankfully Heller devotes only a small part of the book to their affair, pointing those interested to the autobiographical exposes, and does most of her writing on how the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) formed into it’s very own cultural grouping of likeminded people that would socialize almost exclusively with other Objectivists and would study Rand’s works and Leonard Peikoff’s and Branden’s exegesis of them. Clearly placing these groups within the milieu of the 60’s and 70’s and showing their evolution following the dissolution of the NBI amidst the schism caused amongst her inner circle following Rand’s discovery that Nathan had been involved with someone else other than her for four years is where Heller truly shines.

As a historian of the American conservative movement, she is able to deftly chart some of the influence of the Objectivists and show their populist appeal despite “trad”, traditional, conservatives disdain for their atheistic appeal to human rights. She shows how the Volker Fund paid for economics professors to get teaching positions at universities expire their marginalization from the profession, a fact under reported in my conversations with others about Von Mises or Hayek, and how it was the Koch brothers who created the Cato Institute on principles charted by Rand. Rand’s role as inspirer for the creation of the Libertarian Party is acknowledged, as is the wealth of student activism and publications against various policies such as the draft, drug laws and taxes. Young Americans for Freedom and Students for Individual Liberty are cited as prominent outlets of Objectivists related activism and it is her reaction and attempts at “reigning in” those that were inspired by her that she loses them. The anarcho-capitalist versus minarchist state positions controversy are outlined here as well, though it would have been to the benefit of the book to go into more detail on this considering this is a debate that continues to have relevance amongst libertarians today.

At the end of her life Heller shows Rand largely discredited amongst her early followers as her personal character alienated them and her pronouncements on morality had moved from the daily interactions to commentary on the world-historical. Lacking the background to make such judgements, many made fun of or rightly decried her racist or genocidal positions that she deemed as moral (for instance her claim that the Native American’s received what they deserved as they had no private property). Indeed this was at a time when Libertarianism was gaining the intellectual recognition that Rand would have loved. Robert Nozick published Anarchy, State, and Utopia and won the National Book Award for it in 1975 while Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976. By the end of the biography we can clearly see why Rand continues to get cited in American politics today as a person of inspiration, but also why those who uncritically laud her should be someone to watch out for.

Review of "Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution"

Considering how much of my grad school reading was Marxist in orientation, I decided to pick up a copy of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution to provide a more thorough biographical background. While I think the intensive study sessions gave me a thorough insight of his work, as Goethe inveighs, one best understands the idea by comprehending the milieu in which it emerged.

One of the books flaws, or strengths depending on how you interpret it, is it’s sparsity of exegesis of the qualities of the scientific socialism which differentiated Marx from his utopian or opportunist contemporaries. One could argue that Gabriel’s purpose is solely to write a biographical love story, but as is evidenced by books such as Isaac Deutscher’s trilogy on the life of Trotsky, this doesn’t mean that one must give only scant attention to the analysis of the subject’s contributions to human thought.

It is especially a flaw considering that Karl and Jenny’s motivation for getting up everyday for some forty years was the push towards the emancipation of humankind through the understanding of the laws of historical development and it’s harnessing by the proletariat and that because of this they lived an at times extremely precarious, impoverished and dangerous life this would be elementary. However as these distinguishing characteristics are given such scant treatment, Marx can be read as just another radical amongst many at the time and deserving only of attention for his ability to politic and stay alive, he can almost seem like a sick and neurotic intellectual with delusions of grandeur fed by, literally and figuratively, a small number of enablers such as his wife and Engels as well as those merchants that made the mistake of giving him items on credit.

Instead of this sort of treatment, she substitutes topical observations while predominantly relying upon the family, the motley revolutionary characters immediately around Marx and the various government infiltrators trying to probe his intentions and actions. This is of course done as a means of humanizing Marx, something that Mohr would not have been against, yet there is a certain type of banality to it that I find at times reminiscent of reality television. In this regard, it is extremely successful as the people depicted are not mere characters, but a whole coterie of individuals who helped bring about a greater level of freedom in world history.

These reservations noted, it should be said that Gabriel does an excellent job most likely not despite of but because of these stylistic choices prioritizing the microscope over the telescope. In the Marx family dynamic we see a profound love that takes the shape of rage and struggle against oppression. Through Jenny and Karl’s first flowering of romance to their later battles against German autocracy, French monarchism, Belgian appeasement of it’s mightier neighbors and British imperialism, not to mention the iniquities of a burgeoning and yet terribly powerful international capitalism, Gabriel writes in a highly involved manner. She vividly exhibits the grand passions of Karl and Jenny as lovers of themselves and as those involved in the nascent socialist movement. While in the streets there may be a raging battle, or a storm in the press or a uproar at an organizational meeting – their love acts a place of safety for both of them. And while Marx’s willingness to sacrifice comforts and security to arm and assist workers or further research on Capital seems to be evidence of his taking his wife for granted, she understands, commiserates and assists in such a way the shows that the nobility into which she was born was not just one of title but of character.

Marx’s other major assistant, besides his daughters, is of course Engels. After reading this book, I’m much more interested in following this up with Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. He is in many ways a scene stealer due to his joviality, rakishness, revelry, insightful commentary on Marx’s personality and of course because of his seemingly paradoxical position as capitalist and revolutionary. When Marx was together with Engels they behave like college students – drinking heavily and getting in fights, though of the literary kind. When Gabriel writes of their writings against those they dislike, displays of wit, sarcasm, irony, perspicacity and invective that is admirable. No wonder he was nicknamed “the General”.

Gabriel stings together a number of interesting anecdotes leading the attentive reader to see connections that would do disservice to the type of “neutral” biography she is trying to write (though she does interject at several points in a moralizing fashion). One of them that I particularly like was how Karl, even though wracked with bodily ailments due to the stresses of poverty, would give what little pocket change he had to neighborhood boys. This example of love, this habit of his seems easily juxtaposed against the love which similarly motivated him to call for international solidarity amongst workers and the creation of the dictatorship of the proletariat (a phrase amply misused by those who’ve not taken the time to read when he meant by it). She is also explicit in several points about the rupture of continuity. Specifically in the fate for the Marx daughter’s, who each look for and marry men of socialist inclinations that they imagine to be strong-willed like their father but instead turn out to be poor approximations in character and intellect.

A number of prominent spies, socialists, assassins, anarchists, artists, aristocrats, counts, communards, and prominent 19th century intellectuals provide fascinating cameos amongst the betrayals, set-backs, triumphs and family drama. And while the devastating family drama here would likely not happen were it not for Karl and Jenny’s decision to pursue the life of career revolutionaries that they did, it is interesting aspect to note is despite all of the personal tragedies, neither gave in to despair and decided to abandon what they felt to be their calling. Though they may have desired changes in certain aspects, their incredible intellectual life and belief fortified them against poverty, illnesses and death.

The book closes with a then exiled V. I. Lenin addressing the spectators at the 1911 funeral of Marx’s last remaining daughter and her husband, Paul Lafaurge, Marx’s son in law and author of The Right to be Lazy. In just six short years Marx would see the successful application of his theories in the overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy, followed by their revision and degeneration into something that was a horrific caricature that no longer resembled the first form of the subject. What he could and would have done had he witnessed it and was able to participate is the stuff of pure speculation, but what he did do, paraphrasing Bertrand Russell, is change the way we see the world.