This is all well said, James. I struggle sometimes with how to think about the aspect of Chomsky's thought (and others on the left who share it) that so radically divorces them from the rest of us in terms of our attachment to the US. You can knock it as bad politics -- as you say "we have nothing to say to our fellow citizens, who are, for the most part, attached to their homes, their jobs, their families, their neighborhoods, and yes, their country" -- but what if it's right, morally speaking?
My instinct is that there is something actually arrested in their point of view, psychoanalytically speaking. It's a problem because not because it's un-strategic politics but because it's immature politics, because it's refusing to address something fundamental in the human condition. I haven't quite been able to articulate this point yet, but your post seems to be pushing in this direction.
Hello Daniel, thanks for this. I agree that the "moral universalism" of Chomsky's politics is immature, in the sense that it leads inevitably to abstention and release from the world as it is. I guess it comes down to the difference between Kant and Hegel in stating the relation between our ethical principles and historical circumstances. Kant assumed, believed, and argued that you couldn't deduce "ought" from "is"--in other words, it was an either/or choice, to abide by universal and universally binding ethical principles, or to succumb to compromise with the sordid circumstances of life as it actually gets lived. Hegel assumed, believed, and argued that our ethical principles were legible, if only faintly or inchoately, in our historical circumstances, at least since the Reformation and the realization that "all men are created equal," and that the task of revolutionary politics was therefore to clarify and make accessible how "ought" was already residing in and flowing from the "is." This task was largely a matter of translating the vernacular, of finding liberating significance in the meanings of "common sense." In his early Hegelian phase, John Dewey put it better than I can: “This, indeed, is the failure of the Kantian Ethics: in separating that which should be from what is, it deprives the latter, the existing social world as well as the desires of the individual, of all moral value; while, by the same abstraction, it condemns that which should be to a barren abstraction. An ‘ought’ which does not root in and flower from the ‘is,’ which is not the fuller realization of the actual state of social relationships, is a mere pious wish that things should be better.”
You've triggered my "I really should have spent more time studying philosophy" tripwire. Any suggested readings on this topic that don't require to mainline the whole history of western philosophy?
Aack, that's a tripwire to be avoided. Also, I'm what they used to call a "historian of ideas," not a philosopher, so I can't pretend to any expertise in that discipline. That said, I guess I'd suggest two books written by philosophers who thought of themselves as outsiders in their own field of expertise; both are overviews that try to situate western philosophy in a larger, evolving scheme of thinking about personhood, agency, consciousness, & co. John Dewey Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), and Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). Both pragmatists, both sympathetic to Hegel, and both quite readable.
Those sounds good. I've at least dabbled in the Rorty book before, though I'm not sure I've read it cover to cover. In general I've found him appealing. And the Dewey book I haven't read though I've often had the thought that I should read him at some point.
Nonsense. The hit piece against Chomsky is a straw man. Chomsky takes care of referring to the US government, not the US nation. Why this dude can’t see the difference is the reason why one should be cautious with the ideologies of the propaganda machine.
Hit piece?! Dude, I spent 3,500 words talking about why I shouldn't dismiss Chomsky as quickly as I want to. Say what you will about my conclusions, but it's like the opposite of a hit piece.
Daniel's critique struck me as written good faith. He was specific about what he reacted to. He owned those parts of the critique that likely said more about himself and his foibles. He was vulnerable. I read it as more of an introspective piece from someone coming to terms with the imperfections of a hero. It sounds like you may have a valuable point to add to the debate, and I think I could be more open to it if you start with the idea that Daniel's intentions weren't bad. That seems like a good starting point for any public debate, and I think Daniel, by his own online record, has also earned that assumption of good faith. Then you're very welcome to convince us that he's unpersuasive.
I don't see how much more good faith Daniel Oppenheimer could muster in explaining his vexation when assessing Noam Chomsky's politics. The question he raises is crucial: does the moral high ground offer any purchase or perspective on the places where people actually live and conduct politics, or does it exile us from those places, in effect cutting us off from the constituencies--the majorities--that might act upon our less apocalyptic critique of American Empire?
You’re telling me that a critique of the old man that starts with a confession of a confirmed distaste for him, that goes on to give wings to someone else’s view that America’s finest intellectual is nothing but an extraordinarily violent, brutal alpha-male primate (huge dick to anyone who disagrees with him); a critique that suggests that he cannot serve as a foundational thinker because he is too rigid and brutal, alienated from humanity, an aggressor that hides behind his clinical coldness; all of that and more, is a critique in good faith. Yeah, sure, but what I see here is just a long Ad Hominem attack on the old man. He had it coming, apparently, for the sin of not detaching his “love for America” from the critique of its imperialistic government and, it seems too, for not peddling its anti-intellectual popular culture. I get it, he’s an intellectual aristocrat, which does not go well with the national anthem before the game and the movies about “men of honor”. Fuck that. I’m an outsider, I care very little about such patriotic attachments. There are many things I love about America, some of which you could rightly feel proud of, and one of them is that it produced someone like Chomsky. It makes you forget, at least temporarily, the long list of your war criminals.
This is all well said, James. I struggle sometimes with how to think about the aspect of Chomsky's thought (and others on the left who share it) that so radically divorces them from the rest of us in terms of our attachment to the US. You can knock it as bad politics -- as you say "we have nothing to say to our fellow citizens, who are, for the most part, attached to their homes, their jobs, their families, their neighborhoods, and yes, their country" -- but what if it's right, morally speaking?
My instinct is that there is something actually arrested in their point of view, psychoanalytically speaking. It's a problem because not because it's un-strategic politics but because it's immature politics, because it's refusing to address something fundamental in the human condition. I haven't quite been able to articulate this point yet, but your post seems to be pushing in this direction.
Hello Daniel, thanks for this. I agree that the "moral universalism" of Chomsky's politics is immature, in the sense that it leads inevitably to abstention and release from the world as it is. I guess it comes down to the difference between Kant and Hegel in stating the relation between our ethical principles and historical circumstances. Kant assumed, believed, and argued that you couldn't deduce "ought" from "is"--in other words, it was an either/or choice, to abide by universal and universally binding ethical principles, or to succumb to compromise with the sordid circumstances of life as it actually gets lived. Hegel assumed, believed, and argued that our ethical principles were legible, if only faintly or inchoately, in our historical circumstances, at least since the Reformation and the realization that "all men are created equal," and that the task of revolutionary politics was therefore to clarify and make accessible how "ought" was already residing in and flowing from the "is." This task was largely a matter of translating the vernacular, of finding liberating significance in the meanings of "common sense." In his early Hegelian phase, John Dewey put it better than I can: “This, indeed, is the failure of the Kantian Ethics: in separating that which should be from what is, it deprives the latter, the existing social world as well as the desires of the individual, of all moral value; while, by the same abstraction, it condemns that which should be to a barren abstraction. An ‘ought’ which does not root in and flower from the ‘is,’ which is not the fuller realization of the actual state of social relationships, is a mere pious wish that things should be better.”
You've triggered my "I really should have spent more time studying philosophy" tripwire. Any suggested readings on this topic that don't require to mainline the whole history of western philosophy?
Aack, that's a tripwire to be avoided. Also, I'm what they used to call a "historian of ideas," not a philosopher, so I can't pretend to any expertise in that discipline. That said, I guess I'd suggest two books written by philosophers who thought of themselves as outsiders in their own field of expertise; both are overviews that try to situate western philosophy in a larger, evolving scheme of thinking about personhood, agency, consciousness, & co. John Dewey Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), and Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). Both pragmatists, both sympathetic to Hegel, and both quite readable.
Those sounds good. I've at least dabbled in the Rorty book before, though I'm not sure I've read it cover to cover. In general I've found him appealing. And the Dewey book I haven't read though I've often had the thought that I should read him at some point.
Nonsense. The hit piece against Chomsky is a straw man. Chomsky takes care of referring to the US government, not the US nation. Why this dude can’t see the difference is the reason why one should be cautious with the ideologies of the propaganda machine.
Hit piece?! Dude, I spent 3,500 words talking about why I shouldn't dismiss Chomsky as quickly as I want to. Say what you will about my conclusions, but it's like the opposite of a hit piece.
Daniel's critique struck me as written good faith. He was specific about what he reacted to. He owned those parts of the critique that likely said more about himself and his foibles. He was vulnerable. I read it as more of an introspective piece from someone coming to terms with the imperfections of a hero. It sounds like you may have a valuable point to add to the debate, and I think I could be more open to it if you start with the idea that Daniel's intentions weren't bad. That seems like a good starting point for any public debate, and I think Daniel, by his own online record, has also earned that assumption of good faith. Then you're very welcome to convince us that he's unpersuasive.
I don't see how much more good faith Daniel Oppenheimer could muster in explaining his vexation when assessing Noam Chomsky's politics. The question he raises is crucial: does the moral high ground offer any purchase or perspective on the places where people actually live and conduct politics, or does it exile us from those places, in effect cutting us off from the constituencies--the majorities--that might act upon our less apocalyptic critique of American Empire?
You’re telling me that a critique of the old man that starts with a confession of a confirmed distaste for him, that goes on to give wings to someone else’s view that America’s finest intellectual is nothing but an extraordinarily violent, brutal alpha-male primate (huge dick to anyone who disagrees with him); a critique that suggests that he cannot serve as a foundational thinker because he is too rigid and brutal, alienated from humanity, an aggressor that hides behind his clinical coldness; all of that and more, is a critique in good faith. Yeah, sure, but what I see here is just a long Ad Hominem attack on the old man. He had it coming, apparently, for the sin of not detaching his “love for America” from the critique of its imperialistic government and, it seems too, for not peddling its anti-intellectual popular culture. I get it, he’s an intellectual aristocrat, which does not go well with the national anthem before the game and the movies about “men of honor”. Fuck that. I’m an outsider, I care very little about such patriotic attachments. There are many things I love about America, some of which you could rightly feel proud of, and one of them is that it produced someone like Chomsky. It makes you forget, at least temporarily, the long list of your war criminals.