I have been thinking a great deal lately about the arc or shape of my life. These ruminations, which are uncharacteristic for me despite my having chosen philosophy as my life’s work, are brought on by three things: first, my recognition that 88 is really not young, after all; second, by the extraordinary constraints and deformations imposed by the pandemic, which is now more than two years old; and third, of course, by the discovery that I suffer from Parkinson’s disease, which increasingly places constraints on what I am able to do and raises questions in my mind about how much longer I shall be able to go on as I have been. Although I have returned to this subject repeatedly on this blog, the comments made daily by a dozen or so regular readers have more or less ignored this personal side of my life and have proceeded along a variety of independent tracks – or threads, as I understand they are called.
With no disrespect to these interlocutors, who could I
suspect do quite well without me, I shall try to pull together some of what I
have been thinking about. I shall begin
by recalling yet again the extraordinarily evocative passage from Eric Erickson’s Childhood and Society which I quoted at
the beginning of my autobiography: “An individual life is the accidental
coincidence of but one life cycle with but one segment of history.”
I was born into a professional middle class non-observant
Jewish politically left-wing family in New York City in the depths of the Great
Depression, a quite accidental fact that has determined much of the shape of my
life. I have devoted much of my time
during the past 80 years to articulating precisely the ways in which I differentiate
myself intellectually, politically, socially, morally from those around me and
yet from a certain distance these differences are so small as to be almost
unnoticeable. Had I been born into a 14th-century nomadic Mongolian
family or a second century Egyptian family or a 17th-century
Iroquoian family (to choose just three of the endless possibilities) everything
in my understanding of my life in the world would have been totally different.
In a few years I shall die – perhaps before this year’s
midterm elections, perhaps not until several more presidential cycles have come
and gone – and then I will be done. Some of what I have written may well live
after me for a while, but that will of course be nothing to me. What a
spendthrift God must be to have lavished so much self-awareness on mayflies.
I have been quite fortunate, both in the
circumstances of my birth and in my freedom from such devastating blows as
serious physical illness or – heaven forbid – the loss of a child. It has been fun, withal, and because I am
blessed with a quite good memory, I can even now recall most of it. I can recall the triumphant moment in the
fall of 1960 when I completed my exposition and clarification of the argument of
the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding to a quite appreciative
group of Harvard students and I can recall the moment in 1986 when I saw again
my high school sweetheart and knew with an absolute conviction that we would be
married. I can recall launching into the viola solo that begins the fourth
movement of the third Razumovsky quartet and knowing that I had managed to play
it fast enough so as not to embarrass myself with my much abler quartet
partners. And I can of course recall
kneeling before Desmond Tutu in 2011 as he awarded me an honorary degree at the
University of the Western Cape, the highlight of my long political career.
It may well turn to dust, as everything must, but at least
it is not dust that will cause any of history’s gears to grind to a halt.
22 comments:
The literary value of good poetry is to express in provocative and memorable words aspects of life which can otherwise seem inexpressible. Two great English poets have contemplated and written about the very subjects you discuss in your post. One is uplifting and inspiring; the other less so. All of us grapple from time to time with our thoughts fluctuating between the two poles.
In the first, Wordsworth wrote:
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
The second, offering a far more cynical and deflating perspective, is found in Macbeth’s monologue:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
As I mentioned in a previous comment amidst the debates on just how many times per minute one must call Putin a war criminal not to be oneself called a horrible person, the forthcoming book by Raymond Geuss, entitled How Not Thinking Like a Liberal, looks to contain a chapter on your (RPW's) book The Poverty of Liberalism. Geuss's book as a whole looks to be of a piece with your own reflections on the course of a philosophical life out of what Geuss has called elsewhere the swamp of liberalism into kinds of radicalism. Geuss's book is scheduled to be published at the end of May; I would be keenly interested in reading some of your blog posts on the book this summer.
Small correction: Geuss's book is entitled Not Thinking Like a Liberal.
John Rapko,
Simon Legree is a horrible person. He owns slaves and beats them mercilessly. He deserves to be soundly condemned for this. But his wife tries to explain that he is actually a very good and caring husband and fatehr. Moreover, he was beaten frequently by his father, which is why he treats his slaves as he does. And when he hears others condemning him for the way he treats his slaves and even offering them their assistance to escape their enslavement, without knowing his own misfortunate past, it infuriates him even more, so he takes it out on his slaves. Simon Legree, after all, once you know these things about him, is not such a bad person after all.
The problem is that, although you and others have repeatedly called Putin a war criminal, you have simultaneously depreciated that condemnation by offering explanations as to why he invaded Ukraine; you and others offer “factors” which have contributed to his being a war criminal, actions by third parties that are partially the cause of his behavior. In so doing you are negating and sterilizing your repeated assertions that Putin is a war criminal, which you maintain is enough to insulate you and others from criticism.
Thanks for the info. John R. To extend the information you provided, here’s the publisher’s synopsis:
https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9780674276543/html?lang=de
And here is access to Geuss’s Preface and a little bit from his Introduction:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4zBaEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=dNZOW6zXTU&sig=3i8HPCMoRI0bdsaOOC5xoYKKZS4#v=onepage&q&f=false
He seems to be self reflective rather in the fashion of RPW’s initiating statement here, though clearly less optimistic. But his take on Brexit—a bit of a moral panic in my estimation—leaves me as unpersuaded as I was when I read his discussion of the subject some time ago in “Public Seminar” (which for those who may be interested is an on-line publication coming from the New School).
Well, I really would like to make one, and only one, response to my e-friend's Another Anonymous's comment. It is this: 1. I have not made any sustained remarks on this blog in the service of analyzing or interpreting or understanding the invasion of Ukraine. I posted links to a couple of pieces that I thought were interesting and that I thought others might find interesting. 2. It has never occurred to me that here or elsewhere I was attempting in any intellectual discussion to 'insulate myself from criticism'. I think rather that the sole point upon which I agree with Karl Popper is that in such discussion one ought to attempt to make oneself as it were maximally vulnerable to criticism, by stating as clearly as possible one's assumptions, claims, reasons, and evidence, precisely in part so that others can critically examine them and, possibly, correct and/or refute them.--That's all for me forever on this point. Again, I very much hope that the professor will read and comment on Geuss's forthcoming book.
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." — Søren Kierkegaard
John Rapko,
Please, it is you who wrote, on a post that had absolutely nothing to do with the Putin, whether he is or is not a war criminal, the invasion of Ukraine, and the excuses being offered for Putin’s conduct: “As I mentioned in a previous comment amidst the debates on just how many times per minute one must call Putin a war criminal not to be oneself called a horrible person.” By stating this, you were playing the victim and resurrected this issue which was entirely irrelevant to the matters being addressed in Prof. Wolff’s post. Did you expect that because you made this off-hand, irrelevant comment that you should not get push-back? And the articles which you cited were all offering “explanations” for why Putin had invaded Ukraine. By recommending them it is fair to assume that you endorse the views being expressed in them. So please, don’t act like you have been unfairly wounded by those who address. And Karl Popper’s exhortation for clarity and thoroughness in presenting one’s political views does not entail that those views are not subject to criticism.
Corrected comment.
John Rapko,
Please, it is you who wrote, on a post that had absolutely nothing to do with Putin, whether he is or is not a war criminal, the invasion of Ukraine, and the excuses being offered for Putin’s conduct: “As I mentioned in a previous comment amidst the debates on just how many times per minute one must call Putin a war criminal not to be oneself called a horrible person.” By stating this, you were playing the victim and resurrected this issue which was entirely irrelevant to the matters being addressed in Prof. Wolff’s post. Did you expect that because you made this off-hand, irrelevant comment that you should not get push-back? And the articles which you cited were all offering “explanations” for why Putin had invaded Ukraine. By recommending them it is fair to assume that you endorse the views being expressed in them. So please, don’t act like you have been unfairly wounded by those who address an issue that you raised gratuitously. And Karl Popper’s exhortation for clarity and thoroughness in presenting one’s political views does not entail that those views are not subject to criticism.
Should one enter “Wolff” in the appropriate box on the LHS of the page which comes up when one plugs in the site I previously listed and click “Go” 28 results come up referring to RPW, unfortunately none of them to anything extensive. However, we do learn that Geuss “made a point of going to Wolff’s lectures” in 1968, on his return to New York.
It would be interesting to read RPW’s reflections on what Geuss has wrought. I hope he takes up J. R.’s invitation/request.
On that other comment, the less said . . .
I'm officially taking a break from commenting but I'd like to briefly address Prof Wolff's post.
Without meaning to be unkind in any way, it seems to me that Prof Wolff spends a good deal of time recalling his moments of triumph, such as his being awarded an honorary degree by Desmond Tutu at Univ of the Western Cape.
Prof Wolff spends, it seems to me, less time recalling, at least on this blog, his regrets, disappointments, and failures. Maybe that's because he doesn't have very many of those, in which case he is more fortunate than perhaps even he himself realizes.
I am relatively new to this blog but I suspect that several of us are in a sort of denial about professor Wolff's advanced age. We feel we do justice to him and the blog by arguing honestly about issues that he has probably argued many times in the past and that we will keep arguing about repeatedly into the future. I think that the professor has indeed been very lucky. As he says, he could have been born a peasant or serf and died without any education instead now he has lived a fulfilling life which is better than a happy life (in the conventional sense), and has left writings which will outlive him for many many years. That is more than anyone could ask for. Yet I understand it is impossible not get sucked into melancholy...
Thanks for the quote, Ahmed. I believe it is true, and being true this must be true as well: --that we understand almost nothing as kids, but as kids have the most life, and we understand the most as older adults, but as older adults we do not have the same life as kids. Of course, this not being an absolute in life there must be countless exceptions.
ich erinnere mich an einen Kommentar von Albert Camus zu seinem Sisyphos, den ich als junger Mann absolut nicht verstand. Camus sagte: "Man muss sich Sisyphos als einen glücklichen Menschen vorstellen." Irgendwie habe ich das Gefühl, dass ich mich auf dem Weg dahin befinde diesen Satz zu verstehen.
I remember a comment by Albert Camus on his Sisyphus, which I absolutely did not understand as a young man. Camus said, "You have to think of Sisyphus as a happy man." Somehow I feel that I am on the way to understanding that phrase.
i still mistrust my english and check it with the app 'deepl'. If someone can delete the first post, I can not.
LFC,
What are important in Professor Wolff's life or in that of anyone who has achievedimportant things are those achievements.
All of us are at times neurotic and uncaring parents and mates. All of us.
All of us have been betrayed by friends and have betrayed friends. All of us.
All of us have taken shortcuts regarding the law and our spoken lofty principles because no one would notice and no one noticed. All of us.
I don't believe in saints.
However, very few of us have achieved what Professor Wolff has achieved in his academic and political life. Most people live very mediocre and unthinking existences.
So what is noteworthy in Professor Wolff is how he has distinguished himself, not how he is just like everyone else.
I often contemplate how it might feel looking back and reflecting at one's life from one's deathbed. The conclusion I am often drawn to is that living a meaningful life would give one more peace in their death bed than living a life of 'happiness' or 'success'. I think positively contributing to making the world a better place (e.g. reduce human suffering) would be the ultimate meaning that one could give to that gap in time between their birth and their death. I would be very eager to read Prof RPW's take on this.
Great comment, s.w. - but I'm conflicted over the use of the words "important" and "mediocre." Mediocrity is in the eye of the beholder - or something like that; I'm not sure.
I get a bad feeling when I catch myself dividing others' lives into the important/noteworthy/meaningful on the one hand, and the opposites of these on the other.
But part of me also senses a bit of insincerity on my part when I say that! When I look at the life, for instance, of a person who has to spend long hours toiling and exhausting themselves at some unrewarding and relentlessly boring or stressful job (or more than one such job), and expend most of their remaining energy on some troublesome family obligations, with any variety of social/personal problems, etc. - my response is to be relieved that my life doesn't look like theirs. But it's also clear to me that my way of life is, in certain ways, deeply unappealing, even pitiful, in the eyes of many people who are accustomed to their ways of life. (A family member once told me he'd rather shovel shit than read what I love to read.)
Some of the dissonance here can be cleared up by distinguishing between people themselves and their circumstances. (That distinction breaks down at a certain point, because character and circumstances can be mutually informative.) And also by reminding oneself that the culture's (and individual's) criteria for "important achievements" can be pretty arbitrary and dumb, and unfairly exclusionary. I want to say that everyone is/does something worthy of acknowledgement, respect, and admiration on the part of some person or another (provided circumstances are friendly) - everyone, so to speak, deserves some words of praise in their obituary. But again... (Not to mention the fact that everyone can immediately think of exceptions to this!)
I guess it's hard to see one's way out of this. Egalitarianism feels pretty insincere at times, but elitism feels repulsive. It seems the best I can do is plug some wishy-washy relativism - or in certain moods, a good-humored nihilism; like Plato said, "Nothing human is truly important. Nevertheless..."
Again, great comment, and I'd welcome your thoughts on how to sort this confusion out.
Michael,
Maybe from the God's eye viewpoint or that of the universe, nothing human is truly important, but from the viewpoint of the probably readers of this blog, Professor Wolff's achievements matter.
There undoubtedly are people who would rather shovel shit than write what Professor Wolff has written and those are their values, but once again, they aren't my values nor those of those who read this blog.
Each individual life should have an "architecture of serendipity" (Cass Sunstein term) rather than be subject to a mechanical algorithm, so the accidental coincidences which constitute any human lives between their birth and death dates are experienced personally as surprises but then remembered as locked into their time frame.
This week I am teaching Charles Mills (1951-2021) as oppositional political theorist to Rawls and the whiteness of political philosophy. I idealize the way that Mills incorporated stand up comedy moves into his arguments against Rawls, questioning everything as ridiculous, and then in the end as a punchline to all this opposition, settling back into figuring out a way to reform constitutional liberal democracies and their procedural/dialectical justice. So Mills was determined by his extreme opposition to Rawls to see some truth in it, and found enough overlapping consensus with the general Rawls project to consolidate his historical continuity with the world of pure coincidences.
I am also working on a Todd Gitlin (1943-2022) lecture regarding the future of the news industry and universities in the age of unreason. Gitlin was a fascinating writer thrown into the Sixties counter-culture in American universities and became a prime observer and witness to the distortions of mass media in respect to the New Left. His writing about Students for a Democratic Society is carefully referenced and research, no bullshit reminiscences or tall tales, but respectful of journalistic standards of truthfulness. His confessions are balanced with enough irony and wariness of ideology that readers see through him to the subject at hand, which is not his identity or self-consciousness.
In his book, What Kind of Creatures Are We?, Chomsky refers to medical research on the phenomena of the "Second brain," which is the part of nervous system not including brain and spinal chord, and is thought to have some function in containing the vast and rapid interior dialogue or self-consciousness related (a memory specialist would probably say memory only occurs in the brain areas, but the whole system is connected so they don't know). It is true that each one of us has a torrent of memories or system of recollecting a life's meaning that gets worked up into a kind of bonfire of accidental coincidences and then...? It all burns out and turns back to ash and star dust like the songs say.
I am worried about Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher who teaches at Kyiv Mohlya Academy, trying to survive being locked into the time when Putin invaded his country. He wrote on his Twitter account, March 19, 2022: "When your city is hit by a missile, you are helpless. You don't hear any noise of approaching missile, you can't predict it, and a second before a strike you are unaware of it. You can be watching TV, reading, sleeping & be dead in the next moment. That's the reality of this war." All of us are children of time, prisoners of time, and would be philosophers of time, but we never escape its cold dead hand determinations. We are beings locked into times we cannot control by peoples and forces that do not care what we think or how a just society should work and live.
I lived from 1960 to 1978 on NATO air force bases in Canada because my father worked for the Canadian air force as technician. When I see Russia and NATO facing off in the international geo-political crisis of the century, I feel I am falling back into this childhood frame of the evil empire that wants to destroy world freedom at any cost narrative. I don't profess to be being biased I just confess to it. And that is how dialectical philosophy eats its own tale.
Rob, I can envy your career, which at the least produced words and students to live on past your bodily existence. In my own case I'm pretty sure that none of the software I've written is still in use, other than some little things I wrote for my own use.
But I conceive life as a relay race, and having passed the torch (or baton) I allow myself to rest, reasonably proud of the lap I ran. I've also found "Leaf By Niggle" by JRRT a great comfort, without subscribing to its imaginary theological finish.
Post a Comment