In response to my latest post, David Zimmerman asks “Your two intellectual mentors, Kant and Marx, agreed about virtually nothing, transcendental rationalist vs. historical materialist, arch-universal-moralist vs. deep sceptic about the very idea of morality as an animating idea in our lives, and so on down the line, I think. So, how do you find it possible to avoid cognitive dissonance in finding inspiration in such contradicting ideas?”
An interesting question, in response to which I can perhaps
make clearer the nature of my engagement with those texts. I do not find
inspiration reading The Critique of Pure Reason, and I am not even quite sure
that I would describe myself as finding inspiration in reading Capital, although
perhaps I come closer in that case. Rather, in both books I find deep, complex,
powerful ideas that seize me and demand that I come to understand them in such
a way that I can make them clear and simple and beautiful to myself and to my
readers or students. It may sound odd to describe my response to these texts as
aesthetic but there is a powerful element of that present.
When I first read the Critique and particularly the
Transcendental Analytic, I felt that I was in the presence of the most powerful
mind I have ever encountered. I needed to struggle with the text, to compel it
to give up its secret to me, to replace its contradictions and unclarities with
a pure, simple argument that began with a premise that seemed virtually
undeniable and arrived at an extraordinary and powerful conclusion.
My engagement with Capital was different and more complex
because it is, I believe, a more powerful and complex text than the
Critique. I needed not only to make its central argument clear and coherent to me, but also to explain to myself why
Marx was compelled to write the opening chapters in the extraordinary fashion
that he chose. When I read the book for the second time in 1976, I had what I
can only describe as an éclaircissement,
an intuition, a revelation, the working out of which took me most of the next
decade.
My struggles with these two texts were the two most exciting,
demanding, and rewarding intellectual experiences of my life. I think one could
describe this as finding inspiration in them but not in the sense of being
inspired by them to act in a certain way or to adopt certain principles. In each case when my struggle was concluded,
I had something that I found beautiful and deeply satisfying. Perhaps that is
why I was not interested really in responding to critics or engaging with
readers who have found other things in those texts.
Does any of this makes sense? I hope so.
4 comments:
Yes, it makes sense.
It's almost like an aesthetic experience to you.
No one could say that my experience of Beethoven's 9th Symphony contradicts my experience of
Bach's Saint Matthew's Passion even though they are very different musically and are rooted in very different philosophies.
I won't be able to track down the exact quote or its source, but I once read a description of Kant as "wrong, but fascinating," and Husserl as the opposite - in both respects. Wish I could find it.
But yes, I think what you're saying does make sense. I don't share the judgment of whoever it is I'm trying to quote - except for the part about Kant being fascinating; otherwise, I've almost given up on trying to evaluate the great philosophers in terms of truth and error. For me the greater draw of philosophy is that it promises a better sense of what worldviews or intellectual/ideological orientations are possible, of what it might look like to explore those possibilities as far as the limits of human intelligence allow, and of what it might look like when the master explorers struggle to communicate their experiences in a language we can understand. I doubt I'll ever be in a place to decide which philosopher "got it right." (On the other hand, I might decide one day that I've been shirking my duty. William Ernest Hocking said somewhere that we need a philosophy like we need a house to live in.)
Or am I misunderstanding - would you say you see truth as well as beauty in Kant's philosophy?
Professor Wolff:
Thank you for your answer to my question.
It not only makes sense... it is eloquent.
I have frequently found it difficult to achieve the stance toward philosophers whose views I find uncongenial that you have taken over the years toward Kant and Marx, namely, to admire their depth and complexity to the point of devoting much time and intellectual energy to studying and teaching them, all the while recognizing that there is much in them that one rejects. This stance exemplifies a kind of intellectual integrity that the more dialectically-driven in the philosophical community [yours truly among them] find difficult to sustain.
Cheers.
The commonly held view that Kant and Marx exhibit antithetical attitudes is evidence of lack; namely, of a much needed scholarly framework within which to gather together their underlying similarities. Fortunately, NYU’s Arthur Fleeber succeeds in his eponymous treatise to mitigate this pernicious Gestell poverty in Guns and Provolone (1990).
https://youtu.be/U1Tj0oviXY0
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