Let me say a bit more about the Peretz/Walzer story, by way of clarification. When I got the call from the New York-based political scientist, I had not talked to Mike for perhaps 10 years – really not since I left Harvard in 1961 to go to the University of Chicago. There is no reason for this, I just had not kept up with him. I did not abruptly hang up on him. It was such a painful and embarrassing moment that we said a few meaningless things and got off the phone. He was obviously deeply uncomfortable. The next time I saw Mike (but did not talk to him) was in 2010 at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Social Studies program. I think I have written at some length about that experience, which was marred by the fact that shortly before the event, Peretz had made some appalling comments about the Palestinians, which outraged the undergraduates at Harvard who called into question the appropriateness of Harvard accepting a fund of money that had been raised in Peretz’s honor for some sort of Harvard scholarship fund. Some years later, I wrote to Walzer trying to patch things up but it was not a very successful overture and did not lead to anything of significance.
I read the piece by Peretz that was linked to. Let us just
say that that is why I am glad I was not kept at Harvard and why I left
Columbia in 1971. Here at Carolina Meadows there are several places where one
can eat dinner. Susie and I always go to the Pub, which is informal and where
there is no dress code. Right next to it is The Courtyard, where at least in
theory men are supposed to wear ties and jackets. The food is exactly the same,
although the service is to be sure a trifle fancier, but I have felt
uncomfortable on the several occasions when I have eaten there – rather oddly,
I feel as though I am getting above myself. Make of that which you will.
I'm going to hold off reading Peretz's autobiography until after my lobotomy; in the meantime I'll go back and re-read Alexander Cockburn's thousand or so jabs at Marty. Jeffrey Herf has a comprehensive review-summary in Quillette; the professor is mentioned half-way through as one of the founders of the Social Studies at Harvard program: https://quillette.com/2023/07/10/a-life-in-the-fray/
ReplyDeleteKudos to John Rapko for the line of the day:
ReplyDelete"I'm going to hold off reading Peretz's autobiography until after my lobotomy...."
Nice.
This notion that Peretz was a Harvard man par excellence, I can grasp, and I know that Peretz set The New Republic’s editorial line, particularly when it came to Israel, and used his magazine as a pro-Israel voice in Washington and, looking this up, I find that it was in 1975, that Peretz bought The New Republic magazine. We might say 'the Democratic Party and Harvard University', and then, if I'm not mistaken, Peretz is hostile to the Clintons and Obama and isn’t enamored with the Biden administration.
ReplyDeleteI would hesitate to judge any American philosophers simply on which of 2 finalists for president they would strategically vote for, given how bad the choices have become in democracy incorporated. I have also developed an allergy to confessional philosophy in general as it is done in identity politics and how confessions or autobiographies and memoirs of writers/philosophers become more important than whatever arguments they create and develop as traditional philosophers. Walzer in his old age may well still regret voting for Nixon rather than not voting at all, any supporter of Israel which still appears to be a failed state would have many such regrets.
ReplyDeleteI have learned much more from Walzer's books such as Spheres of Justice, which is the best anti-theory of justice and genuinely unsystematic (like Adorno). His other books such as The Company of Critics, or Interpretation and Social Criticism, showed how to apply hermeneutics to reading the history of democracy and pay attention to the contradictory legacies of our civilization in a way similar to Isaiah Berlin. I am not sure if he is still giving public lectures, but Walzer appears on YouTube, and his lecture on "Global and Local Justice" reiterates this combination of relativistic philosophy which would trap him into supporting Israel and a non-relativistic global philosophy which would give him some other way to weasel out of his endless ethnocentrism. Here is a link to his video on justice from NYU School of Law, 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TebpP5x20Zs&t=1729s&ab_channel=NYUSchoolofLaw
Walzer is a living contradiction but since he is now age 88, soon he will be no more supporter of Israel and meet his intellectual dead end.
Walzer, who disbelieves that (invented general or transcendental) universal moral principles (of justice) can help solve the distributive problems. I guess we might say that we ain't doing philosophy and building the theory of justice -- a general and impartial theory of justice, which is ahistorical in nature and is universally applicable. I'm thinking that in that case, what moral and political philosophers have to do is .. what?
ReplyDeleteI used to find it odd that he's also the guy who produced 'Just and Unjust Wars', widely acclaimed, and here you get a unitary theory of international justice, designed to help you see clearly which wars are just and which are not. Also, we know that this is a co-editor of the democratic socialist journal Dissent for nearly half a century.
I think I can grasp a certain disillusionment with the philosophical style of the Grand Theory. But, how can he? Superficially, I doubt it that he is actually doing this.