I’m currently charting some future readings I plan to do, with some hypotheses in mind. The idea is to look at the noble lie in the Republic, to compare that with Leninist accounts of “trade union consciousness”, and bad marxist stuff on productive vs unproductive labor.
In my neophyte understanding, the sense I have of a noble lie is that it’s something one encourages others to believe because of the effects one expects that belief will have. Friends tell me that this line of thinking is present among US neoconservatives, via Leo Strauss’s influence.
Yet another permutation on the problem I have with Hardt and Negri is bound up with this - it seems to me that HN produce a story about present capacities by laying out a noble lie of prior incapacity that changes (during the passage to postfordism) into a present capacity. They may really believe this, but that’s not the point. In some ways, I think this goes on all over the place - many philosophers used an image of animals to produce an image of humans by contrast (and to sneak a political agenda in behind folks’ backs). I don’t know the history of early socialism well enough, but I’d speculate that this is one function played by the insistence on productive labor’s primacy (bound up, of course, with the production of something called productive labor and something called unproductive labor). Another function was to push forward a certain hegemonic sector and its (its representatives’) interests.
Along with this, other concepts for future research - enabling fictions and regulative ideas.
I happened to glance through a book by Richard Rorty again the other day. He has such a singular absence of political imagination, I’d forgotten about that, it made me tired and lifeless almost immediately. But his deflationary theoretical moves are poetry in motion. At one point he makes some remark (I believe in a lecture on postmodernism and politics) about how we shouldn’t be afraid to have incompatible theoretical perspectives on hand as tools, as long as they work well for us. I’m enough of a rationalist to not like the ‘incompatible’ talk - I don’t want to use a tool that rules another out, that still bothers me - but I like the basic point of not feeling a need to get all the details into one account.
Alongside Rorty, I also started the book Punching Out by Martin Glaberman. There’s a bit on how US workers in the second world war voted for a no-strike pledge in their unions, and yet at work there were a number of wildcats in direct contravention to the no-strike pledge. The important point is not only that people can change their minds, and that people can be of two minds in the sense of ambivalence, but even more so that people are capable of directly contradicting themselves and holding incompatible ideas. As much as I don’t want to do that, I do like the recognition that people can do that, and sometimes it’s better that one does (better to strike against a bad contract provision you voted for then to go along with it because you voted for it). If one doesn’t recognize that I don’t see how can avoid becoming either reductively materialist/physicalist (ideas mechanically follow social conditions/the body) or idealist/mentalist (social conditions/the body/actions follow directly from ideas and the mind - ie, thinking people are propositional machines such that the chief political goal is to inculcate certain beliefs into people so that their actions will then follow suit). Against both poles, I’ve been meaning to go back and really read Davidson, the little bit I know about his work on anomalous monism seems relevant here.
In any case, I wonder if one could say Plato recognized some of this - the noble lie wasn’t just an idea in a vacuum, it had an attendant plan for social organization which included a plan to propagate the lie, and I imagine a plan for how to handle those who didn’t believe the lie (or who didn’t act as if they believe the lie, which is effectively the same thing if viewed from the top down), similarly for the Bolsheviks.
None of this is to say that ideas etc aren’t important. They are. Especially if they’re being used as weapons (a la the noble lie of incapacity etc) - it’s important to try and parry every blow. But it’s also important to try to hit back, and I’m not sure one wants to deduce how to do that only by copying the blows that are still raining down. That is, there’s a difference between engaging defensively with the ideas and stories (and I should say, practices as well, not ideas in the abstract - I’m thinking of a remark by Staughton Lynd at the IWW Centenary, he said that the law is not a weapon for workers, at best it’s just a shield. Given the state of things, one can’t be blaimed for wanting shields like the NLRA etc, but they have to be seen for what they are and used carefully and thoughtfully) used as weapons against us, and trying to attack offensively. My aims in the research project I’ve mentioned - sloppily - here is just to try and look at some mistakes along these lines, it’s not a claim to have great ideas for new weapons.
you range wide and free in this post - to go back to the title though, whether someone knows something is the truth or not is what makes it a lie. This is brought out interestingly in Adam Curtis’s somewhat dubious BBC documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares’, which I think is still freely available online, about how the neo-con neo-Straussians have forgotten that they were lying about God and freeing people by killing them and now actually believe their own propaganda.
Comment by mark — November 13, 2005 @ 4:18 am
Hi Mark,
It’s true, I’m a wanderer. I roam around. The blog is largely a collection of notes to self, which is the type of thing I’m best at writing really, though written in occasional attempt to practice writing a little better. It’s quite nice to get some engagement from others like yourself, though, helps me make some shortcuts to better ideas and to other things to think and read about (that sounds insincere when I read it, I hope it’s clear that I mean it).
I’ll have to check out that documentary, thanks. I’m not particularly invested in the term ‘lie’. One could argue (Harry Frankfurt does) that a liar is someone who deliberately tries to convince someone else of a belief that the liar holds to be false. That’s a useful distinction on the everyday level of telling truths and lies among friends and loved ones, but there’s a sense in which a sincere fundamentalist who deliberately instills a believed falsity and an insincere professor who inadvertently instills an unbelieved falsity are also lying, in the sense of being ideologists. And really for me it’s not the truth or falsity that’s interesting, it’s the effects or uses of the belief.
I think that what you say about forgetful Straussians applies to a lot of marxists as well. Tzuchien tells me that Hannah Arendt talks about this stuff, which is unfortunate as my impression is that she’s kind of annoying and now I’ve got a reason to read her. Ah well.
On this forgetfulness thing, one more thing - I’m generally predisposed to think of psychoanalysis as stupid and useless. And yet, in this context I wonder if I’m being a little hasty, as the psychoanalytic stuff might be useful for understanding the ways people react so strongly to challenges to things they’re emotionally invested in (I think this is part of the shrillness from some quarters about Negri, some professors feel threatened that others are getting to Marx without buying tickets and passing through the approved entrances). People who forget that their lies are lies can become invested in them, and then have a vested interest in continuing to believe, to the point of taking action against would be truths that offer possible challenges. For instance, labor bureaucrats who believe, at least some of the time, that the rank and file are genuinely stupid and in need of guidance, or that sacrificing certain live for greater good is worth it (I’ve been reading this Stan Weir book where’s there some stuff about him and some other longshore workers getting fucked over by Harry Bridges so this is even more on my mind lately). The will to believe can make one tie oneself into knots and to lash out in the process. This happened a lot in my undergrad at a lutheran college…
I got into an argument once with a christian professor who got completely tied into a knot by taking the following bits from Paul - 1. salvation is accessed via becoming christian 2. the Jews will be saved - and the well-intentioned PC belief that 3. it is disrespectful and possibly anti-semitic to say either of the Jews will be damned or the Jews will become christian, and that this is not in keeping with the idea the Jews being the chosen people. I was very comfortable to say that the only conclusions possible will be that one of the premisses has to to go and that this was not a problem for those of us who weren’t invested in the stupid religion in the first place. It ended with the professor getting very upset and shouting “but they’re the chosen people!” and my becoming quite nervous about my grade. I think the same degree of shrillness and possibility of retaliation comes up when beliefs in the free market or in the historical destiny of the proletariat get pushed on properly. (David McInerney once told me a story about someone on an email list threatening to beat him up because he was using Althusserian arguments to undermine attempts to recruit others for a humanist marxism.)
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 13, 2005 @ 6:50 pm
I’m not sure it would be possible for me to agree with your last paragraph more.
I’m inclined to say, forget Davidson and read Althusser and forget Arendt and read Zizek. I am quite scared by the recent resurgence within continental circles, basically ultra-liberal hippie shit like Arendt and Levinas, these ‘can’t we all just get along?’ philosophers.
Comment by mark — November 13, 2005 @ 7:49 pm
I like Rorty up to a point. He’s got a real way with words. I love his injunction to keep an open mind, but not let the brains fail out. That’s pretty special. He also said that if Derrida’s fans really liked rhetoric, they would never read Derrida, who is such an abysmal writer, especially in translation. Rorty’s early writing - I’m thinking of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature - is brilliant. But he is actually very conservative politically, except for the fact that this is like the ultimate insult, I’d say he’s something of a Democrat. I though the book he wrote about ‘radicals’ was such a waste of space - he goes on ad nauseum about how ‘radicals’ have been barking up the wrong tree with their calls for revolution, when they should have fought for form. It’s nice and well phrase, but that’s about all he really says. Absent from this is any sense of the scale of the things ‘radicals’ are fighting; the book has almost not reference to the awesome crimes of the US elite, it’s just an exercise in handwringing.
(…)
Mark must be joking that Levinas, a racist, is a ‘hippy..can’t we all get along’ philosopher. Why anyone would waste time reading Zizek is completely beyond me. He’s just a professional controversialist who’s figured out how to tug on the right strings with the wannabe radical intelligentsia. And Althusser? Why? It’s deeply mysterious to me what on earth people see in him. It’s so tiresome how people go on about the evils of liberalism, generally its hypocrisies, and then turn around and support either the liberalism by stealth, or the hypocrisy. What some people want is a huge erection.
Comment by Ghost of the Machine — November 14, 2005 @ 4:19 am
I’ve got a chapter in my thesis about Rorty and his absurd claim that ‘capitalism’ no longer has any meaning as a term after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I like him though, because it proves it’s possible to be a superstar academic with a few basic opinions and no real intellectual ability.
I don’t really get the huge erection part, but Levinas is your classic liberal Zionist, who goes on about how everyone would love each other if only the conditions were right and then proceeds to support the Jewish state, regardless of what atrocities it commits in perpetuating itself. So yeah, he’s a racist because he’s a hippie and vice versa, although I suspect you might find that view uncomfortably complicated given your dislike for Zizek.
Comment by mark — November 14, 2005 @ 6:23 am
Mark, you’re wrong about Rorty. He’s got tremendous intellectual ability - he’s great for good turns of phrase, he’s basically right on most of his deflationary philosophical moves, and he’s great at making tremendously diverse and complicated bodies of work contiguous and accessible. The problem is really that he’s got no imagination, and is the class enemy.
I’m not convinced about Zizek or Althusser, but they are on the infinite reading list, closer to the top than most. As for Arendt and Levinas, I can’t comment, I don’t know either very well and have found my brushes with both kind of annoying. I’m certainly against any kind “can’t we all just get along”, as I don’t think that can happen, certainly not without re-education camps.
Thiago, I don’t understand the erection thing, what do you mean? (This may just be that I don’t understand because I don’t have time for those, myself, I barely make time to sleep.)
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 15, 2005 @ 5:10 am
I actaully read an article by Rorty today (from twenty years ago). I couldn’t believe it: the guy just veers from topic to topic, making a good point before saying something completely untrue (like ‘Foucault is a self-proclaimed anarchist’ in this case). There was barely any referencing - the whole thing was just an informal rant. And this article, ‘Foucault’s Epistemology’ has been printed and reprinted all over the place. Seriously, the guy just exists to make reductio ad absurdam statements, which are then cited by all and sundry when they need a windmill to tilt at and thus the guy tops every citation index. Yeah, he writes well, but as befits someone who doesn’t believe in philosophy, his work has no content.
Comment by mark — November 15, 2005 @ 1:52 pm
hey Mark,
I’m not particularly invested in Rorty, beyond his providing me with two moves I enjoy - the ‘analytic’ power play in a continental setting, and the disjunctive ‘quote a liberal’ power play (quoting nazis is passe) - and his having been a useful moment in my growing up (like straightedge hardcore - I’ll always have a softspot for Youth of Today), so I’m also not invested in convincing you about him. I do think his Philosophical Papers are quite good, especially volume 3, as is Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. He certainly does have more than his share of bad moments too though, like defending the CIA, valorizing bureaucrats, etc.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 15, 2005 @ 9:03 pm
Hmm, the huge erection bit? It’s the attraction of Zizek, meaning what attracts people to him and also a prime function in his thought. Look at his heroes: Lacan, Lenin, St. Paul. Note something in common? Yes, they are all big dicks. But more seriously, they are nasty people who don’t want to strike compromises, but pull up their sleaves and get dirty. It’s so fucking predictable.
The problem with Levinas, other than his obscurantism, is his astonishing racism, which you touched on. He states, effectively, oh, we must like the Other, but Palestinians, woah! don’t go crazy! That’s TOO other…
The solution to this is not to go: yes! racism is there! let’s not pretend we are racists! Meaning, in fact, that this will be a way of conquering and overcoming racism. That’s exactly the same argument the liberalists make, plus a commitment to doing something about it. That commitment is supposedly there with the liberals, so it is redundant, and most of the argument is actually boilerplate.
Rorty really is spectacularly vacuous the moment he starts talking about politics. He was a truly brilliant writer at first, his philosophical stuff, which I almost entirely disagree with, is without question the key point of reference for the entire receptionof Heidegger in the US in the 1980s, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. He showed that there was a reading of continental philosophy that went a long way towards meeting Quine and Davidson - possibly this was a misreading of everything, but the influence and originality of this cannot be underestimated.
Comment by Ghostf of the Machine — November 16, 2005 @ 4:40 am
In my neophyte understanding, the sense I have of a noble lie is that it’s something one encourages others to believe because of the effects one expects that belief will have. Friends tell me that this line of thinking is present among US neoconservatives, via Leo Strauss’s influence.
The “Nobel Lie”, as taken up by Straussians, is that although there is no legitimate and just basis to any regime (as they put it), nonetheless, every regime needs a basis and it must be just and legitimate — even if it is a tyranny. God, for instance, as the guarantor of justice. All real Straussians are both atheists and firm believers in the necessity of a just God.
Comment by Craig — November 16, 2005 @ 6:30 pm
hi Craig,
Thanks for this. I’m not up on Strauss(ians), everything I have on that front comes second or third-hand. One of my best friends tells me that whenever he goes to Hyde Park in Chicago, where University of Chicago is located, he feels paranoid that Straussians are watching his every move and will pounce upon him. I think he means it only partially as a joke. I’ll have to add Strauss and the swine in power who use him to my infinite reading list, somewhere about the middle or upper third. Another friend tells me about something called ‘the esoteric doctrine’, which I think means something like a distinction between public statements and statements made within in-group planning meetings. That seems dangerously close to conspiracy theorizing (dangerous for me, I mean, because I love conspiracy theories). Googling turned up this link, which includes info on a group for Anglican priests who don’t believe in god. Weird.
http://www.eclipse.co.uk/thoughts/noblelie.htm
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 20, 2005 @ 3:13 am
At Carleton University, where I did my undergrad and M.A., in Political Science, there were three “political theorists”. One, Waller Newell, is a dyed-in-the-wool-former-student-Bloom’s Straussian. Another, Tom Darby, is a Kojevean. And the last, Pete Emberley, is a Voegelinian. In other words, all three of the major schools of ultra-conservative political philosophy in North America. What separates them from, say those at Chicago (with respect to the US) or Calgary (with respect to Canada), is that while they have no power, they think they do. Pathetic, really. A highly delusional bunch, to say the least. And, about them, the less said, the better.
Oh: they all deny that there is a Straussian conspiracy. Having said that, a guy knew was upset that he wouldn’t get to study with Stanley Rosen because “our school had already filled our quota to Boston”. Whatever that means!
The exoteric/esoteric doctrine is much more insidious than this. And insulting. The basic idea is that the Great Men of philosophy knew the truth of the Noble Lie, but if they told anyone, they’d be killed. Philosophy, done properly, is something dangerous to “the City” and to “the Philosopher”. So, that wisdom has to be kept secret.
But, at the same time, it wasn’t like, say, Newton, Galileo, and Montesquieu regularly talked to one another. So, they came up with this great idea (one that all the great Philosophers know, of course) is that they have to write books and distribute them. But, the problem is that the rabble can get ahold of these books and they will read them.
But, the good nes is that because they are the rabble, they won’t have a fucking clue what the book is about. Well, that’s not entirely true. Each book will contain two lessons: the esoteric and the exoteric. The exoteric is what the man-on-the-street will understand. Say, “democracy is great!”. But they won’t get the esoteric teaching. Say, “democracy is great [because it makes it safe for us to philosophize]”.
The idea being that the smart people know how to read between the lines — literally; they use that cliche (and believe it!) — while dumb people don’t.
That’s why all their books are so boring: it’s all pointless exegesis! And, I think (but I’m not positive), membership into the club is by writing an exegesis of either Statesman or Symposium.
Comment by Craig — November 20, 2005 @ 3:36 am
hi Craig,
Thanks for this. Very interesting stuff. Can you recommend a source or two (preferably an easy one)? This is quite interesting to me because my interest in this Plato stuff is at least in part a hope to develop a roundabout attack on a certain sensibility within some marxists and other political theorists (or at a minimum my own tendencies to occasionaly have this sensibility), the basic point of which is basically the assumption that some people are dumb. In a sense, the exoteric/esoteric thing is something some marxists do a lot, where the text to be read is reality/the objective situation/class relations etc. The idea of workers being limited to ‘trade union consciousness’ basically says that workers may understand the exoteric content of the capital relation, but not the esoteric content - which requires (and this requirement authorizes) the vanguard party etc. In some ways this version even more insulting than the doctrine applied to classic works of philosophjy, because this version says that workers can’t read the workplaces their in and their own experiences.
This is not to say that everyone already has something like ‘revolutionary consciousness’ (whatever that would be) but that the differences between when/where it exists and doesn’t exist is not one of a special quality inherent in some people/social functions. At least that’s the hypothesis.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 20, 2005 @ 9:50 pm
For general “What is a Straussian” style stuff, see:
Rosen, Stanley Hermeneutics as Politics, Oxford UP: 1987.
Strauss, Leo Persecution and the Art of Writing, Free Press: 1952. [The text on esoteric/exoteric writing.]
Strauss, Leo Natural Right and History, U. Chicago Press: 1953. [The Straussian text.]
Strauss, Leo “What is Political Philosophy?” in What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies, Free Press: 1959.
Rosen has written monographs on, at least, Sophist, Statesman, and Symposium. I don’t exactly follow his work. Alan Bloom, of course, translated Republic and included an extensive set of notes and an interpretative essay.
Other key words to look for are “quarrel between ancients and moderns” and “quarrel between philosophy and poetery”. Conveniently, Rosen has a book on each.
As you might expect, Straussians love ancient philosophy (they call it “wisdom”) and hate modern philosophy (they call it “science”). There’s a couple people they’ll exclude from the list of hated moderns — Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, mainly — and, obviously, themselves. But, overall, there’s Plato and then there’s everyone else. Even Aristotle is a degradation of Plato. (This is, partially, why Arendt loves Aristotle so much: to separate herself from the Straussians.)
For a glowing hard-on of Straussians, see Tom Darby’s essay in Faith, Reason and Political Life Today, Peter Augustine Lawlor and Dale McConkey (eds), Lexington Books: 2001.
For something critical on Strauss and Straussians, see:
Drury, Shadia The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Macmillan: 1988.
Drury, Shadia Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin’s: 1997.
See also Claude Lefort “The Question of Democracy” in Democracy and Political Theory, Polity Press: 1988, which can be read (but isn’t) as a reply to Strauss’ “What is Political Philosophy?”.
Comment by Craig — November 21, 2005 @ 3:54 am