普特南：以同情和質疑為人生指南（英文原版）下

原標題：普特南：以同情和質疑為人生指南（英文原版）下

hilary putnam: compassion and questioning as a guide to life

By Alan Gilbert.

接今日上一篇

So I. Milton Sachs』s and the government』s 「leopard spot program,」 cordoning off peasants on burned out land, was a further echo. Cox was looking for Hilary after that event, but perhaps, he, as Robert MacNamara – see MacNamara』s worries about bombing civilians in Japan in the film Fog of War – or McGeorge Bundy, were haunted by the crimes they had done. With the staggering onward of American leaders into ever new wars, with the threat of destroying life on the planet through climate change and war, an increasingly visceral and visible thing all around us, it is no small matter, spiritually, to do such things.

Hillary also kept up the brilliant arguments about the racism of Herrnstein and James Q Wilson, Crime and Human Nature (Herrnstein』s foray on behalf of injustice before The Bell Curve).They assert toward the end of their 500 page book that there is insufficient evidence to evaluate any of the theories of genetic/racial differences – i.e. 「body type differences,」 racial profiling – in crime (these have long been remarkably awful and corrupt theories, but never mind…). Nonetheless, they say, the claim 「cannot be plausibly rejected」 because of the number of arguments for it that have been made. And in Herrnstein』s 4 page report to police chiefs delivered for the 「Justice」 Department/funded by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, he says, the claim is 「probably true.」 This is no trivial matter since the harassment of black and brown folks is a huge police and judicial practice – 2.3 million prisoners, 25% of the world』s prisoners, a majority black and brown, in American prisons (Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow) – and most recently, from the murder of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown on, Black Lives Matter has become both a just slogan and a mass organization against assassinations by police. Herrnstein』s and Wilson』s is a bigoted and evil argument (to advance this directly to police chiefs may be the worst single thing that Herrnstein did – though, sadly, there are competitors…).

Hilary underlines the faulty logical structure here: there is insufficient evidence, these two social 「scientists」 say, to evaluate the claim. Nonetheless, the claim is probably true because there are 4 arguments which purport to support it. This 「influential」 500 page tome – a lengthy flimflam or the Emperor』s New Clothes – was intellectually destroyed by brief attention to argument.

When Hilary began reading my writing on Plato, he liked it generally, but cautioned me that the 「beautiful city」 in the Republic is more like an ashram than a modern fascist regime (I agree with that, but convinced him that this weak-minded militarist sort of ashram was also a satire), and warned me to be careful about whether Plato wrote The Seventh Letter (Kant as well as one of Hilary』s colleagues, Gisela Striker, thought the author wasn』t Plato). See here. I showed, I think, why the style of argument, particular the metaphors, was probably Plato』s For instance, Dion convinced Plato that he would, as a philosopher, be but a shadow if he did not journey far to Syracuse, speaking to him in the voice of philosophy, as 「the laws」 speak in the Crito. But I worried a lot about my interpretation.

I had recently learned from Leo Strauss in discovering that Plato seemed to hint at a philosophical tyranny in the Republic (the regimes go down from philosopher ruler to tyrant, but do not explicitly circle back, I had long noticed). The Seventh Letter too, describes an attempt to counsel the young tyrant of Syracuse, except that the whole text rejects, point blank, the experiment, Plato being imprisoned and enslaved by Dionysius, Plato』s best student Dion winning out and becoming – though it is not said – an actual philosopher-king, but then murdered almost immediately by a seeming 「friend」 from Athens.

Nonetheless, I thought Strauss always distorted or ignored the significance of Socrates』s questioning (and, of course, is a brilliant cryptographer, but could not argue his way out of a paper bag). For there is no evidence in the Apology that Socrates seeks the rule of a philosopher-tyrant – one who makes decisions without laws – and Socrates seemed to me, in practice, by going to his death, however critical of the views of 「the many,」 to defend a democracy which tolerated questioning, which allowed deliberation, dissent and the possibility of a common good. But I initially thought Plato, scorning a democracy which had put his teacher to death, was, understandably if unattractively, an authoritarian reactionary.

In this, I was moved by the question: what did Plato mean his students (or future, close readers) to get out of his some 35-40 dialogues? Why does he seemingly remove philosophy, in this way (the initial Academe…), from Athens where Socrates had practiced it in the market-place? What did students do, some, as Aristotle, in the Academy for 20 years, if not debate the dialogues line by line…

In addition, some of these students ended up on opposite sides in deadly political conflict – Demosthenes, a defender of Athens and opponent of Phillip of Macedon, wrote Phillipics; he was murdered in a Temple by Alexander, who was counseled by Aristotle. After 20 years as a brilliant student, Aristotle was not made head of the Academy when Plato died, and founded his own. There is thus a pretty sharp which side are you on question here, which requires deep insight into what a dialogue is (Plato is like a playwright and not the character 「Socrates」) as well as what motivates Plato』s complex thinking in creating the dialogues.

But then, I considered more deeply Plato』s affection for Socrates. It was extremely unlikely that 「writing Socrates,」 as it were, Plato really meant, even if the dialogues suggest incomplete arguments often and sometimes deliberately weak ones, that Plato was really for philosophical tyranny against his teacher (see 「Socrates worst argument ever: philosophers and barking dogs」 here).

I did a lot of thinking about this and, again, changed my view some five years ago (see here, here and here). Hilary asked me why (see here). I said: I couldn』t see Plato being a fundamental opponent of Socrates. I gave a lot of evidence that the city in speech is Glaucon』s city, not Socrates. See here. Such a city comes out of an argument shifted by Glaucon』s interjections; he wants relishes, not a city of pigs (the Pythagorean city which Socrates was beginning to sketch – see here), and thus, a city of luxury (though this vanishes for guardians) and war…

If one asks simply: could a Socrates come to exist in the city in speech, a city where all guardians have the same emotions, the same customs (up to the age of 50), it is not likely. In a free Athens, one could question – that and that alone is a great superiority to this seemingly 「philosophical,」 martial alternative. Socrates describes Athens in the Republic as a circle of circles. Philosophical rule perhaps means leadership in a circle of philosophers (who may well be dissenters in the larger city).

Hilary loved this change, I suspect, because it was very Hilary-esque (or Socratic). It comes from living with questions and thinking about them more deeply until a new perspective opens up. Hilary sent some of my arguments on the Republic to other philosophers interested in Plato.

Steve Wagner had the following thought which he had wanted to say to Hilary:

「Regarding Plato』s Republic I will tell you something I had meant to share with Hilary. At a point some years back, not having opened the Republic in many years, thinking I was remembering what 『the city in speech』 meant I instead totally made something up — yet oddly, it strikes me as being in the spirit of Alan Gilbert』s Plato. What I attributed to Plato was this thought:

We will describe a just city, a domain of freedom and love of truth. This city is ideal not just in its perfection but, unfortunately, in the sense of existing nowhere. It may not exist for a very long time. Indeed it may never come to be. Yet it can exist through speech: whenever two or more people come together as free inquirers in the spirit of Socrates, talking philosophy with care both for the argument and for each others』 souls, then and there, as long they converse, is our city. The just life for human beings is something all of us can bring into being through speech, even in the shadows if needed. It can exist everywhere and cannot be destroyed.

I think of Hilary as someone who epitomized the Platonic citizen in my interpretive fantasia. In his presence we lived in the city.」

Hilary also followed the arguments I was making about Heidegger, who, with two of his students, hoped to advise Hitler, and in his 1943, On the Essence of Truth: Plato』s Cave-Metaphor and the Theaetatus, wrote that philosophers set all the rules for the tyrant (h/t Tracy Strong). Hilary wrote to me here about one paragraph of Heidegger』s, endorsing Hitler and a decisive role for philosopher/sycophants in setting Nazi laws and practices, invoking the Republic, which was reprinted on Leiter Reports – here.

A distinguished Oxford translator of Plato then objected that two statements about a philosopher-ruler in the Republic must be what Plato meant – Heidegger, whom he had not read, was right according to a consensus of English philosophers – because no esoteric interpretation of Plato can be true. See here. Note that he gave no argument, except his translation of the sentences, for any of this. In addition, he ignores the entire context of the Republic leading up to this statement about how philosophers must rule which is satirical; understanding that context – reading with the lights on – is not, by itself, esoteric…

Also, he affirmed Heidegger』s judgment of Plato, against Putnam and Gilbert, while ignoring Heidegger』s Nazism. To say that this appeal to Oxonian authority, flamboyant demonstration of moral and philosophical ignorance, and lordly decree against a whole type of interpretation, one that Socrates spells out, for careful readers in Phaedrus (lines 275d-277a) , has no substance is, I am afraid, obvious. The exchange – Hilary called it 「fascinating」 – included many comments, and, in response, I wrote 「Plato and the Consensus-police」 here.

In Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life, Hilary also lectured on and then wrote about 3 and a quarter Jewish authors: Levinas, Rosenzweig, Buber and Wittgenstein (raised as a Christian and not religious, Wittgenstein, Hilary thought, has a deep resonance with Rosenzweig), who work toward the existential experience of the other In his interview with Hilary for Dehak, Yehuda Divan misunderstands Levinas who is responding, as an equal or even asymetically, as less important, to the neediness and suffering of others. For to begin ethically from the face of the other is to begin from a point where empathy is to the fore and killing far away (think of Trump and other racists on immigration or the Israeli government on Palestinians and you will see searingly one aspect of this point). Levinas』s core insight is not un-Jewish or influenced by conversation with Europeans, Hilary rightly says, any more than it is un-Christian, un-Marxian and so forth. Compassion for others as well as wanting everyone to have a decent life, is at the heart of all these forms of thinking (consider what Bernie Sanders says about the main point of his spirituality – Hilary liked Bernie a lot – and you will also hear some commonality):

「YD: At the opening of the fourth chapter, You point out that 『Levinas』s audience is typically a gentile audience』, and that one can understand from Levinas』s words that 『in essence, all human beings are Jews.』 This is not a generalization we would expect a Jew to make. And it』s hard not to notice that the acceptance and forgiveness which stand at the foundation of Levinas』s approach are more suitable to Jesus』s approach rather then to the severity of Judaism. Does Universalism necessarily mean lowering, or removing, the criteria』s?

HP: What Levinas preaches is not 『acceptance and forgiveness』, but something related to but different from these, namely responsiveness to the neediness and suffering of the other. To 「forgive」 someone or 「accept」 someone is already to assume a position of superiority, and Levinas tries to teach us something that people, including certainly Christians, tend to miss: to respond to the needs of others because they are needs, and not for the sake of a principle, or because one thinks that 『Jesus died for our sins』, or even because one thinks 『God commanded me to』. In the Levinasian attitude, one puts oneself at the service of the other, not above him. If this is 「unJewish」, it is equally 「unChristian」, 「unKantian」, 「unUtilitarian」, 「unMarxist」, etc. etc. But we should not want to have only Jewish thinkers who have a teudah [a certificate] that certifies that their thought is 「genuinely Jewish」. I hope you agree!

Re 『universalism』, it was Hillel who said 「ohev et habriot」, perhaps the most universalistic declaration in the whole of Talmud. But let me focus on your closing question, with its reference to the 『kriterionim』:

I don』t know if you are religious or secular, but I know that for most Israelis non-orthodox forms of Judaism (Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and the Chavrutah movement, for example), are all considered 「non-genuine」. (For the typical Israeli atheist, a Reform synagogue isn』t merely a place he doesn』t worship; it doesn』t count as a synagogue at all.) And for such a person, there is, then, such a thing as the 『kriterionim』 for being 『genuine Judaism. All this I regard as harmful prejudice. Instead, I agree with Rosenzweig, when he wrote, 』』It would be necessary [for the person who has succeeded in saying 『nothing Jewish is alien to me』」] to free himself from those stupid claims that would impose 『Judaism』 on him as a canon of definite, circumscribed 『Jewish duties』 (vulgar orthodoxy), or 『Jewish tasks』 (vulgar Zionism), or God forbid 『Jewish ideas』 (vulgar liberalism).」 I don』t believe in kriterionim, and I am not afraid of agreeing with whoever advocates responsiveness to the suffering of others, even if he be a Christian or a Muslim or a Buddhist, or a Marxist. Maimonides, after all, wrote in the introduction to the Eighth Chapter, 『Sometimes I have taken a complete passage from the text of a famous book. Now there is nothing wrong with that』--–and a 『famous book』 he certainly had in mind was by a Muslim, Al Farabi』s Chapters of the Statesman. Our intellectual life and our spiritual life should not be based on fixed 『criteria』 and certainly not on any sort of ethnic exclusiveness.」

Hilary condemns attempts as in Israel to mandate dogmatic, exclusive forms of (intra)Judaism, welcoming a conversation among all as well as with others. He notes sharply that Yehuda, unintentionally I suspect, flirts with a romantic nationalism – but that is, as Hilary rightly points out, the view of the Nazis, and some Zionists, like Leo Strauss, who were fascists (he cites Strauss』s advocacy of a Zionism led by a Mussolini-style leaders, modeled on the Blau Weiss movement in Germany in the 1920s) and eschews Heidegger, praised, also unawaredly, in one of Yehuda』s questions. Hilary sent me this interview, saying that I had influenced him (for analysis of how Heidegger was never in the 「clouds」 and was for the Nazis as of Being and Time and sadly, Strauss, too, see here, here, here, here and here). I was deeply moved by this. I am not Jewish particularly (sympathetic to King』s Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism). But I agree with every word in this interview and Hilary』s sense of what is great among these Jewish writers is, spiritually, of great power.

Listening to Heidegger at Freiburg in 1927, Levinas blown away. 60 years later, he speaks, in a conference on Heidegger, of how he, too, was unaware then (still is in a certain way) that the beauty of Being and Time and Heidegger』s repulsive Nazism were of a piece.

「Despite all the horror that eventually came to be associated with Heidegger』s name – and which will never be dissipated, nothing has been able to destroy my conviction that the Sein und Zeit of 1927 cannot be annulled…」 (「Dying for…」 pp. 208. 207, in Levinas, Entre Nous).

Except for his wife and daughter, Levinas lost his entire family – father, mother, uncles, aunts, father-in-law, mother-in-law – in the death camps. And so, over and over, Levinas speaks rightly of the Da in Dasein (of 「being there」 not as that of individuals but what Heidegger was actually for: Lebensraum-hungry German being in the world) as, in fact, occupying the place of another.

「From the Da of the Dasein, a risk of occupying the place of another, and thus, concretely, of exiling him, of consigning him to the miserable condition in some 『third』 or 『fourth』 world, of killing him. (『From the One to the other,」 pp. 149, 145, 148, and 「Dying For…」, 216, 217 in Levinas, Entre Nous).

Hilary would have agreed with this idea – that he was deeply concerned with the dispossession/despoliation of indigenous peoples I know from correspondence – though he does not discuss it in these lectures.

Many have misunderstood Heidegger who is feinting at 「individuality,」 but actually thought that German 「Dasein」 was captured in all obeying the will of the Fuehrer. Levinas』s words unravel, in Heidegger』s metaphorical starting point, the elite German and American practice of colonial genocides (reacting to the Pan-German League』s vision of the East, the Karl May novels and the American genocide in the Wild West, Hitler spoke of 「the Wild East,」 of Russian 「redskins,」 of killing thirty to forty million slavs and settling German farmers in their stead. Long hidden by ideological Cold War discussions, this idea is the clearest expression of the Nazis』 genocidal 「Social Darwinism」 – see, for example, Carroll Kakel, The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide: Hitler』s Indian Wars in the Wild East, 2012).

Levinas also rightly contrasts his own ethical understanding with Heidegger』s ontology (the latter is also almost a feint; the aim of Being and Time is, given that a professor might be fired for avowing Nazism in the Weimar period, to unearth Dasein』s being toward death and being in the world along with historicity, a supposed obligation to sacrifice oneself for one』s generation, to restore, but with a new reactionary emphasis, the old order. Heidegger』s actual discussion of Being is remarkably limited, h/t Hazem Salem).

In Democratic Individuality, I put Levinas』s point another way. Fascism – the murderous bowing and scraping to a great leader/aggressor is not political but fundamentally anti-political (and anti-ethical, except towards some other 「fascists」 sometimes…). It falls athwart of broad, modern ideas of democratic individuality – of democracy as a framework for the pursuit by each person of her own ideas of a good life, changing them as she sees fit, so long as she does not harm others. At a certain level of abstraction, such ideas are characteristic of decent liberal, conservative and radical – communist, anarchist – ideas. The basic point of Democratic Individuality as a theory is thus strikingly articulated by Levinas – it is seeing the face of the other, that basic relationship (her face initially) which brings forth the humanity in each of us.

Brutal 「collectivisms」 – i.e. in the United States, 「the Manifest Destiny」 of 「the Anglo-Saxon Race,」 has been the hallmark of 「the West」 and some others (Genghis Khan, etc.), but here, too, another world is possible. It is that possibility which Levinas and Hilary attractively find in the faces of others…(Hilary speaks of this idea as 「powerful and compelling」 in Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life, p. 96, though he also, rightly I think, suggests that Levinas lacks Aristotle』s important notion of love of self – independence – as being central to friendship and to responding, with compassion, to neediness, pp. 98-99).

In addition, in the Dehak interview, Hilary regards Maimonides』 Guide for the Perpelexed(Yehuda misses the name of the book; such guides are also an old jewish fashion) as a kind of writing, in conversation with a great work, to show where it might, for a fresh reader, be misunderstood. This is a highly responsive, humble and intelligent kind of dialogue in Maimonides about the Torah, and in Hilary』s discussion of the 3 1/4 thinkers, not presuming to tell everyone what something exactly says (i.e. to substitute one』s own understanding for the beautiful, complex and many-sided works of others), but to warn about difficult passages, to engage someone who is studying it in a conversation. It is another, perhaps better formulation of what I aim at in doing internal (Socratic) critique – see, for example. Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?, ch. 1-2 – and one I am using explicitly about Plato, Socrates and Gandhi in Alone among the Dead, a new book I am working on about the origins of modern civil disobedience/satyagraha/nonviolence (Hilary』s thought does not exclude Strauss』s claim that some of the Guide is a send-up, perhaps even 「a thousand times more biting than Voltaire,」 of certain features of the Torah, though it probably conflicts with Leo』s 「discovery」 that Maimonides, Ibn-Rusd/」Averroes,」 Al-Farabi, and Plato are all atheists….)

Hilary also loved poetry. He wrote to me (and talked to me much of this) – and over many years, when I began putting up poems on my blog, would often write to me a short note about each one – something that meant a lot. He spoke to me of poems of Louis MacNeice and many others that he especially liked, sent me the news when Houghton Library put up the original manus of Emily Dickinson poems (see Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson). When I was in Dharamsala this winter, I heard Tenzin Tsundue speak about the meaning to him of poetry. It saved his life against exile and torture and re-arrest even in India, and many friends and relatives being worried about or angry with him. I wrote a poem about it, which Hilary sent me a note about:

「Dear Alan,

I love this poem.

Age and health related problems (mine and Ruth Anna』s) absorb all my time lately, but a poem like this transcends them.

Affectionately,

Hilary」

Hilary himself was a bit like the Brahmaputra, coming swiftly down from Tibet, being, creating life, watering our wider Asia.

This poem is now, also, for him.

Steve Wagner, a wonderful friend of Hilary』s and mine, sent me news of Hilary』s death while I was in Chile (see below). That same evening, he came across and then sent me a facebook page of Robert Reich』s about how an older boy, Michael Schwerner, had saved him from bullies in school. Andy Goodman, my friend from Walden School, went with SNCC and Freedom Summer to Mississippi. Mickey Schwerner was down there, James Cheney from there (he left his brother Ben with a promise to come back and play with him and went off that day…); it was Andy』s first day in Mississippi. They went to visit a burned out church where the minister had urged people to register to vote. Their car had a flat tire. They were abducted by the Sheriff and given, at midnight, to the Klan…

Hilary once wrote me of the pride that he and Ruth Anna felt, and that I should to, at the lives of fighting racism we had led. It was how I met Hilary. It was how I stood with Hilary against the wordy racism of Herrnstein and Murray (even bigger bullies, more blood on their hands…). It was how he (and we) stood against certain powerful prejudices about the Vietnam War at Harvard and in the Philosophical Association and in the elite. Somehow, the coincidence was very striking to Steve and he sent me a poem by Wallace Stevens. In 「On Mere Being」 from The Palm Tree at the End of the Universe,」 Stevens imagines a mechanical bird whose song, imitating the song of birds, has no reason to it, and yet we hear the beautiful music. For there is a connection of my friendship with Andy now long ago, and my long and dear friendship with Hilary, a moral and political (as he wrote so eloquently) and philosophical thing, of many fibers, but one also about poetry. Stevens often had marvelously sounding last lines:

its fire-fangled feathers

dangle down

The sorrow that Hillary is gone, a dark hole in the universe for so many of us or the vanishing of a beautiful water-drop (Issa, a monk and fellow-poet of Basho, also summoned by Steve), is intense. The warmth and kindness of his friendship and his being human and somehow fire-fangled – Hilary』s amazing singing and brilliance and compassion for all – will be with me, and I hope with all of us, its soul-echoes spreading out to infinity, in the great move into the future.

***

What are poems for?

For Tenzin Tsundue and Hilary Putnam

A serious man

soft-spoken

red bandana

lost along a roadway

raised away from parents

exile

lost yourself in demonstrations

far from home

walked over the mountains

exile

5 days into China

tortured and beaten three months

to lead resistance

questions

amidst fists:

Why have you come

Who do you know

Who sent you

shadowy

railroaded

all the way to Lhasa in a cell

red flag

betraying

I studied English at Mumbai

poetry

Keats Shelley

in another tongue

interrogators do not believe

Mumbai

words have power

poetry

clear as the sweeping headwaters of the Brahmaputra

roiling Tibet

turn swiftly down

at the Great Bend

rush down down down

to water Asia

poetry

fine mountain snow

circling

down down down

on the yak herder

20,000 feet of night

cordoned in cities

with a protective scroll

tiny houses

of beautiful images

no grass

and words

investigators took pity

not your need

sent you out of China

where Indian authorities

held you for a month

perhaps brainwashed

a spy for Beijing

anyone but

a maker of the words

that saved you

imagining the lost fathers

who fought

betrayed perhaps

by nonviolence

or a homeland you have barely seen

perhaps the prison cells

or a warrior Tibet

cutting throats

but now

fighter of anger and greed

conjuring

a free Kom Amdo

the fiery invisible

U-tsang

and you and others

sword of nonviolence

blindly exiled

day by day

within it

***

Steve Wagner sent me the following message when I was in Chile:

「Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926 – died 13 March 2016)

The Buddhist monk Issa on the death of one of his children:

the dewdrop world is a dewdrop world

and yet

and yet

Steve

When I sleep, I dream about hurrying down a road under morning clouds or evening mist. When I awaken I am captivated by the mountain streams, interesting sounds, or the calls of wild birds. Buddha called such attachment wrong, and of this I am guilty.

「Basho on his deathbed」

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Gilbert is John Evans professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and author of Marx』s Politics:Communists and Citizens (Rutgers, 1980), Democratic Individuality (Cambridge, 1990), Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy (1999) and Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence (Chicago March, 2012). His blog Democratic Individuality is a rich mine.

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