Bard and the philosopher

When Bard hired the autodidact Heinrich Blücher, they got a thinker. Here is an excerpt from his thinking (it may come as a surprise to those familiar with the work or Michael Martin or Colin McGinn or other mere "professional" philosophers:

[...] How was it possible and how did it happen that man believed in God almost up to 1800 and then suddenly stopped--replacing this dropped belief with a merely negative belief that God did not exist.

This we will try to find out, but first lets start with this negative belief--for a belief it is--that God does not exist. Since Kant showed us that we cannot know whether God exists or not, it means that the atheist cannot possibly know that God does not exist--so he is really a believer in nothingness. This brings us immediately to the question of faith and to the distinction between faith and belief. Pure faith (which philosophy can accept as such) means that you believe in God although you know that you cannot pretend to know that He exists. Belief on the other hand implies that you pretend to know that God exists (or, as in the case of the negative belief of the atheist, that God does not exist). In faith you cross the borderline from reason to faith, but so long as you never try to convince anyone else of your faith, it can be a question of pure faith, and as such something that philosophy (free philosophy) can accept; the minute you try to convince anyone else of your faith, it means that you have to try to argue philosophically and to pretend to believe. The medieval mystic could still try to talk of his own experiences because they were so strong and because he still lived in an age of belief, but now the situation is such that a philosopher like Karl Jaspers has said that if a mystic would come to him, he would have to say: "I am sorry, but I cannot talk to you about this. I am not in a state of grace."

The negative belief of the atheist brings up yet another point with his "I believe that I do not believe.", we come into the realm of the demoniacal. Old theologians always said that the denial of God was done by the Devil, but this denial of the atheist is not diabolical. It concerns an inner human experience which has much to do with the principle of the demonic. Thinking in the West (Heidegger, etc.), combining with the thoughts of psychology, has lately found that there is such a thing as being possessed. Scientifically explained, this means that a man is possessed by his own mental processes which he cannot control--like the idee fixe, for example, where the man is not thinking, but is "being thought." Since Nietzsche a branch of psychology has developed in which an analysis has been made of certain motives human beings use--especially of inferiority and the development of the quality of resentment as a negative form of action. Relating this to the atheist, we see that while he claims not to have a mystical experience as the saint does, actually he does. The atheist after being driven into a corner will suddenly pop out with "But I believe that I do not believe in God." A terrible inner action is taking place here: the atheist has experienced his own inner nothingness; he denies God compulsively because he feels himself to be nothing--and the relation with the demonic is clearly there.

In philosophy we would then have to say that with this we have an answer and would have to ask: What makes this reaction possible? and why do most people who have had the inner experience of their own nothingness react so wildly and so especially against God? They react this way because if a man feels himself to be valueless and is penetrated by that feeling (the personal nihilistic experience), then the will to destruction of all values is the immediate reaction. Destruction of all values means to aim at the thing always valued most highly by man: God. It is not the Devil in action but man who has been robbed of all feelings of his own personal quality; man who has been driven into the feeling of no qualities of his own whatsoever along with tremendous resentment against himself. But we are very bad self-destroyers for human beings have also a quality of grandeur--which Pascal put forward as one-half of man's basic condition (the other being misery). The quality that makes for man's grandeur is that he can love somebody else more than himself. This is one of the peaks of the possible creativeness of man, but on the other hand, man can never take anyone else more seriously than himself. This is automatic because man lives with himself, even in dreams, mirroring himself continuously, and he cannot possibly spend the same energy on anyone else. If he is in a state of love, loving someone more than himself, then he is safe. But this borderline man we are talking about has paid for this nothingness with the loss of the capacity to love. So he is only left with the other quality--the inability to take anyone else more seriously than himself--and he must deny the worth and value of everyone else.

These have all been preliminary probings into the question in order to give you an idea of how philosophy proceeds, but before I go on I must say that I have a funny feeling in starting this course. I have always felt that I would never give such a course; in fact I have always made it a condition in taking a job not to give an introductory course in philosophy--for that is impossible, and the man who does is either a fool or a teacher of a science (the history of philosophy). An introductory course in philosophy is doing that which philosophy teaches--teaching life (which is all that philosophy can teach). Then the modern situation forced a thinker, Karl Jaspers, to give a series of lectures on the "Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy." I had supposed that he would take the position I have always taken, but then I saw why he could do it. Jaspers is an existentialist who comes from psychology. His position is that philosophy cannot be taught, but philosophizing can be taught.[...]

These transcripts must be compared with the available recordings of his lectures. For some students, this would be their first encounter with philosophy.  Mine was with T.Y. Henderson and such BS as this would not have gotten far with him.  But that was a mere prairie University and he was merely from Georgia. Heinrich was a Mensch from Berlin and Paris. And married to Hannah Arendt.

The irony is that Jaspers came to philosophy from medicine where he was the author of a respected textbook on psychopathology.  Bluecher was the author of nothing.

When Bluecher says

In philosophy we would then have to say that with this we have an answer and would have to ask: What makes this reaction possible? and why do most people who have had the inner experience of their own nothingness react so wildly and so especially against God?

he is playing a role - trying his hand at being a Sartre or a Heidegger or even a Jaspers.  He may have heard is wife talk in this way. He has heard about Binswanger and Boss.

In philosophy we would have to say that

might better translate as

Here at Bard I am able to state that

Compare his drivel to the writing of most any thoughtful American or British or Canadian or New Zealand or Australian philosopher of the day: they would have first given a talk before their peers, defended their assertions and arguments and objections and conclusions and interpretations and only then after re-writing and re-writing arrive at something possibly worth publishing to be read and to be retained - some small part of which has been worthy of being retained for its own merit, not merely as historical documents of an academic discipline.

It has taken years to dispel the teachings of European pretenders from Erickson to Bettelheim.  We had our own, the quack Harry Stack Sullivan.  There will be others. Today they are more often found teaching in Third World universities or in America in comparative literature and less often in Departments of Philosophy.

What was the insignificant young student to say?  How could this young virgin have casually discarded the Episcopalian tradition of his father and his mother or the Orthodox Judaism of the grandparents? An atheist!?!

the atheist cannot possibly know that God does not exist--so he is really a believer in nothingness

But the truth is that the young student is able to have his belief without claiming to know the truth of any such negative existential proposition.

How reassuring it must have been to have such a philosopher as ones professor!  How glad his students are to continue to celebrate his gift to them!

These have all been preliminary probings into the question in order to give you an idea of how philosophy proceeds ...

This is not how philosophy should proceed outside the seminar of a tyrannical Wittgenstein or a tyrannical Heidegger.  This is philosophy for the seminary, the theological college, and not a liberal arts college in America.  The buffoon invokes Kant and what Kant has shown us.  But unimportant philosphers have quietly proceeded to show that on this point Kant was over-confident: a very good case can be made that an omnipotent God does not exist and a very good case can be made that an omniscient God does not exist and an even better case that the manifest existence of evil is inconsistent with the existence of a benevolent God.  And all of that independent of first causes, creation or "transcendence".

Bluecher may have had no idea how dialectical materialism was taught in the Soviet Union but he could have transitioned with ease into that curriculum but for his unease with the purges of Stalin.  Oh for the days of Lenin!  The mere creation of the Cheka and re-institution of the death penalty! Phooee!  A man of action has nothing to fear there!  But I lapse into polemical ad hominen and dare to mock a thinker!

But simply quoting Bluecher is not enough to debunk him.  Bard's folly is to put his lecture transcripts on the web - but they have not provided any useful tools for annotating his pretentious drivel.  That is what this web technology should provide: the ability to annotate.  And to trace his borrowing.  And to flag any original contribution if such can be found in the transcripts ( although what I find is second-hand and decidely second-rate.) But to show this it would help to be able to lay his text side-by-side with the text of a more modest and better educated thinker.

Notably Blücher was not a father so had never felt any guilt for having bullied a son or daughter with such bombast.  He had never participated in his wife giving birth, never sat up with a sick child, never thought what he would say to reassure his grandchildren concerning his death. So there was little to temper his buffoonery. His claims for we and philosophy when there was no such "we" and he was no such philosopher. Did he imagine Jaspers hiring him in Basel? Heidegger suggesting him for a post at Marburg or Freiburg or Heidelberg?  A buffoon. At Bard.

Somewhere there will be a summer course for those who want to improve their teaching of introductory philosophy courses: clearly showing what was wrong with Blücher's bombast would be a start.

Absent in Arendt: Semmelweis and Boltzmann

Ignaz Semmelweis and Ludwig Boltzmann are two figures missing in Chapter VI of Arendt's The Human Condition.  Arendt may simply have been unaware of the opposition Boltzmann had faced.

Semmelweis is not remarkable in being missed: Pasteur is not there.  And yet arguably the changes in public hygiene have been the single most remarkable change in the "global" world which she is considering.

Arendt mocked those who might dream of living to be one hundred (had she had a child late in life, she might have wished to see grandchildren graduate from university...)

With very little to say about childbirth - the act of giving birth - but more to say about "birth" in the abstract (Heidegger was not present for the birth of his son Hermann, paternity aside) - and perhaps Arendt was never witness to a birth - it is remarkable that the man of science who spoke for such a simple truth would go unmentioned.  Semmelweiss fared worse in asylum than had Hölderlin and worse than would Heidegger.

Also remarkably absent is Edward Jenner, his methods and the near eradication of smallpox by the time of Arendt's research.  Had Arendt been the lone surviving child of a large family, her attitude and her book might have been different.

Did she in fact understand the difference between a bacillus and a virus?  Had she switched to filter cigarettes based on the mistaken belief that this would reduce the health risk? She and Heinrich both succumbed  to infarcts likely caused by a lack of exercise combined with heavy smoking. Would she have considered the science relevant? The case against filters is not obvious and is based on the nature of nicotine addiction.  Had she not seen how emphysema or lung cancer could reduce the range of action? In her case, she was prevented from writing her book on Judging and prevented from delivering a Heidegger eulogy.

Is it mostly common sense that is lacking n Chapter VI?

Also missing: the concepts of information and noise (Claude Shannon's "Theseus" dates from 1950.)
Prior to 1960, Arendt was unlikely to hear of non-linear dynamics in her circle.

See: Heidegger's bizarre broadcast of his opinion about the science behind radio and television (available on youtube.com)

A web  search of the 4000 volume collection of Arendt at Bard reveals no title by Boltzmann or Bolzano - nor Brentano or Ingarden - nor any Milosz poetry - although Celan and Char are there - and Hans Baumann's translation of Akhmatova's Requiem.

One very odd absence is the first volume of the Ricoeur which is suppoed to be modeled on Jaspers: only the small second volume is there.  Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving, is there but I have not been able to confirm that it is hers and not Bluecher's.  Another odd absence is the 1964 Explanation of Behaviour by Charles Taylor - as is the absence of the 1971 von Wright Explanation and Understanding - both books very familiar to me as a student of philosophy years before her death.

Note: her personal library had very little Husserl, no Levinas, no Canetti, no Tournier - and for her friendship with Randall Jarrell, a curious absence of American poets: even Denise Levertov is absent.  Michael Hamburger's translation of Baudelaire prose poems is there.  Broch is there, but only an English translation of Musil as "Five Women" - not a single volume in German.  The only Murdoch is the Black Prince: Iris Murdoch as philosopher is missing.  A great deal of British philosophy from the post-war 50's and 60's is absent (but there are at least 2 of the 4 R.G. Collingwood that one might expect.)  There are 4 volumes by Oakeshott - but the critical volume, his 1933 Modes of Experience is not there. Cassirer is of course there in multiple volumes, but Susanne Langer is missing.  Russell is missing.  The main works on Whitehead are missing (on small set of excerpts.)  But Bergson is there - even the T.E.Hulme translation of his Introduction to Metaphysics. Popper is missing (there is a Bryan Magee paperback.)  But Melville is there. Binswanger is there, but not Boss. Santayana is there in one volume as is Ortega, as is Unamuno.  Merleau-Ponty is not there in French.  But most of the Raymond Aron is there in French BUT NOT his work as a philosopher, which is truly amazing: not his 1961 (or the 1964 edition) or his 1969 - and her name is sometimes associated with his! Missing: La philosophie critique de l'histoire and Dimensions de la conscience historique.  The only Hayek is The political ideal of the rule of law. Rawls' T of E is there. As I look about my shelves of philosophy from the 50's, 60's and early 70's I wonder what more she had parted with, or given to students ... but no Canetti - and Arendt an authority of sorts on Broch?  Levi-Strauss is there -twice in French and twice in English. Calvino is not there. Valéry is there (an often in French) as is Gide. Piaget is not. Luria is not. Vygotsky is not. But The Master and Margarita is there. Pepys is not. Boswell is not. But Keats and Shelley are there.  They were playig catch-up with Americans, not with Brits. Emil Fackenheim, 1967, is there. Quine is not. The only Carnap is Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre - Die Logische Aufbau der Welt is not. But Weyl, Symmetry, 1952, is there - but nothing from 1913-1940.  There is no indication what year she acquired it, but the archive reports that it has ephemera and marginal lining. Her Freud includes the Standard Edition. Of a little Wittgenstein, only the Tractatus is reported as annotated; the Investigations are not listed in English or German. The only Ayer is the 1972 Russell. There is no Moore. No sign of a single American pragmatist. Kafka fares better. There is no signs she loaned out Tillich or Jonas or Löwith. Wollheim's Freud is there, but not his Art and its Objects - but Oakeshott on poetry is there (remember - she gave the Gifford Lectures on life and mind.) And as I said: the missing poets. Williams. Stevens. But there is Alvarez and Pound.  But no Beckett. Not in French or English. OF de Beauvoir, only La force des choses. As with Tournier, Roman Gary is absent. Is it possible that she missed both Le Roi des aulnes and Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique - the 1967 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française? But she must have had a copy of The Painted Bird because she has notes about the author. But not Steps or Being There or Cockpit.  Did she read them and discard them? Sell them second-hand? Leave them in the college cafeteria? In an airport lounge? Where is Gravity's Rainbow?

Where are the two books by Raymond Aron on philosophy and history?  Arendt, who told Heidegger that she was only now reading Merleau-Ponty in 1972.  Marx, Heidegger and Jaspers will only take you so far.

Next: the curious parallel between a transcript of a lecture by Bluecher and writings of Jaspers. When is thought borrowed? (Bluecher, a Bard professor, was an autodidact and not a writer - and so perhaps not schooled in citations and references.)