America, i~ the ocra~io n for the me rger in the running-ho t-and-cold, multi- in his first publication\ ht· tool..
irst publication\ ht· tool.. the
of elitist idealism and populist expan-
i\'encss that's implied in seeing this
uncompromising show in our wurist-
ft;endl) national mu:.£>mn of art. The
ational Gallen•, a mu~eum in an offi-
cial cit), has a ; ligh t impersonality, but
this works lor Mondrian. because it em-
pha~i;es his imernal heat. The show will
look different in New York City in the
fall, where the smaller-sized gallet·ies at
the Museum of' Modern Art are just one
clcmt·nt in a n urban pressure cooker
that gives everything a keyed-up, strobe-
lit, ideological feel. Then again, there's
a homecoming warmth about seei ng
Mondrian in Manh auan , for this retro-
spective that originated in Holland
where he wa' born wi ll be closing in
the city where he spent his last and per-
haps happiest years. Adding to the sense
of closure wi ll be the addition of the
penultimate and ultimate paintings,
Broadwn.v Boogit Woogu and \'iclOI)' Boogit
~~~gtl', which do not, on account of their
fragile condition, any longer leave the
city where thC) were born.
Mondrian r·e~ponded to the restless-
ness of Manhattan, and it's reflected
Untruth and Consequences
BY RICHARD RoRTY
Killing Time:
The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend
(Unlvmity of Clllca«o Press, 192 pp., S22.95)
I.
aul Feycrabend, who died
P in l994 at the age of 70,
was the Norma n Mailer of
philosophy. Like Mai ler,
he was a soldier in World War II (but
on the wrong side). Ft·yerabend, too,
was brilliant, brave, adventurous, o rigi-
nal a nd quirky. Both liked to shock:
Mailer used lO sa\ that we face a choice
between cancer a;ld homosexuality, Fey-
erabend once tried to put modern
meclicine and voodoo on an epistemo-
logical par. And th ere are other resem-
blances. Feventbcnd was an exuberant
political radical, but nobod) could pin
down his political dews. He was a cele-
brated womani£er (even though, as this
autobiography reveals, he never experi-
enced sexual intercourse, having been
rendered impotent at 2 1 by a bullet that
pierced his spinal cord and left him on
crutr hes, and in a lmost constant pain ,
32 T HE NEW REPUBLIC JULY 31, 1995
eli rcctional power of Brondwa:v Boogie
Woogit. Thi~ -;alute to the city went into
the Modern ·s collection sh ortly after it
was finished in 1943, o nly a mallet· of
months before Mondrian died. ew
Yorl.. appealed to a n artist who. as he
wid J ames J ohnson Sweeney, the orga-
ni;er of a memodal show at the Mod-
ern in 1945, had been "willing to iive
up everything for art.~ That sounds like
a rather old-fashio ned romalllic pose,
but Mondrian brought it all the way
into the twentieth ce ntury by making it,
quite literally. the subjec t or his art.
By the time that Mo ndrian had a rri\'ed
in New York in 1940, th e giving-up
was behind him, and in the city where
everybodv seemed to have a story about
what they 'd left behind. Mondrian
made new. exciting acquisitions. The
rolls of colored sticky paper tape. man-
ufactured by Dennison. crisscrossed
a nd piled up on his paintings; left in
place on the last, unfinished \'irtor)• Boo-
/,''~~' Uwgie, that paper tape is an emblem
of expanding possibilities. Mondrian
had given up ewr thing, but he 'd got-
ten everything ba<k, and then orne. •
for the rei>t of his life). I lis life was disor-
ganized. and he sometimes treated his
wives, lovers and colleagues very badly
indeed. Fcyerabcnd remains a hero to a
si1ablc minority of philosophers, bm the
majority think o f him as having had too
little self-d isci pline to fullill his early
promise.
For some forty )'Car:., Feyerabend
played a conspicuous role in the big
battle that the philosophers of the
rwentieth century have been fighting:
the battle between tho~e who, like Frege
and Husserl . want philosophy to be an
autonomous, ahistorical discipline tl1at
discerns ineluctable formal structure
of reality, experience o r language. and
those who, like I leidegger and Dewey,
think that cutting philosophy loose from
history will produce o nly sterile scholas-
ticism. Feyerabend ca me on th e philc:r
sophical sce ne in the 1950s. In the
English-speaking world, formalism and
ahistoricism were in the ascenda11t. Even
unfashionable. hi sw ri ci~t. anti-formalbt
side of the argument. B} nO\\ the pen-
dulum of philosophical opinion has
swung back toward that sidt", thanks
partly to his work.
Fevcrabcnd -.tarted writing articles in
philosoph)' of s<ience ,tt a time when a
great mam philosophn~ agt·ccd with
Willard van Orman Quine (then , as now,
the hero of analvtir p hilosophy in the
Uni ted States) that "phi lclsophy of sci-
e nce is philo~ophy enough." Logical
e mpiri cism, the kind of philosophy th at
Quine helped import from Europe, took
fo r gramcd that the search for scientific
truth is humanity at its best. For Quine.
as for most anal) tic ph ilosophers. there
is no more p<:jorative epithet than "anti-
scienc<.'." That t•pithet W<L\ hurled at Fey-
erabcnd a lmost a.<> soon "' he h£>gan to
publish.
T
he logical empiti<ist revo-
lution in philosoph}. which
tool.. plac<· in American
philosoph) deparuncnL~
between 1945 and 1960. wa.~ a scicntistic
revolmion. Tht• rcvolmionaries believed
that what C. P. Snow was ~oon to ~tigma­
ti7e as "the literary culture'' is inherently
anti-democratic, e li ti~ t and dangerous.
They thought th at the fut11re of ph ilo-
sophy, ancl perhap~ of lihl•ral demo-
cratic society as well, depended on over-
coming metaphysic~-on debunking
the kind of bold. sweeping philosophi-
cal system-buildi ng that attracts poets
such a~ VeaL~ ( \~ho was tht illed b) Ploti-
nus) and nmd i,ts uch a!> Promt (who
borrowed a lo t from Berg·on). Philo-
sophers, the)' were convinced, must tr)
to gi,·c Snow's "scientific culture" the
pret.edence and the pn·dominancc that
it deserved. As latt' as 1980. Clarl.. Gly-
mour. a respected philosopher of sci-
ence, could begin his 17teory ami Etti-
denCI' with this ~cnt('ncc: "If it is true
that there are but two kind~ of people-
th e logical po~itivist~ and th e god-
dam ned English proft'SSor~-then I sup-
pose I am a logical positivist. " ("Logical
positivism" is a rough synonym for "logi-
cal empiricism.")
Quine wa~ a studtnt of Rudolf Car-
nap, who fi rst hecc1me famo us as the
author of' a polemic against Heideg-
ger called "O,ercoming Metaphysic~
Through the Logical Analysis of Lan-
guage." That e'>.sav was the pdncipal
inspiration for the most importam man-
ifesto of logical empirici'>m. A. .J. Ayer's
Lt.111guage, Truth find l .OJ.,'Ir. Carnap, Ernst
Reichenbach and Carllkmpel were the
most prominent of' the philosophers of
science who were drive n out of Berlin
and Vienna by ll itler, and who (despite
considerable suspicion, and occasional
surliness, on the part of th e indigenous
 Old Guard) gradually rose to command-
ing positionl> in American phil osophy
deparunent~ in the lifteen years after
the close of the war.
These justly revered pioneer~ of ana-
lytic phi losophy believed that philoso-
phy in the manner of l legcl and He i-
cicgger-spcculativc philosophy, which
proclaims n1.thcr than argues, and which
u·eaL~ nat ural science with ciisdai n- had
been a cultu ral and political disaster.
Hciclcgger's emhusiastic 1aLism only
confirm ed suspicions th at they had al-
ready formed. The e lucidation of ~cien­
tific research , of "the logic of scientific
inquiry." ~eemed to them not on I) to be
the central task of philosophy, but to
mee t pressing moral and sociopolitical
needs. Books such as Reichenbach's The
Rise of Scientific Philosophy and Karl Pop-
pe r' Th f Opm Sociel)' and Its Enrmie.1 and
The Lof(ic of Scientific Discover)' convin ced
several generations of English-speaking
philosophers th at th e replacement or
metaphysics ami spec ula tio n by scien-
tific habits of philosophical thought was
no t j ust one more tempest in an aca-
demic teapot, but an important contri-
butio n to healthy, democratic, intellec-
tua l life.
n the Carnapian accou nt
0 of science, scie ntilic in-
quiry has an inherent
logic th at philosophy of
science must make explici t and imi-
table. There are discernible patterns of
inference that con nect reports of obser-
vation and of the results of experiment
with scientific theories. These pauerns
permit scientists to reason more per-
spicuously than anybody else. They are
better able to agree on what cou n L~ as
' re levant evidence, a nd on what counts
as a decisive objecti on to a belief. It is
easy to figure oUL wha t sciemists are
sayi ng, once you master their technical
language, and easy to decide whether
th ey art: justified in what they say. There
is no rhetoric, no futtiness, no evasive-
ness. We sho uld all think and reason
as they do. We should all study logic
and the philosophy of scien ce, because
doing so makes for clear and responsi-
ble thinking, and th et·efore for civility,
mutual understanding a nd democratic
politics.
For most of Carnap's and H em-
pel's ~tude nts, the clarification of "the
logic of science" was, indeed, philoso-
phy enough . For it was the way to
accomplish philosophy'~ oldest objec-
tive: Lo make human beings wiser and
morally better. These swde n ts \'iewed
their teachers as moral he roes as well
as innovative thinkers. By 1962, gradu-
' ate students in American philosophy
departments had to pass a Ph.D. qualify-
in g exam in logic a nd the philosophy of
scien ce. The history of philosophy be-
gan to lose its central place in their
train ing (a place it still re tai ns in France
and Germany). and philosophy of sci-
ence began moving inlO the space left
vacant. That ~ ub-<lisc iplin e seemed to
everybody to have a great future-even
to Thomas Kuhn when, in 1962, he
published The Structure of Scientific RnJo-
lutions. • Hugt Stkrtion
• l~ G-arunt<t
o its author's a nd every-
T one else's surprise, Thr
Structure of Srimtiflc Rroa-
lutions proved to be the
most innuentia l English-langu age phil-
osophy book of th e last half-century. It
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inference that allowed scientilic theories
to be validated by neutral fact.
Kuhn 's book, and Feyerabend's con-
temporaneous articles, claimed that
choosing between compe tin g scien tifi c
th eories was conside rably messier, con-
siderably less ''logical," tha n th e logical
empiricists had made it out to be. "Docs
it really help," Kuhn asked, MOVING?
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Old Address (Affix label from this issue.)
a number of vexing probl em~ may dis-
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Address
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So did Feyerabend's claim that "suc-
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THE NEW I!EPUBUC
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JULY 31 , 1995 THE NEW REPUBLIC 33
Btll ft')'t·rabcnd went 011 LO :my ~omc­
thiHg th.tl Kuhn refrained from ~avi ng:
"I a\3<.'1t that thcte t·x•~t no 'objective'
n:;c.on feu prcfen ing ~cicnce and \!\'est-
em rationalism w other tr.aditions. ~ :-Jot
lontcnt ''ith thi~ offense to common
~l'll~l', lw offcnrlcd hi-. colleague!> h) say-
ing thing~ likc thi~ : UPn:-Kuhnian posi-
th·bm was infantile. but re l atin~ J r clear
(thi' includes Popper who i ~just a tiny
puff of hot air in the po~itivi!>t.ic teacup).
Post-Kuhnian po~itivi~m has remained
infantil e-but b also very un clear." A
lo t of Popperia ns are ~ till not willing to
fo rgive Feyerabe nd for ridiculing the
master. A lot o l other philosophers will
never forgiu · him fo r -.uggesting that
the choice between Calileo and the
Inquisi tion ,,as a choite bet\~een differ-
ent cu ltural tradition · rather than bc-
twcc n Trmh and Super!>tition.
n tht· wal..e of Kuhn's evcn-
I lt'mpcn:d bc>ol-~ and Feyera-
bt•nd\ nut\tic and provocati\c
one\, philosophv of ~cience
wa' ~hou·d out ol thc cen ter ofanaht.ic
philo~<>phy. It h .t~ been , if not margi;lal-
in:d , !irml) d<.·moted. The claim that all
inquiry ~ho uld make it-.ell ~sc i e ntifi c" i~
now ran· I} heard . Ph y~ics-e m'}' is fa r ]e)>S
widespread than it was in th e '50~. Nowa-
day' m o~t -.wdenL~ of science would
agree wi th Fcyerabend that ''what we
must do is to replace the beautiful but
mclcss formal ca<.,tles in the a ir bv a
detaile d stud} of prim an· sources in the
hiswr\' of -.c;it'nce. ·•
The popularit) of Thr Strurture of
Srimttflt RPvoluttons-a boot.. that, unlil-.c
any of F'en•t.tb(•nd':., i' \\CJI-organin·d
and ('lll itwntlv teachable-ha~ made
it wnvcnicnt to refer w thi!> shift in
philosoph ic:al th inking about scienc(>
<l!> Mthc Kuhn ian rt'\olution. ~ But in the
'60s and '70 , Kuhn and Fe)e rabend
\\ere treated a\ co-leader~ of the revo-
luti on, co-propounders of the crucial
doctrine that undermined the Carnap-
l lempC'l picwre o f "tlw logic of sci-
e nce": the thesis of the theory-ladenness
of observatio n. Thi~ thesi~ ca~t doubt o n
what Feye rabe nrl derisively called the
"layer-ca ke " \iew of scie nce, the view
according to which inference starts from
a laycr or 1'<1\\ , empiricall} g iven, neutral
data and wot ks up to a choice between
theories.
To say that ob t•rvation is theo n-
ladcn i' to ::.av that there are no raw
data. All perception is conditioned
by the previm•., beliefs and desires of
th e perceiver. This poi nt had been
made, and uscd to cri tici7e Carnapian
orthodox\, b, Stcphen Toulmin and
o r wood Russell Hanson , who were in-
flue nced hy Wiuge nstci n 's later, anti-
empiricist writing'>, and by Quine's fam-
o us cla irn tha t ''th e unit of empirical
34 T i lE NF.W REPUBLIC JULY 31 , 1995
~ignifi ca n cc i\ [not indi,idual reports of
ob\ervations but] the whole.: of ~cieme."
But Kuhn guardedlv, and Fe)erabend
unguarded!), inft• t rcrl morc rad ical con-
clusiom from that point. As the '60~
wot t' on, doubh about the distinction
bctwecn data and theory snowballed; it
gradua lly be<anw cleat that Hempel
a nd Carnap. and t•vcn Quine. had put
too many of tlu·ir egg~ in the empiricist
basi-ct.
~ a result <>f' this reu·cat
A f10111 logical c mpiri ci~m.
defenders of the scien tific
t ulturc again~tthe lite ntr}
c ulture hegan to fall back on pra ise for
scie n ti"~· moral 'inue!> (the ir lac k of
dogmati!>m, tlll'i r '''illingness to be per-
!>uaded bv new C\1dt•ncc) rathe r than on
claim-. th:n -.cie tlli!>ts an.· in closer touch
"ith ex pet it•nce 01 1ea li ty than other
people. 1\lmt prabc of sdc nti~l!> nowa-
days i., indin·n , and dwell on the deli-
' iencic-. of non-scienti,l!>. Such prai!>e no
longer points with ptide to scie nce's
cpistemologicall} 01 llH;'taphysically ptiY-
ileged position. ln 'ltcad, the moral \iccs
of th e post-moderni;ed English prof'es-
M>t s l.ll c viewed with a larm: their cava-
lier dogmati\111, their inauemion to de-
mand~ fore\ ide tt <·e.
Wh e n the histo r y of this latest pendu-
lum swing in philosophy is written, how
large a role wi ll Fe)crabend be found
to have played? It is hard to say, as hard
as it i-. LO c tablish the rolc that Charles
S.utders Pci rn· pla)ed in the develop-
mt·nt of pntg-matbm. Fe)erabend wa~
tht' fiN to "t\ , forccfull) and explici tl), a
lot of importan t thing:. that are no" con-
,·en tio nal philo,oph ical ,,i,dom. Peirce
wa~ the !it ~t to S<l) other such things. But
much of Peircc \ \\TiLing is, as Will iam
J amt·s cJc,paitingl) said, "tlashcs or light
against Cimme ria n darl-.nc ·s. ~ Feyera-
bend'~ writings an: a lo t like Peirce's.
V.11 cn you pick up o ne of Fe}erabend's
books, you often feel bafned by curt,
co nfu~in g, not quit e convincing, argu-
ment' for what seem unnecessarily
overstated conclusions. To make things
worsc, these argume nts are ofte n ha rd
to filter out fmm some very technical
phrsics and some very detailed (and,
one :.ometimes feel~. slanted) stOries
from the h i~tOf)' of science.
Ju ~t a~ Jam e~ lea• ned a lo t from
Peirce wh ile sen ibl) reft-.aini ng from
glos ing him in anv detail, so leading
comemporar) philo ophers of science
lcatncd a lot from Feycrabend but
would not '~ish to try to reconstruc t
his argumen ts. For neither Peirce nor
Fe;erabend ever really got his act
togcther. The writings of both are full
of good id ea~. a nd will probably con-
tinue to hl' mincd. But most of us will
co11tinue to assign J a mes and Dewey
rather than Peirc;c when inculcating
pragmati~m. and Kuhn and \'\' iugen-
stein rath et than ~ e)eraben d when ex-
plaining \\hat \\it \ wrong wi th logical
em pit icism.
II.
n this auwbiography. wrillen
I at the 'et) en rl of his life, Fey-
l'rabcnd comes pretty close to
admitting that his writings are
(as he says of his most famous book,
Again11 Ml'lhorl) "collages'' rather than
sustai ned arguments. But he makes
clcar that he docs no t much care a bou t
th at, and has no grt•at regrets. What
he dOt'!> regret, Olc:asionall y, is having
spent more time on philosophy than it
de:.cn·ed. lie think!! that most of his
philo~ophiral collt·agucs take their dis-
cipline too serioml), and he prides him-
self on taling it no more or le~ scd -
ou:.h Lhan lw took the exercise of
his other p• incipal talem-his voice.
lie had a worl cl-cla~s alto, he te lls us.
and tool singing lessons throughout
h b life. "Reader~ \\hO know only intel-
lectual joy~." he ~<I)'S, "can hardly imag-
ine the pleasute derived from usi ng a
well-trained voitt' that ha~ power as well
as beauty."
Although thi~ amobiograph) would
have ((•w reader~ if Feyerabend had
not bcen ,, f amou~ p hil o~ophe r, there
is 1c lati\'Cly liLLie abou t philosophy in
it. lt is likcly to be read, with fa!.cina-
tion and perhap~ with profit, b people
\\ho do not ktHl\\ or care much about
the su~jeu . They will read it as the story
of a .vi olflcct \\hO decided , forty-odd
year~ after the cnd of World War ll , to
write an autobiogt aph; ·mainly to recall
m) timc in the Getma n army and the
way I had <:xpetit•nted national !tocial-
ism.~
He wanted to do this, he says. because
very !au: in life he became a different
person. After mcet.ing his fourrh wife,
C raLia Bonini Feycrabend, he ''discov-
e n~d wha t it means to love someone."
"The long days wi th Gnvia," he claims,
"turned nte from an icy egotist into a
friend. a companion, a husband." The
experience of loving, he says, made it
p<>S~ible (()I him for the fir t time to
"I eel. LOa \tn<lll degree, what it meam to
be branded a~ an outca~ t." as the J ews
were b)' tht• ' a;is. H is desire to recall his
time in the annv came to him only
altet he stopped being an ic) egotist,
and only after he happened to see a
mo,·ie about anti- emitism.
Fcn'l'abt'nd'!> ac<"ount of his early life
is frank, lwncst, brief an d rather too
laconic. "During the Na;i period," he
s um ~ up. "I paid little anention to the
gent•ral L<tlk abou t Jews, cummun ism,
the Bo lshevi l-. threat; I did not accept it; I
did no t o ppose it: the wo rd ~ cam e a nd
went , appart·nth witho ut effect." Whe n
h b j c \1i ~ h n e i g hbor~ in Vien na disap-
peared o ne b\ o ne. he tt:lls u,, "i t ne\ er
occu rred to m e to inquire fu rther; the
id e<l th at the hu e of C\t' t \ ~i n g J e h uman
being was in 'o me wav contwcted wi th
tn\ 011n C'-i'>Lence wa~ t· ntireh o u tsi rle
111) field ohi~ion:· · the suffer ing o f lots of di ffere nt ~o rts of
T he result o f Fel(:' rabend 's e1'elllualh·
g limpsing thi' id ea i-. no t, as on e mig h t
expect. an upMtrgl' of con trition , but
rath er the reflection tha t
I tet t<lin l} cannot undo Ill} wavering and
unconn •r 11 dtll ing the NaJi period . Nor d o
I iltinl. that I c ut ht· hlamc:d or hc:ld
n·,pomiblc for 1111 beha\'iw. Re,pon~ibi l itl
.r'>!.umcs that 1>1: ~ no" the <tllnnatives. that
we know ho" 111 rhoo~t· an rong the111 . and
th.u \\l' uo,e thio, ~ II III\ kdg<· w pn-.h tht:m
a'id e th rough COW<UdiCl', oppor tuni" n, or
ideological lenor. But I can rcpo r 1 "hat I
thought and drrl . 1\h<ll I thin!.. ahotll tht·'>e
thuught.. .mel MUtm'> wd.l\ , and "hi I
changed.
Read in isola tio n , thi s see ms a shock-
in g e vasio n of 1espo nsibility. But Fey-
erabc nd ha a point. Al. usual, however,
he Ol'e r~ ta le'> it. a nd writes in o rder to
shock rather tha n to convin ce. Of rounl'
he can be blam ed a nd held respo nsible.
But what he can be blam ed fo r, he can
pla u&ibly claim. is not ill will, but ig no-
rance of altcrn.ttiH:s, lac k uf imagina-
tio n . fa ilu re to n oti ce, ~e lf-absorption ,
icy ego ti sm.
icc, • ocra te~ a rgue d , i ~
V ignorance. 'o. Kan t re-
plied , it i ~ ha1·ing a n C\il
will, o ne tha t clo-,es its ears
to the vo ice of com cien ce, a \o ice that
speak~ to cve1} h u man bei n g, issuing
co mm an d ~ of wh ich none of u · can
clai m ig nora nce. ln hi' memoir Feyer-
abe nd is •e ·tating ' ocrate:.' ide of th e
a rg ument. The good po in t that he could
h <11 e mad t•, had he been less inte rested
in shocking his read e rs, is the o ne h e
m akes a bit furth e r o n :
a mor;cl ch;u anc·r r.l nnttt h<· created by
argument. "edncauo n ." or a n an o f will . It
canno t bt· Cll' <lle<l hv a nv kinrl o l planned
action. whether 'cic ntif'if , mo r-al. or 'di-
gious. Ltke tnrl' lme, it i'> .1 grit, no1 an
achievemc!nt. It de1wncl., on ,ccridents such
as parc:nt.ll ,,fft•t tion , 'onw !..inc! of stabihty,
flie ncl,h ip. and-follo"ing therefrom-on
a ddk<tll' b.llame bt·twc<·n self< onlid<·nce
and a tnnct•t n lor other'·
Some luck) Gennan~ in th e d ays of
!Iiller had a good mo ral character, as
rlid som e lucky Virgi nia m in the daY!> o f
slavery. The unluc k) o nes took the suf-
ferin g tha t Mtrro uncled th em as 'ju!>t th e
w a1 things are .'' So Wt' blame them , as we
blame Feyerabe nd. For th e~e unlucky
people, th e on ly human be in g~ whose
fa te was connec te d wi th the ir own were
those like them-;ehe,, in being Arvan or
be ing wh ite.
\Ve are righ t to blam e the m for this,
b u t we "·o uld be \\Tong to de m Fe\ era-
bend\ the!>is that '' hcthn o ne i' rai.,ed
an anti- em iLe 01 no t. or rc~i~erlto no ti ce
people rath e r than jmt a fe1v, i' a matter
o f cha nce rat her than of cho ice. Wha t
o ne pe rcei\ C\ is. as the a nti-em piricist
ph ilosoph e r!> of sc ie nce im isted , a fun c-
tio n o f o ne\ beliefs and d e ires. And
so is wh at o ne d o c~> no t perceive. Fcycnl-
be nd did no t pcrcci\'e wh at was be ing
d o ne to his .Jewish ne ig hbo rs because
he had h ad th e bad luck to be broug h t
up with ce rt ain beliefs a nd d esires. He
e\•e ntually did perc<·ivc wha t had ha p-
pe ned , because h e had the good luck
to marrv a certain woman a nd sec a cer-
tain mo1ic.
nvbod~ who restate' ocra-
A tes\ side of th e a rg ument
will be acc u,ed , b) th ose
wh o favor Kam\ side, of
d estroyi ng moral agency by reducing
mo ral characte r to th e chance product
o f genes, accultura tion and a host of
o the r d e te rmining ca u se~. Anybody who
restates Ka nt's side o f th e argum ent will
be accused . by peopl e who accept Dar-
win 's acco unt o f how we go t here , o f
introd ucing m yste rio u , me ta physical,
imma terial, evo lutio narily inex plicable
emitic!> call ed "co n scie n ce~ and "will"
in to the human organi!>m. Socrate!>
th o ugh t that bad character- ign orance
of the Good-<:o uld be explai ned by
th e accide n ts o f o ut bio logy o r o u r li fe-
h isto r v (bei ng a woma n u r a slave, for
example. and co nseque nt!) unable to
it around the pa l e~t ra l i~tening to
Socrates). Dar wi nians a nrl Freudian
think that it can be explain ed by acci-
dents tha t keep us igno ran t that "e1·c r y
single human be ing is con nected to our
own ex istence." Such accide m · include
haYing th e wro ng gen es, the wro ng par-
ems, th e wro ng educa tio n or th e wron g
compa nio m .
The worst war to fo rmulate the
issue be tween Socra tes a nd Kant is to
ask whe ther free will can have wriggle
room in a univc r~e mad e o ut of ph y ical
particles. T hat wa) m adn e~!> li es, or a t
least the silly \Ort of philosophy tha t
m akes the pos~ibilitv o f moral agency
de pe n d upo n rece nt d isco1eries in
quantum physics. A bener way wa sug-
ge~ted b) Sanre, in his d iscussion o f
"bad faith." Sartre said that we arc
doom ed constamly w oscillate be twee n
treating o urselves as d etermin ed (whe n
we ex pl ai n our pas t ac tions) a nd treat-
ing o urselves as frc·e (when we d ecide
what to d o next, and wh ethe r we like o r
disli ke our past sdves). I k wamed that
we fa ll into bad fai th when we con ru~e
expla na tio n wit h ju~tification (a\ Fever-
abend doc.,) and ~ill 1ha t out prt: ~e n t
seh cs arc no t rcspomiblc for o ur pa't
selves, or that our paM \ehe!> were help-
less p up pets o l extt•rna l causal powe r .
Bu t , he added, II(' fall into eq ua ll) bad
fa ith (an d often in to rcligiou'> or po liti-
cal fana ticism ) when. wit h Kan t, we pre-
te n d th at we arc, like God, able to rise
abm-c accident and luck, whe n we think
of o u rselves as possessed o f a biologi·
cally an d historically inex plicable knowl-
e dge of th e Rig h t.
n thi~ respec t artt'e was
I p rell)' close to llume, wh o
said that we have w treat
ourselve as respo n iblc and
blamable when '' e thi nk of ou rseh es as
mem be rs of a mor.tl com muni tY, and as
d eterm ined by camal fo rce'> when we tq
to figure o u t how to make ourselves-
a nd, more important, o u r children-
better people. H ume d id not thi nk that
e ither way o f thi nking conflicted with
the o the r. For him, it made pe rfec t!)
good sense to hold people re ponsible
for what they had been causally neces-
sitated to d o. Dure s (havi ng a gu n at
your head ) m ay cxcu e a vil e action ,
b ut your genes and your ed ucatio n do
not.
This is no t because th reats have
greater power to necessitate tha n educa-
tio n , bu t beca use social life d em ands
tha t bo th la\1 and common seme di stin-
g uish between causes of actions (or inac-
tio ns) tha t are excu~e., a nd causes that
are no t. e ither theology no r phil oso-
p hy nor science can do much lO refine
or to rigidi fy this d i,tinclion, bu t socia l
prude nce ca n. Building a moral commu-
n ity, a com munity of reci p rocal tnt t, is
one task. Re u·uspective causal explana-
tio n (i nclud ing the explanation pro-
vided by psychologi~L!> a mi phy~iologists)
is an o ther. o th ing is gained by trying to
synthesi7e these two tasks, eve n tho ug h
sometimes, cautiously and prud ently, we
pe rmit the latte r lO affect the fo rme r. as
wh en the co urL~ d ec ide LO let psychia-
trists offer com pli cated rr asons fo r at-
tri buti ng dimin ished respon sibility to a
d e fendan t.
Socrates, Sartrc and 1Iume can be
re ndered consonant with Darwi n . Kant,
a nd most religiou-. orthodoxies, can no t.
But commo n se nse is still largely reli-
g io us a nd Kan tian. T he no tio n of an
inbuilt and infa ll ible conscie nce, which
o nlv a no n-ba nal fo rm o l e\il-a dia-
bolical will-<:ould ignore, is till prelly
ce ntral to most \Ve~ t l'rners' ideas of
m a n a nd the un he rse .. o is the no tio n
that o bser vatio n, expe rimen ta tion and
clear, p recise, "logical" thin ki ng wi ll,
sooner o r la ter, lead us to what Kuhn
JULY 31 , 1995 TilE New Rio.I'UBLIC 35
calls "one full, ol~jecrive, true account of
nature." A' Kuhn poims out, howe,·er,
such a notion, too, is hard to recon-
cile with Darwin. The idea that ont"
species of organi\m is, un like all the
other\, oriented not jmt tOward its
own increa\ed prosperit) but toward
Truth. is a~ un-Darwinian a\ the idea
that every human being has a built-
in moral rompa"-a conscience that
swing~ free of both social history and
individual lurk.
he philo ophical baules
T
betwe<'n the formalists and
the hiMoricists-betwecn
those who want to isolate
atcmpural ~truclllres and those who
think. with freud, that "chance is not
unworthy of detet min in g our fate"-
follow the same scenatio whether the
is~ue is ltcientific truth or moral agenq.
Philosophcrlt on the one side want
something to rely on, something that is
not subject to chance. Philosophers on
the other side trY to find wm·s of pre-
erving most of common sen~e while
ket·ping faith with Darwin: with the rcal-
iLation that our ~pecies, its faculties and
iL' nutent 'cientifir and moral lan-
guage~. are a~ much products of c hance
as a re tecton ic plates and mutated
viruse~. They 1ry to explain how social
democrats ran be bener than ~at i s,
modern medici ne beue r th an voodoo,
and Gali ko hcttet tha n the Inq uisition,
even though there are no neutral, tran<r
cultural, a hi storiral criteria that dictate
these rankings.
The peoplt' on one side of this ar-
gument (all their opponents irration-
ali\h a nd daim that they are under-
mining the loundations of modern civ-
ilitation. Tht· people on the other ~idt·
retort that their opponcnb are dog-
matic metaphy,iriam, till in thrall to
the self-deceptive. ob~o l ete. religious
hope that ou t ~pecie' i,, somehow, in
the rare of a po\\'et not our~e l ve~. a
power th at keeps our head~ turned
wward the True and the Right. Feyer-
abcnd got a kirk ou t or being called
an irrationalist, and exaggerated his
image by ti tl ing one of his books
FmruiPII to Hmsnn. Hut by the time
he wrote thil> au tohiognlphy he was
in a more 'ober mood. In Killing Time
he says, "I nt'\t'r denigrated 'reason ',
whatc,·er tha t is, on ly ~t1me petrified
and t) ranniral \er\ionl. of i t.~
It is hard to tell which beliefs are
e~sential to liberal democracv. to what
llabermas ha~ called "the t;nfinished
project of IOOtkornit\," and which are
petdfied and t) rannical dogmas. But
te ll ing the d ilfcrettce is what philoso-
pher~ art• for. Rummaging through com-
mon sense, trying to figure out what to
keep a nd what to throw awav, is what
36 T i lE NEW REPLBLIC JULY 31, 1995
they do. Somebody has to, or else we
hall ~ul f'ocaw, like tht• ~rhoi<L~ti cs , un-
der a pile of the 'hri,ckd husks of once
fruitlul idt·a~. Fcvcrabcncl ~ometimes
d id this job ra rde~l>lv, but at his best
TheNaturalist
BY
EUGEN WEBER
Zola: A Life
by Frederick Brown
{farrar, Straus and Giroux, 888 pp., $37.501
rance~co Zo lla was born
F in Venice in 1795, jmt
before the great cit'. 's in-
dependt·ncc ended, of an
old milittH) famil) whose tradi tion
he follmH·rl b\ joining the Amtrian
armr. Donot in :'vlathematics, author
of a Trratise 011 Sttltlf)'lllg, he resigned
h i~ commi~~ion in 1820 to become a
civil engineer, inventor, entrepren eur,
buildet o f r<~ il road,, canals, dams, port
inslallatiom. T lw ligme of th is brilliant.
resolute, ub~tinatc d re<1mcr, who was
attracted to Loui~-P h i 1l ipe's France al~
te r IH30, evokes th l' \'anguard of Saint-
, imonian t•ngint•t·r~ \\ ho carried out
France\ industrial and banking revolu-
tion ol the nineteenth century. Chang-
ing hi~ name to Franc;ois Zola. the ven-
wrer ~ettled in !\ l ar~eille, where he
planned the bui lding of a new purl. H e
then ~igncd a contract with th e muni-
cipalit\ of nearb\ Aix-en-Pro,·encc for
the building of a dam and a canal des-
Lined L<> supply tlw cit) '''ith \\'ater. The
conduit would become the Canal Zola;
but iu, bcgettl'l died in 184 7 or pneu-
monia caught on the worksitc. An ar ri\'-
btc who tt cvet ar ri\ed, the 51-year-old
Franc;ois kit behind a you ng widow,
Emilit•, who m he had wed in Paris, a
7-year-old son, Emile, and a ta ngled
linanrial situa tion.
Emi lie proceeded to spend twenty
year~ trying to rctrie~e her h usband\
e~talt' !rom swi ndkr~. and in the process
~he lost wh<lt little she had left. Emile
gre\\ up a ~cholar.,hip b<>). a t a time
"hen being one W<L' le~., honor than
ordeal, a swou<:r. a hookworm CO\'ercd
with \Chool pritt''>: "ab~olutt" hli~s , ~a.\ he
remembered later. But Frederick Brown
~hows that Emile\ )Oilth was mon: than
study. Tone ocaf, he learned the clari-
net and pla}cd it in the college banct.
Their pockets swf kd with books, Emile,
Paul Cctanne and anotlwr schoolmate
roamed the countryside around Aix,
he did it rouragt·ousl) and persuasively.
R1<.11 \RL> RoR 1\ i a n i,·ersitv Professor
of the I I umanitie~ at the U;1iversity of
Yitginia.
trod the red t'anh of Pron!nce, sniffed
lavender a nd gor~e. tUmbed the chalk
hills that .etanne wa~ to paim later,
declaiming wr\e to Clne another. to the
green pines, and the immen~e blue ky
abO\ e. Alfred de ~ I mset's Rolla, "bo.-n
too late in to a world too o ld," spoke to
their di!Tuse adolescent angst. But H ugo
rca.,~ured them: "£\'Cry man in his heart
creates to hi~ whim I A whole enchanted
world made just for him."
Bucolic joys ended when Emile's
mothet. deep in legal enta nglements,
called the bo} to Paris. where the bright
pri 7ewinner of Aix managed to fail his
school-lea,•ing exam, the barmfaureat.
twice in a ww. Di,placed and discon-
certed in the gt eat w<.·n of the capital,
the rattled 17-\ear-old w~ forced to
earn the humt)tc li,"ing for two. The
ni neteenth n·nwry dealt straight-
forward!> \\ith mi~err: it let the hungq
un ive it thn ccmld, or die if they
couldn't. All but destitute. the Zolas
\univcd b\ the ~kin of their Leeth in a
series of cheap rooms and tin)' Oats.
un heatt"cl. Emile dcrked in the docks,
then found a job in the publi~hi u g firm
of H achcuc. \\ het e he soon passed
from packaging boob 10 publiciting
them. Bv I Rfl3 he was llaclwue \ adver-
tising nianag<·r. earn ing a living wage,
but Mill movt ng with his mother from
one unpaid ~et of rooms to another,
cheaper hut un more affordable.
Freelance writing-es avs. sketches,
critici,m, short ~torie~ . •mything that
would st:ll--uffercd a wa' to bring in
more monq , and pa} higher rents for
quarters more bright and beuet heated.
"L'nder the \\hi plash of necessity.~ al\ he
put it. nulla riles 51ne lwea ( no day with-
out a line, om: of Brown\ chapter titles)
became· his ~logan and his dri,ing force.
Stop writing. and thC) star\'(:d. Wdt-
ing like an oc·topus, Emik doubled his
income, tht·n douhled it again. He left
I Iacheue. set hb mother up in separate