- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - -- -- - - -- - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - -
plans that are said to represent a hou~e
in which Johns lived as a child. Here he
is supposed to be in o ne of hi s medita-
tive moods, a ort offugu c state in which
a rt history and persona l history begi n
to merge. This man wh ose idea of an
ho mage is to do tracings after Cezanne
is trying to convince us tha t he is kee p-
ing the hig h an tradition alive. J o hns's
tamped-down palette doesn ' t ach ieve the
twilit poe try tha t he 's pro bably after,
but the gu n-meta l color scheme does
put us o n notice that this is sober work.
The most recent canvases arc mean t to
convey an impression of middle-aged
maturity, lessons learned, chall cngt>~
met. These high-priced gra) paintings
are the an-world equ ivale nt of a very
expensive gray suit. They are engineered
for importa nce.
Some people say that J aspe r Johns
has bee n maki ng an impre~sion for so
lo ng that by now he's beyond th e reach
of critici m . Michael Kimmelman ex-
plained in his review of th e J ohns show
in The New York Times that he doesn't
care for a lo t of the work, but he also
obser ved that "it's pointless to argue
about Mr. Jo hns's place in history; this
issue was settle d decades ago.'' By re-
assuring his readers tha t J ohns really
is an imponan t artist, Kimme lman may
intend to soften his own discomfo n at
Knowledge and Acquaintance
BY RICHARD RORTY
Bertrand Russell:
The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921
by Ray Monk
(Free Press, 695 pp., $351
t wa$ ~a id o f the ~i x th Baron
I Byro n that he ~wic ldl'd his p<"n
wi th the easy negligence of a
nobleman.'' So did the third
Earl Russell, whosl' wnung combined
exube rant panache with genuine intcl-
lecw al d epth. lie wrote copious!) and
persuasively for mo re than sc\·cnry }'Cars,
o n subjects as di fferent as Ro nsard 's
poetry, C hin e~e politics and Greek phi-
losophy. He was fluen t a nd witty eve n
whe n tackin g back and forth betwe<:n
English prose and the crabbed symbol-
ism o r math ema tical logic, a symbolism
that he helped to invent.
Byron wie lded his sexua l o rgans as he
did his quill, and, reading Ray Monk's
biog raphy, one might be tempted to say
that Russell did the same . Mo nk has
46 THE NEW REPUBLIC DECEMBER 2, 1996
finding himself on the wrong side of
current taste. 'v\' hen Kimme lm an con-
cedt>s .John s his ''place in history," how-
ever, he's j umpin g th e g un . The idea
tha n a n artist who has been acclaime d
fo r thirty-five years is a permanent fix-
ture re nects a ~ h onsi gh tecl view of his-
tor y. J oh ns's long relationship with the
Museum of Modern An prove~ nothing
except tha t he is the clo~es t thing to a n
official artist tha t we have, and that
doesn ' t prove much a t all.
There are official artists, such as Ve-
latquez, whom we count among the
immo rtals. And there are orficial artists,
~u c h a~ Le Brun , who dominated France
in the second half of the se1·enteenth
ce ntury, filling Versailles much as J o hns
now fills the Mode rn , who hardly count
with anybod)' today. Ani~ts are ha iled
in one generatio n and forgotte n two or
three generations later. l wonder ifJ ohns
recalls an observation th at his frie nd
Duchamp made in 1966: "Success isju ·t a
brush lire, a nd o ne has to lind wood to
feed it." Kirk Varnedoe ha~ thrown o n
lots of wood, and the fire is burning furi-
o usly. This huge retrospective is the ulti-
mate accolade that John s wi ll receive
from his contempo raries. And in th e
heat or MoMA's tire it's eas}' to fo rget
that what remains afte r the names di e
down is ano ther matter t'ntircly. •
don e a lo t of de tective work. He has d is-
covered that Russell's ~ex life was more
varied. more devio us and more clup li ci-
tou ~ th an one would g uess from his
Autobiogmph)'. But Ru s~e ll took his sex ual
partners a lo t mo rt' serio u I}' than did
Byron . H is re lation s with women see m
to have follo wed the sa me pattern as
with men: he was constantly loo king for
somebody wonderfu l a nd astonishing,
so me body who would change his life.
If they were women, he would often go
to heel with th em. But no t if they were
me n : this must be one th e few rece nt
biographie to offe r no re\·elations of
homosex ua l yearnings.
Russe ll \ intense enthusiasms usually
did not last. On first encounterin g G. E.
Yloore, J oseph Conrad, Alys Pearsall
Smi th (his first wife), D. H . Lawre nce,
Ottoline Morrell or Wittgenste in, he
would become co nvin ced tha t he had
me t someon e immemelv superi o r to
himself, intellectually, mo rally, or both.
But he would then dec ide, often fa irlv
quickl y, that he had been wrong. To a
few people-Conrad , for example-he
remained a good friend and a loyal
adm irer over the years. Man y others
must have wo ndered why he was now
so ready to d ismiss them with a will)'
phrase, when he had been all O\'er them
last mo nth , or last year. It wou ld be an
overs tatement to say that Russell was
e ither at yow fee t or at your throat, but
reading M o nk· ~ biogra phy makes it clear
that he hac! a tendency to think that peo-
ple were eitl1cr glo rio us o r useless.
ussell spent his 30 and 40s
R
on the fringes of Blooms-
bury, in the days whe n (or
so it now seems) most of
the artistically or intellectually g ifted
members of th e English middle a nd up-
pe r c lasses knew one another and con-
versed a nd corresponded incessantly.
This lirst volume of Monk \ pn~jected
two-volume biography stops in 1921, <mel
thus covers Russell 's Bloo msbury pe ri-
od. It will attract, and g rati fy. at least
two son s of readers: people who lind
Bloomsbury e ndlc s~l y fasci nating, and
philosophy buff~.
I sha re Mo n k's fascinatio n wi th
Bloo msbury, but I a m slightly a'>hamed
of it. I am not sure that I ought to be as
intereste d as I am in th e tangl ed sex ual
and inte llectual con nections among the
members of that set. 'v\l1 ~· am I so in-
trig ued by Monk's discovery that Ru!-.-
scll cuckolded his fri end T. S. Eliot, as
wel l as his teacher and collaborator
Alfred f\'onh \.Vhitehead? After al l. I do
not believe that, as Virginia Woolf fa-
mou!-.ly cla imt'd, human nature cha nged
"on o r abou t December 19 10." More-
ove r, I lind the lirst half of the twentieth
cen tury blun ing together with th e last
half of the nin eteenth ce ntury: Ald o u ~
Huxley and F. Scott FiLzgerald begin to
look more like Will iam Dean Howells
than li ke T homas Pr ncho n, Pro ust more
li ke BalnK than like Be rnhard. A dawn-
ing realin tio n tha t I have no idea what
"postm ode rnism " means has led me
to wonde r wheth er I ever knew wha t I
meant by "modernism,·· and why I still
assum e tha t it was b li s~ to be alive in the
days tha t Mo nk describes.
My hun ch is that it is with books
about Bloo msbury as it is (or so am I
told) with string quartets: the audience
i ~ getting steadil y older and dwindling.
My own ge ne ra ti on, th e o ne which wa~
young in th e '40s and '50~. grew up
believing that th e possibili ties of in tel-
lectual a nd e motio na l li fe had bee n
c hanged by Darwin , Marx a nd Freud ,
that the twe ntieth centur y really wa~
going to be wonderfully diffe re nt from
th e cc ntlll-)' tha t pn·ceded it, th a t Elio t,
Woolf a nci Prousl ~h owed u ~ how great
1hat differe n ce could be. Tholte o f us fo r
whom these la tter write rs werT paradig-
m a ti c may be th e o nly peo ple still will-
ing lO she ll out m o ney for bi ognrphie!>
o f Lytto n Stracl1ey o r Vita Sackville-Wcst.
And this may be 1h e ca~e even fo r
bi ographi es of Moore or Russe ll , a nd
maybe even Wiugcnstcin. It is p ossible
that Mo nk-wh os{· biograph ) o f Russell
is j u st a-. th o roughly resea rc hed a nd as
e n gro~sin g as th e stunning bi ogra ph y of
Wittgen tcin th at made him fa mo us fi ve
wars ago-has publish ed his book in
th e nic k o f tim e. lf p>u conside r Moore
and Russell O llt ~idc o r th eir piqua nt
Bloom sbu ry-cu m-Cam bridge a m bie n Cl',
simp!) as fig ures in the histo ry o r phi-
losoph )', th ey do n o t loo k nearly as im-
po rta nl alt they o n ce did. Wittge nste in 's
stock i ~> still as hig h a~ ever; hut this is a t
least part!) because no bo d y is quit e sure
what th e ma n ac tu ally sa id. T here a rc
as manv \'c rsions o f Wittg enste in o n th r
marke t these days as the re a rc o f Pl ato
o r o f Hege l. Moore a nd Ru ssell, h)'
co ntras t, really a rc as una mbig uous a n d
~ tra ig htfo rward as tlwy prided th e m-
:-d w~ on be ing. So it is muc h easie r to
lind them obsole te.
NEW!
ABRAHAM
LINCOLN
A Biography
By Lord Charnwood.
Introduction by
Peter W. Schramm
"Chamwoocl's Abraham Lincoln IS
one of the clearest analyses ever
attempted. It possesses an almost
noble rhythm that makes 11 rank as
11terature....H1s book sought the
reasons behmd Lmcoln 's act10ns and lifted the whole field of
Lmcoln stud1es to an mtemat1onal plane whiCh later wnters would
keep m view • - Andrew Rolle, Lmcoln: A Contemporary Portrait
"I have always relished the detail. the perspecbve, the WISdom of
Lord Cham wood's Abraham Lincoln. It IS a gilt to have 11available
at last lor a Wide read1ng publtc." - Charles B. Strozier. aulhor,
Lmcoln's Ouest lor Un10n: PubliC and Pnvate Meamngs
"Chamwoocl's biography rema1ns one of the great landmarks m
Lmcoln literature because of 1ts elegant style. its transatlantiC per·
spect1ve, and 1ts thoughtful. keenly mvesligative approach to the
subJect." - Don E. Fehrenbacher, Stanford Un1vers1ty
August 1996, 352 pages
I
-t720 BOSTO:\' \\'AY •
Mo nk is steep ed in philosophy and
he seems to have no doubt that his
subjects did e poch-making phil osophi-
cal work. I lis biogra phies d o an adm ir-
a bl e j o b of imewating the d l' tail s o f
the ir subject!.' philosophical wo r k with
th e rest of th e ir lives, th eir thrilling
philosophica l dbcoV<.'ries with th e o th-
e r so rts o f th rills th at th ey ex pe ri e nced .
"One canno tunde rMa nd him (Ru ssell ],"
Monk writes, "with o ut unde rs tanding
the rol e played in hi ~ life a nd in his
imagin a ti o n by his ho pes for phil osoph).
And on e canno t begin to undc rst.a nd
I ha t with o ut somt· t~nders ta ndin g of th l·
ph ilosoplw itse lf'. "
Monk certainl y h a~ a point. It you
write a bi ography o f a pe rson muc h of
wh ose life wa~ d evo te d to so l vin ~ prob-
le ms in a certain specia l area, yo u haH' a
treme ndo us advanl age if' you are th or-
<Hrg hly fa miliar with th a t a rea. Tlw best
biographi es o f ph}'sicists arc u ~uallv writ-
te n by phy~icist~. the best biographic~ of
m ovie ~ta rs by peo ple who have h e lped
to ma ke moviel.. Still, wh e n r un equa-
tio n s beg in a ppearing in the forme r, o r
de taile d discussio n of th e co mparative
m e ri ts or cam e ra booms in th e la tte r,
read e rs ~l art to skim . Our interest in
heroic fi gures such a~ ids Bo h r o r Mar-
lene Di e tr ic h m a}' no t h old up under th e
prt·ssure of too m an y, o r too m inut e,
de tails.
NEW!
A SACRED
UNION
OF CITIZENS
George Washington's
Farewell Address and
the American
Character
By Matthew Spalding and
Patrick J. Garrity.
Introduction by
Daniel J. Boorstin.
"Th1s marvelous book helps to renew our understandmg of
George Washington's enormous contnbution to the founding
of our country, and of lhe cont/numg relevance of h1s exam·
pte to the problems we face today."-Willlam A. Galston,
Umvers1ty of Maryland
•Spaldmg and Gamty help Washington speak once more to
his "Fnends and Fellow Cllrzens. •· -Richard Brookhiser,
NATIONAL REVIEW
•An mtelligent and 1mportant work • - William Kristol, THE
WEEKLY STANDARD
Seplember 1996, 256 pages
L\~HAJ\1 , ~lD 20706 • 1-800-462-6420
When it comes to b iograph ies of p h i-
losophers, th ings get compli cated. Some
ph ilosophers-Plato, I lobbes, Nieusc he,
Kuh n-pu t f(>rward p hilosoph ical view~
whose po in t is p retty clear ri~ht on th e
ba t. T h e prag m ati st'~ qlll:stion-"Wh at
differe nce wi ll it m akt· to pranice if
this phil osophi cal claim is true?"-is
fairly easy to a n.s wcr whe n it comes to
Plato o n the natu re of the soul, or
H o bbes on sover-eign ty, o r ietzschc o n
slave-moralit)', or Kuhn o n the na turt of
theory-cho ice in science. If ) 'O U an:qJL
what those p hiloso ph ers ha\'l' to say o n
thos<:> ~u bjen .~. it may well c hange you r
in tell ectual habi ts an d }OUr ~d f~inrage.
' '<JLr ca n g(•t the poi n t of their p h il o~op h ­
ical in itia tiws ('H'n if you skim over
some of th e tec h nica l it i c~.
Whe n you rear!. on the <>th er h a nd,
a bou t that wonderful morn ing whe n
Kan t wo ke up to the rca li tat ion th at
"cxish" i~> not a pred icate, o r th e mo-
mcntou'\ dav whe n it dawned on Ru~se ll
th at classes ' a rc logically p rior 10 n um-
be rs, or the e pochal week in whi ch Witt-
genstei n real i1cd thai a logica lly per~ pic­
uo u~ la ng uage would con ta in no terms
whi c h design ate rcla tiom. )OUr bl ood
lll<l) n ot run q uite so last. Yon ma} have
to \uppress a ··so whatr'' You would have
to h ave wo rried a lo t about the onto logi-
cal a rg ument li>1 the l'xistcncc of God
to u nde rsta n d wh} Ka nt got so excited .
NEW!
THE
SPIRIT OF
YELLOW-
STONE
The Cultural
Evolution of a
National Park
By Judith L. Meyer
"Meyer speaks au·
thontaliVely here as
to why a park's h1story and cuffure, With thelf rela·
t1onsh1ps to management and protection, are every
bit as 1mportant as the science of a park • - Lee
Whittlesey. Nallonal Park Serv1ce, Yellowslone
Nallonal Pari<
•...a t1mety rev1ew of the developmental history of our
first nat1onal park.. .Preservmg Yellowstone lor future
vis1tors w1ll require all the Wisdom the past can pro·
Vide. Jud1th Meyer proVIdes a wmdow mto that
past.' - Aubrey L Haines, h1s1onan and author of
The Yellowstone Story
September 1996, 184 pages
DECEMBER 2, 1996 TilL NFW RFPUBl iC" 47
You would have to care so mewhat about paci ty (as Monk puL~ it) as a ninctecmh- study of p hilnsophv in the 1 9~~0s a nd
Kant's cla im that ari thm etic and geome- cc ntury Whig. A godson o f.J o hn Stuart 1940s (in cluding me) were convin ced of
try arc based o n n o n-e mpirical for ms of Mill and a grandson of Lo rd J o h n Rus- the truth of these two theses, nHtn) o f
sensor y intuition to be turned o n by Rus- sell-he was born in 1872-Russell up- them by A. J. Ayer'1. l_an[(lwge, Tntth and
sell's ThPPrinriplesoJMathematics. In such dated and enlarged the libe ralism or l.ogir. which appeared in 19~6. Ayer was
cases, if you do not get the techn icali ties, the e two gn .· at Victorians for the ben e- Russe ll's bul ldog, in the sense in \vhic h
you get nothing. fit o f twe mic th-ce ntury a udiences. He flu xfe)' was Darwin's. I Iii. book h ad
Philosophy professors, of course, get made a big difTe 1·e ncc to public o pinion the.: largest sal e~ of an y English-language
exciterl by th e technicali ties. They are on a lo t of social and political questio ns, phi l o~ophica l treatise prio r to Kuhn 's
o u r m eat a nd drink. Fo r u , Monk ra n- and he did a great deal of' good. But hi ~ 'lite Structu rr oJSrimlijic RPvolu tiOitl.
not prm~de too man y detai ls. But m ost views o n mo ra l, ~oc ial and political ques- By 1960. h owever, neither of Russe ll 's
o f us would be reluctant lO insist th at tions, a nd on the mean in g of' lift', have central these!> looked remotely pl ausi-
any elf-respecting imellectual ou gh t to no thing a t all LO do with th e work wh ich ble to mo~t anglophonc philosophers
s hare o u r professio nal thrills. Similar- made Russell jlhilosophically influen tia l. If (who con tinued to C<dl themselves "ana-
ly, econom ics p rofessors lytic," for lack o f any bet-
might think that any sclf- ter ideas or to excuse
rt•specting voter has a the ir fa ilu re to read
duty to ho ld some views Hege l a nd llcidcggcr).
on economic policy, but An alyti c philosophy n o t
concede th at the gen eral o nly lllrn ed against its
public is excu ed from principal found er, but
the obligatio n to follow analyti c ph ilosophers be-
the d ebate betwee n the gan to profess incomprc-
foll owers of Keynes a nd h e n ~io n a bout h ow a ny-
th e fo llowe rs of Fried- body as smart as Russell
ma n. No doubt an y se lf- could ever haw been
respecting hum an being foolish enough to hold
should have a worldvicw, his absurd views. Thc
but he or she may be work of Willard V. 0 .
excused fro m m ost of Quine and Wilfrid Sell-
the de bates (over, say, an. comri buted to this
the validity of th e o n- switch. Quine criticized
tol ogical argume nt) be- the distin ction be twet:n
tween Descartt:s and formal, con ceptual. ana-
Hum e , or hetwee n Ka nt lvtic tru th~ and m atc-
and H egel. (The onto- l:ial, c mpi l-ical. symheti c
logical arg um ent, yo u tr uths as a h angow.'r o f'
may recall from Phil oso- the Aristotelian esse n-
phy I 0 I, says that sin ce tialism that Russell had
Cod is the most perfect repudiated. Sellars de-
be in g, and sin ce it is molished the idea o f
mo re perfect to exist knowled ge by acquain-
th an no t to, Cod nec- tance: h e di s tingui~ hcd
essarily exists. Another between impacts on our
versio~ says that Cod is sen se o rgans a nd th e
that being whose very judgment form ed by
essen ce is ex i ten ce, so langu age users (a nd
the suggesti on that he o nl} by la nguage users)
does not exist is sel f~ as a result of those im-
contradictory. if exis- pacts. The real turning
ten ce, as Kan t th ought, IH RI R\1'. 1> Rl :>I>~ II IH )A(!.. ((.)L' <oll ll l\ HlR Ill~ 1'. 1\\ Rl.l'll\11(. point, h owever, was the
is not a predicate , this po ·thumou publicatio n
argum e nt d oesn't work. Russe ll once he had not wrillc n technical books such of Wit tgen stein 's PhilosofJhiral Investiga-
thought that it did work, but he later as Till' Prin ciples of Mnlheuwlics and i\11 tions in I954. In that book, Wittgenstcin
developed a n ew and origina l explana- Inquiry into Meaning and Tntth, nobody ridi culed mo~t of th e doctrines th at he
tion o f why it didn 't work, an ex planatio n would think of him as a great philoso- an d Rtti.sell had joined in promulgating.
that involved the creatio n o f a new, and ph er, a ny more than we thi nk of R. I I. Since the lnut•st igation~. mur h o f anglo-
ver y fruitful , set or logical symbo ls.) Tawn ey o r Walter Lippmann under that p honc philosoph}' h as been a co mpeti-
Still, Russe ll is aq,ruably the most in- descri pti on . tio n to sec who can offer th e most rad-
flue n tia l ph il osop h er to have written Russell created wha t has come to be ical a nd thoroughgoing criticism s o f Rus-
in English in this ce ntury. Dewey a nd called "analytic philo ·o phy"-still the sell.
Kuhn arc the on ly plausible rivals fo r do min ant tradition among th e angle- A brid' hi story of a na lyti c philosoph y
th at p osition. Sur ely Russell must have phon es-by convin cing a lo t of his con- wonld s how it marching bris kly and tri-
said some thing-and something distin c- tempo rari t:s of two theses: tha t, as h e umphant ly u p the h ill durin g th e first
tively philosophical-which it he hooves said, "logic is th e esse nce of philoso- hal f of this cenwry, and marchin g down
ever ybody, not just the professio nals, ph y," and that a ll knowledge is founde d again , with e(jua l bravura, durin g the
to know? Maybe, b ut I am not sure what in a specia lly simple and d irect sort of st:cond h a lf. As the nex t century dawm ,
it was, and I doubt tha t Mo nk is, C'ither. knowing, called knowing by acquain- it is n ot at all clear, espcciall} to ma ny
Russell was very influential in his ca- tance. Man y people e n tering on the bemused no n-ang lophone philosoplwrs,

48 TilE EW REPUBLIC' DECEMBER 2, 1996

th at a na lyti c philosoph y st.ill has a di-
rection and a momcnlllm. ll has repu-
diated all the Russe ll ian doctrines which
made it seem so promising in the '30s
and '40s, and it is not ohvious what has
been put in their place. Si nce the ami-
e mpiri cism and the anti-foundational-
ism on which analytic philosophers now
pride themselves was taken for granted
by nin e teemh-cenwry ang lopho ne phi-
losophers such a~ T. H. Green and Ber-
nard Bosanq uet, o ne might be tempted
to say that analytic philosophy was a
century-long waste of time.
utth at would be a mistake.
B One learns a lot by trying
out an cxcit.ing new sug-
gesti o n abo ut what a disci-
pline, or a genre, or a society, or a self
migh t become, even if one even tua lly
concludes th at th e ~uggestion will no t
pan o ut. Russell had a vision o f phi-
losophy as detecting logical structures
hidden behind the ordinary usc of lan-
guage. Those str uc LUres, o nce revealed,
would show u ~ what o ur conce pl~ real-
ly a rc, what we are really talking about,
as well as what infe re nces arc valid. Un-
CO\'e ring these strucwrcs, he thought,
would Ic t us sec through sophistries such
as the o nto logical argume n t. It wa~ a
beau tiful vision, but it dep{·ndcd on dis-
covering some ultimate simples into
which all concepts, an d th erefore all
judgmenL~. cou ld be decomposed. Those
simples were known, Russell believed,
"by acquain tance." th rough ~ensory in tu-
itio n or (in the case o f' mathematical an d
logical concepts) intellectual in wition .
Wi ttgc mtei n 's Philosoph ira[ lnvrstiga-
l iom made fu n of the very idea of knowl-
edge by acq uainta nce, and of the c laim
that a n hitherto undetected logic under-
lay o ur usc of la nguage. Nothing, Wiu-
gcnste in said, wa~ hidde n; philosophi cal
proble ms arc not lO be solved, but dis-
solved. There is no great constructive
work to be done by finding si mples and
showi ng how comph·xes can be con-
~ tructed out of them.
Wiugenste in 's posthumous book
drove Russell up tlw wall. By th e time it
appeared Russell was in his 80s, and not
abou t to start a ll O\'er again . Anybody
who acq •ti esced in Wittgenstcin\ volte-
face, he snarled, was giving up philoso-
phy. intdlectual respomibility and prob-
ably moral dece ncy a~ wel l. But Rus-
~e ll was not too o ld LO put Wittgenstein
in his place. Comparing Wiugen~tein's
aban do nm ent of what Russell consid-
ered to be the on ly decen t son of phi-
losophy with Pascal's abando nnll'lll of
math ematics and To lstoy's alnllldon-
m('IH of ficti o n , he said that
Wiug(' ll\lein . who unald pht) with nu·la-
plw~ical intdca<'i<'' a~ clt'vt•rly "' Pa.,t·al with
h cx;~gon~ or Tolstoy with etnpc10rs, threw
<IW'd! this talc111 and <kbascd him~dl bdorc
tommon .,cnst· as Tolswy debased himself
before pcasanu;--in each case from an im-
pulse of pride. I admir<"d Wittg<·nslt'in's
'fin rtalu1 btu not his latn work, which
St't'mcd to lllt' lO involve an abnegation of
hi., own bc,1 talt·nt \ '<'f)' similar 10 1ho,c o l
Pas' al and Tot..wy.
ANNOUNC I NG
This is the sort of riposte we all hope
we may still be able to write at the age of THE NEW R EPUBLIC
R!J. 1t is also a very acu te com parison. 1997 P OCKET DIARY
Wittgenstcin was a great admire r. of' Tol-
stoy, a nd (a!> Monk 's biography showed
in detail) he wa~ ea~ il y a match for Tol-
F or the past few years, we have
stoy in his willingness to do abso lutely
anything to improve his own image of
himself in his own eyes, no matter what
th e cost to his pH·vious commiunents, or
to his friends.
heen giving pocket di arie , embossed
in gold with TilE NEW REPUBLIC
name and logo, to our writers and
ed itors and spec ial friemJs in the
media. The d iaries have heen so pop-
n the same article that I have
I just quoted , Russclln oLCd that
the th en cu rrc·n t generation
of Oxford philosophers Uohn
Urmson, Geofli·ey Warnock, Peter Straw-
son , Gilbert Ryle) "in a numbe r of works
ular that we have decided w make
them avai lable to our subscribers at a
low cost, only $11.95 each.
The diaries are made by Letts of
London, whose diaries were favored
which , I am told, have me rit" had "set
forth a numbe r of argume nts against my by Charles Dickens and George
views and methods." But, he continued, Bernard Shaw. Each diary incl ud es
"I have been un abk· to sec any validity in week ly calendars with space to write
their criticisms of me." He thought the down daily appointments, plus a
metaphysical intricacies that he had Ull-
wine vintage chart, a list of impor-
ravcled thanks to the new sym bo lic logic
that he hdped to invent were there. They tant tol l-free telephone numbers, and
were not created, <l~ the younger Oxford addresses, ami more.
philosophers claimed, by the misuse of' The pages are edged in gilt and
philosophical language; they were built carry a silken page marker. The diary
into th (• structu re of realit y. The later
work of Wittgcnstcin a nd his disciples, itse lf is dark blue with fea therweight
Russell insisted, was a manifestation of light-blue pages.
latiness rathe r th an of perspicacity. It's elegant and easy to use. The
Despite the widespread view that Wiu- cost to non-subscri bers is $13.95, bur
gcnstei n, Quine and Sella rs had undc r- we're offering it to subscribers fo r just
mim·d his logical ato mis m, Russe ll never
gave up on his early claim that his way of $11 .95, including postage.
doing philosophy had made it possible
for philosophy, for th e first tim e in his- AVAILABLE TO O UR SUBSCRIBERS
tory, to hefome a science. He continued FOR A LIM ITED TIM E
to believe what he had claimed in 19 14 :
that hi s work had made possible "th e
sa me kind of advance a!> wa~ introduced YES, Senu me Till: N1:w REPUBLIC
into physics by Galileo: th e substi tutio n pocket diary immediately. (Plca:,e allow
of piecemeal, detailed a nd verifi able re- 2 w 4 weeks (or delivery.)
su iL~ for large untested generali ti es rec- ...J I am a s ub~criher, $11.95
ommended o nly by a certain appeal to J I a m not a subscriber, $13.95
tht' imagination."
The queslion of whe th er the re i~ an}' Name------------
suc h thing as rendering a discipline sci- AJJress - - - - - - - - - - -
entific cuLs to the heart of th e question City _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ I
of whe th er Russe ll made an end uring I
1 State __ Zip _ _ __ I
con tributio n to philosophy. If, as Kuhn I
I
a nd his fo llowers have suggested, we I
Write ro: Pocket Diary, Dept. A, I
have no ver y ck ar, rigorous or scien tific I
Tt IE NFW REPUBliC, 1220 19th St., NW, I
criteria for the appl icatio n of' the term
Washingmn, DC 20036 I
"scientili c clarit y and rigor," no criteria I
1
whi ch abstract from th e current state of Check or Money-Order I
I
a g ive n discipline and a pply to all disci- mu.sc accompany each order 1
I
plines at all historical pc1·iods, th e n the
----------------------------.. 1
DECEMBER 2, 1996 THE NEW R EI'UBLIC 49
rase for Russe ll's impo nan ce is wea k-
ened . For Russell be lieved that he had
finally, for good ancl all, don e wha t Kant
had tried and faile d to do: set philoso-
phy o n the secure path of a science.
K
uhn taug ht us LO trea t
claims of scie ntificity socio-
log icall)' rather than epis-
temological!). lle said thai
one mark of wha t he called "normal
scie nce" is the ex istence of a di ~ciplin a r y
matrix buill aro und respect fo r a para-
digma tic achicYc menl. Within such a
matrix, th ere is gene ral agreeme nt
among inquirers abo ut who is do ing
pro mi ing work, who deserves th e big
prizes, a nd o on . The re is a lso ag ree-
ment on who has achieved ··piecemeal.
detailed and ve rifiable resul ts.·· Still,
Kuhn we nt on to say, there is a lso revo-
lutionary scie nce, whi ch is th e sort o r
science you get when it is not yet clear
whethe r some bo ld new innovato r is a
genius o r a koo k, and the re are ~e\ e ral
co mpeting di sciplinary mau·ice!> aro und ,
so that which o ne you wind up worl-ing
within d epends upo n whic h graduate
schoo l, o r mcillor, you happen to pick.
·when a n ew achi eveme nt begins to
make it loo k as if the old paradigmati c
achievements will have to be reth o ught-
when paradigms collide-the Old Guard
and the Yo ung Turks no longer agree o n
what constitutes promising work, o r even
o n what constitutes sciemi[jc clarity a nd
rigor. From the n o n, until a new, un-
challenged, post-revolutionary di scipli-
nary matrix geLS establish ed. until all the
Aristote lians have die d out and bee n re-
placed with Ga lileans, or all the Galeni c
docto rs have so ld the ir prac tices to fo l-
lowe rs o f Ha rvey, you cann o t ge t a con-
se nsus o n wha t is scie nce and what is no t,
on whic h termino logy is clear a nd which
arg ume nts a re rigorous. Nor can you ge t
a consensus on whe the r some thing is a
verifiable result o r an o bsolete piece o f
rubbish .
Wiugc nste in 's Philosophical flme.ltiga-
tions engendered a philosophical revo-
lutio n . It insinuated tha t most of what
both Russc·ll and Wittgenstein himself
(in his first book, the Trartatus LogicQ-
PhilosofJhin ll) had , circa 1920, taken as
de finite ve rifia ble results we re really o b-
solete rubbish . We a ng lopho ne philoso-
phers a rc stillli\ ing within th e new disc;i-
p linary matrix crea ted by that revolu-
tio n. And for as lo ng as we arc living in
it, the consensus about Russell is Iii-ely to
be that he was brillia ntly, charming ly,
provocatively and profc>undly wrong.
'When Russell decided tha t philoso phy
consisted in logical a na lysis, and tha t the
new log ic he had hel ped invent would
make a new way of doing philosophy
possible, Russell creat ed a new and exc it-
in g matrix. He there by bro ug ht abo ut a
50 T HE N EW REPUBLIC DECEMBER 2, 1996
revolutio n in anglo pho ne philosophy,
o ne whi ch laste d for d ecades, hut wa ·
itself crushed by Wiugen stein 's counter-
revo lutio n. To most n o n-anglo pho ne
philosoph ers, however, the entire cen-
tury o f philoso phical wo rk which e n-
sued upon Russell's atte mpt to revive
British empiricism . including th e pro-
empiricist revolutio n of the first fifty
years a nd th e anti-empiri cist coun tei'"
revolution ofthesecond lifty) r a rs, looks
o ddly parochia l. The pree mine nt philos-
o phers of othe r lands, su ch as Gada mer,
Den·ida and Vauimo, arc balTic d bv the
importance th at their l>ritish and A;lleri-
can rolleagucs attribute to Russell and
Wittgenste in. They see th e fabl ed "rigor
and clarity'' o f phi losophy as it is prac-
ticed at Oxfo rd or Harvard as mos t ana-
lytic philosophe rs sec philosoph y as per-
fo rm ed in Paris: it loo ks local , qua int,
po intless.
It is possible. or course, that this most
recent revo luti on in angloph o ne phi-
losophical o pinio n, the o ne whi ch re-
sulted fro m Wittgcnste in 's criti cism of his
Tmrln lu~ in his !Jwrstigntiom , i ~ iL~clf j ust
an o th er !lash in the pa n. 1t is even possi-
Revolutionary Ware
BY JACKSON LEARS
American Plastic: A Cultural History
by Jeffrey L. Meikle
(Rutgers University Press, 403 pp., $49.951
Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century
by Stephen Fenichell
(Harper Collins, 356 pp., $251
isto rians, like o th e r in tel-
H lectuals, have rare ly shown
much interest in how
things wo1·k. Bla me it o n a
dua listic tende ncy to c leYatc spirit over
matte r, o r on an inh e1i ted Pro testant
prd"e,·en re for words over objc·cLS as
carrie rs of meaning, or o n a professorial
incompe tence around tools: whatever
the reason , th e rc~ ult of this in attentio n
is tha t (wi th a few shining exceptio ns)
th e history of tec hn ology has bee n left
large ly to nu ts-and-bolts a ntiquarians o r
co rporate techno philes.
The latte r have mo re mo ney and more
in!luence. To a n appalling exte nt, po pu-
lar understanding o f th e history of tech-
no logy has been ~ h a ped by institutio ns
such a EPCOT Ce nte r, where patro ns
a re in vited to la ug h a t the ine ptitude
ble that some neo-Russl'llia n a ttem pt to
revitali1c British empiricism mav take the
entire ph i l o~op h ica l world h) storm , and
thereby succeed in bridg ing the abyss
wh ich preseu tly separates "ana l)'tic .. from
"Conti ne n tal"' ph ilosophy. .Jo hn l\lc Oow-
cll's recen t a nd much-discussed Mind
and World is such a n attem pt, in which he
tried he roicall) to com bine the best of
Russe ll wit h the best of li ege!. McDowe ll
wou ld like t<> re habilitate kn owledge by
acquaintance by breaking down the tradi-
tio nal distinction between the co ncep-
LUal and the se nsor y. T h is migh t j ust
wor k. Stran!{er peripi ties have occurred
in the history of p h il o~o ph y.
At the mo me nt, th o ug h, the re seems
little reason to agree with Mo nk tha t Rus-
sell . duri ng the )Cars d e~crib ed in this
first vo lum e. was do ing epoc h-making
philoso phica l work. Histo rians a rc mo re
likely to d e~c ribe him no t as th e Gali-
leo o f his d iscip line, but as the rounder
of a relatively short-lived a nd provi ncia l
school of tlw ught.
RtCI t \RD RORTI' teach es ph ilosophy at the
University of Yi rgin ia.
of th e pre-ind ustria l past and chant the
ma n tra or the Di ~ n e) imagineers: ·•tr we
can d ream it, we can do it." The EPCOT
vision of techno-histo r y is simp!) the
DisnC)' versi•>n or a wel l-funded , qua~i ­
o fficial view of tec hnolog-ical cha nge. lt i ~
a n o utl ook tha t ha!\ bt·c n around fo r
more than a century, em bodied in c>eq-
thing fro m world's l~1ir broch ures a nd
urban renewal plam to AT&T comm er-
cials. An d it is a n odd mix o f tec hn ologi-
cal de te rm in ism and fa nta1>ies of huma n
om ni potence. accord ing to which th e
dc miurge o r "developme nt" will libe ra te
US fro m I he dead ha nd o f the past,
whe th er we lil-e it or not. We are in-
exorably tethered to th e treadmill of
progress.
Th i prog1e ~siw ,;ew denies the mes~i ­
ness o f hu man exp e rie nce. lt conceals